Materials
Gospel
of John, #5
When
Jesus Weeps
John 11:17-37
by R. Todd Bouldin
Last Sunday I began preaching from the story
of the raising of Lazarus in the Gospel of John chapter 11. We saw
how last week that Jesus loves you too much to fulfill all of your
expectations for your life. Instead, He has greater dreams for you,
greater dreams than we can possibly imagine. We just wanted a miracle
to make this life a little better. Jesus insteads offers a while new
life. But often that means that the things God is doing in your life
may seem like it’s happening when it’s already too late.
Will you believe then? Even when it’s already too late and your
expectations are in the grave?
Prayer
Mary, Martha and Lazarus are interesting characters in the Gospel
of John because they are not apostles, and not even traveling disciples
of Jesus. In them, we get a glimpse into people that Jesus called
friends. We don’t know much about them, but John tells us enough
that we get a feeling for their characters a bit. We know the least
about Lazarus from the Gospels. He’s either sick, dead, or glad
to be living again when we encounter him – kind of reminds me
of Larry Fuller. But Martha, we know her pretty well from the Gospel
of Luke and from the Gospel of John. She is the take-charge woman
in the group, not unlike a few women I’ve met at church events?
And as we can see in this passage, Martha didn’t miss much while
she was doing the dishes and Mary was at the feet of Jesus. Martha
knows Jesus and her theology pretty well. She understands the power
of Jesus, and she is courageous enough to ask Jesus for Him to exercise
His power on behalf of her brother.
Now Mary is the daughter you’re still worried about because
she isn’t very practical. She hasn’t cleaned her room
in a while, she is majoring in art in college, and she always is giving
her money to save the children of the Sudan but never has enough money
for herself. She’s smart, but she’s not careful. But if
you want to laugh or cry, Mary is your friend. They were all very
different I suppose, but Jesus loved all three of His friends.
The Greek text says that He loved them so much that He didn’t
come when Martha requested Him to come save her brother. Instead,
He lingered where He was for two days, and finally showed up at the
bedside about four days too late. Four days is a long time after someone
has died to be showing up for a healing. The shock and the weeping
are past, the funeral food has been eaten, and things are getting
back to normal. But then Jesus shows up, but way too late, and Lazarus
is dead. But funerals lasted longer in the ancient world than now,
and their friends are still around to comfort Martha and Mary with
their loss. It seemed so unfair that someone so close to them, and
even close to Jesus, had to die so early.
Lazarus is the name of the thing in your life that you thought
Jesus loved as much as you did but you’ve lost it. Maybe
it was your health, or your career plan, or your children. It may
be a dream we had for our church, or for our city, or for our family.
Maybe it is even some mission you believe God led you to pursue. For
the friends of Jesus, these expectations and dreams are not just personal
pursuits or prideful ambitions. We actually believed Jesus cared about
these things and that He would do what we expected Him to do. We don’t
expect God to give us everything we want, but we do expect that Jesus
will love His own friends enough to save their hope. After all, Mary
and Martha were not asking for something entirely selfish. They were
asking Jesus to show His power through His actions for them. Nothing
is more disappointing than when Jesus makes you wait on a mission
you thought was His too. Nothing is more disturbing than to find out
Jesus may not have been on the same timetable as you.
Three weeks ago, I sat with a friend of mine in Abilene, Texas as
she told me of how she felt so confused by her life and what God wants
for her. She was a children’s minister in a church in the Northwest,
and she received a call to be the children’s minister of a very
large church in Texas. She believed that this is what God wanted for
her and her family. So her husband moved his business to Texas, they
moved their children into new schools, and she began her new ministry.
Less than two years later, with little explanation, she was terminated
by the church elders and now her family remains in Texas without a
plan for what comes next in her life or theirs. She wrote me an email
last week and she told me that she did not know how to see this event.
It truly is a crisis of faith when you find out that Jesus has shown
up when it’s too late to save your dream. Had she been duped?
Had she not sensed God’s calling correctly? Or was God doing
something much bigger that she can’t grasp right now?
When the Savior is too late to save your Lazarus, that’s
not just a disappointment. It’s then that you ask some tough
questions of God. When Lazarus dies, you’ve lost something
that is close to your heart, but something that you also thought was
close to God’s heart too. The question then comes to you at
this moment – at this moment when all of the options have run
out and the dream is in the grave – can you still believe in
Jesus? Can you believe then?
The period of mourning continued, and then Martha gets the word that
Jesus is on His way to their home. I am not sure what Martha was thinking,
but she left Mary at home and she ran down the road to meet Jesus.
She’s always on top of things. Always trying to manage the situation.
