Jesus wept

I’m going to offer you the beginning of a Lenten reflection for this week and the link to the full essay if you’d like to read more. I was reading in John 11 this week about Jesus’ response to the death of Lazarus and this really stirred me:
 
“I’ll be honest: the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead is a hard one for me.  At many levels, I don’t understand it.  I don’t understand why Jesus dawdles when he first receives word of Lazarus’s illness.  I don’t understand why he allows his friends to suffer for the sake of “God’s glory.”  I don’t understand why he tells his disciples that Lazarus is “asleep” rather than dead.  I don’t understand why he sidesteps Martha’s tortured accusation: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  I don’t understand why Jesus raises just one man, leaving countless others in their graves. And I don’t understand why Lazarus virtually disappears from the Gospel narrative once his grave clothes fall off.  Why is he never heard from again?

In many ways, the story is shrouded in mystery.  But today, this week, now, I cling to the two words in the narrative I do understand:  “Jesus wept.”  Thank God — Jesus wept.  For me, this is the heart of the story as we (have lived) through the Covid-19 crisis: that grief takes hold of God and breaks him down. That Jesus — the most accurate revelation of the divine we will ever have — stands at the grave of his friend and cries.

Let me be clear: in focusing on Jesus’s tears, I’m not ignoring or minimizing the raising of the dead, the conquering of the grave, the unbinding of the bound.  I am a Christian because I believe in resurrection.  I believe it as metaphor and as symbol.  I believe that God can and will bring back to life all that is dead, buried, forgotten, and festering within us: old wounds, hardened hearts, stubborn addictions, fierce fears.  I believe that God is always and everywhere in the business of making us more fully and abundantly alive — alive to love, alive to hope, alive to each other, alive to Creation.”
 
Debie Thomas' Lectionary Essay: "When Jesus Wept."
 
Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation