Some Thoughts on John 11...

Today the gospel lesson was the raising of Lazarus. This story is so complex in revealing the humanity of Jesus. He waits two day after he has heard the news to go to Bethany. When he draws close, Martha Lazarus' sister whom I think of as the "together" one runs out to meet him. She says the words that must have stung his heart "if you would have been here, he would not have died." She goes on, though, to declare her faith that he still can work a miracle. Mary, the sister who lives with her heart on her sleeve, goes out to meet him, and also says the words "if you would have been here, he would not have died" and proceeds to weep. That is when we have that "shortest verse in the Bible", "Jesus wept." It really touches me that it is not in the proclamation of strong Martha, whom I can imagine always paid her bills on time, had all her Christmas shopping done by Nov 1 and had saved wisely for retirement (none of theses being bad things) where we find Jesus moved by emotion. It is when Mary, without a confession of faith that maybe would have even been hollow for her at that point (who, facing untimely death, has not had some moments where our faith walk stumbles?) weeps, no words to be found, that Jesus sheds tears--perhaps the tears of a loving friend, bearing Mary's burden. Perhaps the tears of a man whose good friend has died. How strange, how wonderful that this same man, he grieves the grief who loves, also, moments later reveals his miraculous power to resuscitate the man four days dead. The "why" question certainly arises--if he knew he could raise Lazarus, why did he grieve? For Mary, as I suggested? Or because as fully human and fully divine, he experienced what any of us feel at the loss to death of a good friend while at the same time able to bring him back to life? Words really fail me around this. In the first part of Anne Rice's book Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt the boy Jesus, seven years old unintentionally, and horrified, kills a boy with a curse he places on him, later bringing him back to life. This boy, Eleazar (which is the transliterated word Lazarus, in Hebrew, like John/Jean in English/French) when the boy Jesus raises him back to life comes back kicking and screaming and fighting tooth and nail. If we let our imaginations roam a bit, if we might imagine with Mrs. Rice that such a thing possibly happened to Jesus, then the tears Jesus cried at Lazarus' death might be in memory of a former raising he had done, an older boy whom he unintentionally killed, whom he intentionally made alive again--perhaps the tears of Jesus in John 11 are for himself as he remembered that first raising--about how his own innocence about his own power left him, never to return. That those tears were for the mother and father of Eleazar who for a few hours sat at their dead son's bedside, experiencing what Mary, the mother of Jesus, would feel herself on that bitter Saturday between. The tears might be for all who mourn what was and what could have been. Lazarus/Eleazar. Human/Divine. Life/Death/Life. Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure, in the cross are sanctified, say the words of In the Cross of Christ I Glory. In the intimate pictures of Jesus in the scripture, we find that bane and blessing of life which is sanctified because Our Lord lived this life beside us. Ready us again, O God, to bravely face the paradox of what it means to be a believer in a vulnerable victor and help us stay honest in our task of living as he lived. Amen