Beside Jesus, Weeping--November 3, 2023
"When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, 'Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.' When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, 'Where have you laid him?' They said to him, 'Lord, come and see.' Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, 'See how he loved him!'" [John 11:32-36]
You and I know that Lazarus will live again--in a matter of moments, as a matter of fact, in the storytelling. Jesus is six verses away from calling to his friend in the tomb, "Lazarus, come out!" and the dead man himself answering that call like he is being awakened from last night's sleep.
And the thing is, Jesus knows it, too.
To read the story as John's gospel gives it to us, Jesus knows full well what he has in mind, and has been willing to let his travels be delayed so that he is too late to prevent Lazarus' death, but not too late to raise Lazarus from the dead. Jesus prays knowing that he is about to interrupt the usual order of the universe with a real-time resurrection. And yet he weeps.
Let that sink in for a moment. Jesus knows how the story will turn out, and he knows there is a happy ending for this scene that has so far felt like a Shakespearean tragedy ("if only he had come sooner!") that will turn it all into divine comedy. And yet he weeps for his friend. He weeps, too, for the heartache of Mary and Martha and all their community, who have been grieving for their brother and neighbor Lazarus for the past four days already. He is grieving for the shadow of death that hangs over all humanity, too, even though he knows that his own looming cross and borrowed tomb will begin the end of death's grip on the world. Jesus knows all these things... and yet his love leads him to grieve in the present moment.
That tension makes this not only one of the most tender moments in all of the pages of Scripture, but also an essential reminder for us who belong to the community of Jesus. Following Jesus' lead, we are people convinced of both love's power to raise the dead AND love's call to care for the hurts of the suffering world now. One does not cancel out the other. Our hope for resurrection does not mean we stop caring about the tragedy of death and the sorrow it causes in the present moment. And our belief that we will be reunited with those who have gone before us does not mean that it is somehow wrong, impious, or unfaithful to miss them now. Both are true at the same time for Jesus, mere moments before the tension is resolved with an empty tomb; we are allowed to live in the tension of hope and grief as well, for as long as it takes. Love, in fact, leads us to both.
For that matter, Christ-like love leads us into the same tension in the midst of world events that seem impossible to resolve. I am convinced, for example, that my hope in God means that at the last, God's perfect Reign will mean a restoration and renewal of all creation, "where justice is at home," as Second Peter puts it. I am confident that the World's Story ends in divine comedy of peace for all peoples and weapons beaten into plowshares. But that hope doesn't mean I get to say in the present moment, "Well, since it will all turn out all right in the end, I guess I don't really have to care very much about the latest developments in the war in Gaza." My belief that at the last in God's new creation all captives are freed does not mean I can shrug off the plight of those held hostage by Hamas. My confidence in the victory of God's justice does not mean I give up on the need for peace now, and my assurance of the ultimate peace of God's Reign does not mean I can ignore the victims of injustice right now, either. Love leads us both to hope for the future and to compassion in the present, just like Jesus outside of Lazarus' tomb.
My concern, of course, is that for an awful lot of our history, we Christians have made the mistake of speaking almost exclusively about future hope (and even that is usually framed as "We'll get to go to heaven when we die," rather than "God will set all things right"), and we have often had little to say about present-moment suffering, other than, "Tough it out, and one day it will be better after you die." We've sold the gospel like it's Heavenly Fire Insurance rather than a promise of creation restored through Christ. And that has led to folks in the name of their Christian faith to say things like, "Endure slavery now, because one day you'll get to go to heaven," or "Just put up with the abuse now, and hope that things will be better after you die," or "We don't need to care about the health of our environment, because God is taking us up to heaven in the end anyway." So it's no surprise, either, how easy it can be for Respectable Religious voices now to say things like, "God will triumph in the end, so we don't have to pay attention to death tolls on the news now, or care about how many innocents are being harmed." It's terrible when those voices draw those conclusions, but in a sense, it's exactly what you would expect from a theology that can't hold the now and the not yet together in tension.
By contrast, I think Jesus' example points us to deep care and concern in the present moment for all who suffer--even when the suffering of different groups seems to pull us in different directions. Rather than thinking a war requires us to pick "sides" for us to root for, it is possible for us to care both for those threatened by terror and victimized by hostage-taking hostility AND to care for refugees killed by bombs dropped in retaliation. We can grieve for every life lost--in fact, we must. As Henri Nouwen put it so beautifully, "I am beginning to see that much of praying is grieving." Grief in the present moment keeps us from becoming callous over the reality of suffering or just ignoring the pain of others because we think God will take care of it later.
So today, our work in taking God's never-ending love seriously is to let ourselves grieve. We place ourselves at Jesus' side weeping for all who have died--those we know and miss ourselves, and those whose names and stories we will never know on this side of glory. And with Jesus, we let ourselves share the sorrows of others who hurt, even while we hold onto our resurrection hope and the promise of new creation. That kind of compassion will lead us beyond church doors to the kitchen tables, hospital waiting rooms, and bedsides of those who suffer, as well to compassion for those across oceans who are living in the shadow of death and the noise of war. That's where we go today--beside Jesus.
Lord Jesus, let your never-ending love teach us how to weep with those who weep even while we hope for resurrection joy you promise.
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