And this time the woman who had been on top of things and tried to
resolve the situation was upset. She ran to Jesus and said, “If
only you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Jesus
answered her, “Martha, your brother will rise again.”
She then says, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection
on the last day.” Four days into her grief, Jesus shows up,
and Martha seems to be struggling to remind herself of what she knows.
It’s a tough situation, so she starts talking theology to get
past her broken heart. If you’ve ever sat with people as they
grieve the loss of a loved one, you’ve heard the same theologizing.
“The Lord is my Shepherd … “ “He’s gone
to be with God.”
Martha is just like us. Her expectations of Jesus just bit the dust,
and Lazarus is in the grave, but she can’t possibly imagine
that Jesus might do something to cause life now to be entirely
new. In our moments of disappointment, it’s easy to theologize:
“Well, I’m sure God must not want me to go in that direction.”
“I know God knows best.” “I guess God wanted to
take her.” And we believe that the only thing God can do to
change the circumstance is something in the next life –
something beyond the brokenness and disappointment of this life, right
now.
Martha returns to one of her favorite assurances to get herself past
the grief and disappointment, and Jesus interrupts her, “I am
the resurrection and the life, Martha. Do you believe this?”
You who have shown up at worship service Sunday after Sunday for years,
you who can recite the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes, you who
constantly revert to the 23rd Psalm and Romans 8:28, you who know
so much about what God will do in the future, STOP. Quit thinking.
Quit analyzing. Quit theologizing. Hear Jesus tell you something.
“I am the resurrection and the life. Do you believe this?”
Really. Seriously. Do you believe that Jesus could actually do something
to change your life right now?
Notice here that Jesus is not asking Martha what she believes.
She is glad to talk about what she believes. But what she believes
evidently isn’t enough because she is still worried, anxious,
disappointed and perhaps even bitter. It’s great that she has
so many correct beliefs and sound doctrines. But Jesus asks her if
she believes in Him. Jesus is not asking what she believes, but
in whom she believes. “I am the resurrection and the life.
Do you believe this?” If you believe that, it will make all
the difference when Lazarus has died. When your life has bit the dust,
or your expectation lies buried in a grave, whether you survive will
depend on who you know. Jesus is not a “what” but a “who.”
Jesus is the living Son of God, the One who resurrects what is dead,
the One who gives life to what appears to be in the grave. In Christ,
in knowing Him, the tombs of loss and grief cannot hold us. Your
losses will not be the defining moments of your life if you believe
Him.
Martha said, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah,
the Son of God, the One coming into the world.” You may have
had some belief about that doctrine before Lazarus died. But you won’t
truly know it until after Lazarus dies. That’s when you will
know if you believe it.
When Jesus reaches Mary, she responds initially just the way Martha
had. “If only . . . .” “If only, God, you had shown
up before our marriage got too rocky to save.” “If only,
Jesus, you had healed my husband.” “If only God you had
given me the career I had planned.” But Mary doesn’t talk
theology with Jesus like Martha does. She just fell at his feet and
wept and wept. The Gospel says that “Seeing this, Jesus was
greatly disturbed and deeply moved.” No words had to be spoken.
No Scripture verses had to be quoted. The tears were silent falling
prayers of grief and loss. And Jesus began to weep.
He does not try to gain composure or maintain objectivity. He does
not say, “Oh get over it! I’m the resurrection and the
life. All things were work out together for good.” He just starts
to cry. Jesus, God in the flesh, weeps. This means that God
can be greatly disturbed and deeply moved, particularly by the losses
of all we held dear. Even when He wants to give you a new life, He
won’t abandon you in losing the old one. Old dreams die hard,
and He will stand by your side, and He will cry with you as you put
the old dreams to death.
God has joined our tears. He has joined the tears of the world, those
whose tears we see as well as those who cry at night in the silence
of their room on their pillow, and in places around the world we will
never know. He cries with the AIDS orphans who give up their parents
to death in Africa, and with the mother who loses her son on the battlefield,
and with those who lose their jobs and with those who can’t
find one, with those whose families are torn apart by violence and
greed, with those whose children have abandoned them. Regardless of
the grave at which you stand today, Jesus does not ask you to just
get over it. He kneels beside you and He will weep with you. Who
knows what will happen next, if the God we know and believe, can weep?
Can your theology do more than think and talk? Can you envision a
God who cries, a father who weeps with you over your losses. If you
can, you will know that this is no ordinary person who weeps with
you.
The One who kneels beside you as you say goodbye to what you love
the most is the resurrection and the life. Who knows what can happen
if that’s true?
"I am the resurrection and the life." Do you believe
this?
March 19, 2006
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