Clear and Bright
John 11:1-45
Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’ Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
Then after this he said to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?’ Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.’ After saying this, he told them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.’ Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.’ Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow-disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’
When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, ‘The Teacher is here and is calling for you.’ And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came 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!’ But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’
Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upwards and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’
Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.
Easter is only two weeks away—isn’t that crazy? In two weeks we’ll be celebrating the triumph over death itself with the resurrection of Jesus, the ultimate victory. But before we get there, we have to make it through the hard stuff. Before we get there, we have to make it through the death against which Jesus will eventually win. And so over these next couple weeks, we’ll be digging deep into Jesus’ humanity. We’ll be hearing stories about his doubts, his worries, his fears. And his humanity is perfectly exemplified in today’s passage in his tears—as he weeps for his friend, and, I believe, for himself and for what awaits him.
Last week, Jesus healed the blind man Celidonius after some cryptic and foreshadowing words— “We must work the works of [God] who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” You might remember from last week’s sermon that this was Jesus foreshadowing his death and the fact that his disciples would have to continue is work after he was gone—but for the time being, he was still in the world, and so the world remains in figurative daylight, and he and the disciples have to make the most of the time they still have.
Today, once again, we have Jesus reminding his disciples of the work they must do during the clarity of day and the impending chaos of night. Jesus gets word that his beloved friend Lazarus is sick, and his friends and Lazarus’ sisters Martha and Mary ask for his presence to heal their brother. After some time waiting, deliberating, for reasons that are never stated, Jesus finally makes the decision to travel back to Judea. His disciples are distraught—“Rabbi, [they] were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” Jesus has created such a stir that in Judea with his signs, with his messianic claims, with his growing flock, that he is officially in grave danger. But Jesus says, similar to chapter 9, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.”
While there is clarity of purpose—meaning, while Jesus is still physically present to guide and lead his flock, they must do what they can regardless of the risk, regardless of the horror the waits in the wings. There is a growing urgency here, and growing fear. There are several explanations as to why Jesus waits days before reviving his friend Lazarus— the most widely accepted one has to do with burial customs and beliefs that the spirit hangs around for a day or so after burial, so Jesus had to wait until his friend was truly dead to revive him; day four after the death was when one would be considered officially of another world. But I can’t help but wonder, if, considering Jesus’ tears later on in the passage, if Jesus’ very human fears contributed to his waiting. The disciples are right to worry about Jesus’ and their own safety in returning to Judea—in the passage our lectionary skips between last week and this week, the religious authorities did indeed pick up stones and were ready to kill Jesus right then and there. He convinces them with some very lawyerly scriptural interpretation that they will be going against scripture if they do indeed stone him, and so he gets away and goes into hiding.
So I can’t help but wonder, if knowing what awaits him in the coming weeks, if having this very recent, near-death, deeply traumatizing experience in Judea, that when he hears the news of his sick friend, and when he gets word of the pleas of his good friends Martha and Mary, if he just doesn’t have it in him to go there quite yet, to return to this place full of powerful people who would have him dead. Imagine the thoughts going through his head, imagine escaping death once, just to return to the place where you know death awaits once again, where you know the painful fate that awaits you. Jesus knows that darkness is coming.
A month or so ago, I read a beautiful and heartbreaking book, This Other Eden by Paul Harding. In the book, Ethan, a poor young man with a gift for painting begins an apprenticeship of sorts at the estate of a wealthy couple. He spends his entire day painting, he takes advantage of all the daylight he has. In contemplating the day’s transition into night, he remembers lines for a book on painting he was gifted: “Evening is the hour when different shapes begin to blend together… Morning is the hour when shapes begin to distinguish themselves from one another again.” And so Ethan wakes up every day as the sun comes up to paint, and paints until the light is “no longer adequate.”
Jesus and his disciples must make everything out of the daylight that remains. And for Jesus, this isn’t very long. He doesn’t have the luxury of have endless hours of daylight ahead to continue his work, to save the world. He has to save who he can, and teach who he can with the time he has left.
And so when his disciples remind him that he will be in grave danger upon his return to Judea, he bravely shoots back, “Are there not twelve hours in day?” and then further explains that he must take advantage of that literal and figurative daylight and finish out his mission on earth. And so when he arrives in Judea and Martha meets him and scolds him for not coming earlier to save her beloved brother, Jesus explains that her brother will indeed rise again. She takes this as obvious, referencing in the then-common Jewish belief that in the final days, all will rise again. But Jesus is talking about the here and now. Jesus is still here, it is still light, and Jesus is able to be the resurrection, not just in the future of those final days, but right now—he still is able to lead with clarity and intention.
But it’s when his other friend, Martha’s and Lazarus’ sister comes, Mary, that things really take a turn. Mary is more outwardly emotional than Martha, she comes to Jesus and says virtually the same thing her sister said, but weeping, and Jesus can no longer be his usual stoic self. Jesus becomes “greatly disturbed in spirit” and bursts into tears. He weeps. It does not say if it’s simply Mary’s tears that bring him to weep; or if it’s the reality that his friend is dead; or if he feels guilty that he waited those two days as his friend suffered and died. It’s probably a mix of all those things—Jesus was human, after all.
And then, in verse 38, it’s written that Jesus is “again greatly disturbed” when he arrives at Lazarus’ tomb. And so again, I can’t help but wonder here, if Jesus is not only feeling sorrow and grief for his friends, but also feeling sorrow and dread for his own future, for the pain and sorrow that awaits him. He sees the tomb, identical to the one he will be in in just a short time. He sees his friends weeping for Lazarus, as they will soon be weeping for him. He smells the stench of death and grief all around him, and he is so full of emotion for his loved ones and so full of fear for himself, that he weeps in a way that we don’t see anywhere else in the gospel of John.
He knows he doesn’t have much time, he knows there is not much daylight left. Soon things will blur together and be obscured and confusing. Soon his loved ones will stumble about confused without Jesus there to lead them with clarity, purpose, and intention. Scary times are ahead.
And again—Jesus knows all this. And so, he weeps. Worshipping a weeping deity, a truly human god, is what drew me back to my faith after I left the church for a bit in my teens and early 20’s. Being able to feel like we can understand our savior, and that he can understand us became the key to my faith. And we may not always be as brave as Jesus in facing what’s head; in fact, we rarely, if ever are, but at least we know that when we’re feeling low, when we’re stumbling around in the dark, we still have that light in Jesus. And I imagine that Jesus is still weeping often, looking down, wishing he could come back and be that light of the world again, to make things clear and bright. I think Jesus sees us stumbling in the dark towards out own destruction, and I can’t help but wonder if he wishes he could come back and weeps for the fact that he can’t.
Because imagine if he did—imagine if our weeping, disturbed, very human savior came back to us right now. It wouldn’t be much different from the days leading to his passion and death—a stoic, peaceful man preaching in favor of the poor, preaching in favor of the oppressed, preaching against hierarchies and the powerful. How do you think the powerful would react to him today? Those in power trying to cut food stamps, trying to cut access to healthcare, trying to further ostracize and deeply endangering our queer and trans siblings—how would they respond to Jesus today?
After the passage Sue read for us today, the plot to kill Jesus is set in motion—the religious authorities begin to plot, not because they all truly believe Jesus is some kind of blasphemer, but because they’re scared of the Romans—in verses 47 and 48, a chief priest exclaims, ”What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” They’re afraid.
That same fear is so deeply present today—the fear of losing our own power, our way of life as we know it, in favor of a world that might benefit others in addition to ourselves. It takes sacrifice and some stumbling in the dark to get to that new world, but we have Jesus as guidance. Though he may not be here with us, we have the Holy Spirit in his stead. Without Jesus’ physical presence, we may not have the clarity of broad daylight at our disposal, but we’ll have some kind of guiding line, something to make the road visible enough. But we will still stumble, and we’ll be scared, but that’s the beautiful thing about Jesus, and the beautiful, though heartbreaking, thing that we’ll learn about as we enter Holy Week soon—Jesus knows our stumbling blocks. Jesus knows our fears and our sorrows, and Jesus weeps with us. We are never alone in our darkness.
Knowing that we are never alone in our darkest hours has always brought me so much peace. Knowing that we have a savior who loves us unconditionally and weeps alongside us is what strengthens my faith. It gives me clarity and intention to keep on going.
The road ahead is hard, there’s no getting around that. Without Jesus’ physical presence, things are obscured, blurred together, confusing; but thanks to the Holy Spirit, we have our moments of daylight. Over these next couple weeks, we will see the darkest parts of humanity; but new life, resurrection is always possible. So over these next weeks, we will pray with Jesus in the garden; we will weep with him, we will weep for him. But then that perfect light will shine and guide us on our way; the world will be blurred and dark no more; and we will continue the journey towards an earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
