Redemption Through Jesus’ Grief

I clearly remember a sunny morning when I was six years old. I was so pleased I had dressed myself for the first day of spring in bright pastels—a pink and yellow velour top and blue pinafore dress. I came bounding into the kitchen to show my parents, and the last thing I recall is standing in the doorway with the sun in my eyes. After that, all I remember is hearing that Murmur, my great-grandmother, had died. 

Everything crumpled. The sun and birdsong and all the hope that comes with spring caved in. Our Murmur was gone. 

Murmur always loomed large in my sense of who my family is. As a young woman, she emigrated from western Sweden on a passenger steamer, she worked as a seamstress sewing furs in Chicago, then Minnesota. When her husband and young son died from tuberculosis, she and her young daughter moved back to Sweden for some time. Immigrating has always been complicated, and rarely linear. Eventually, they returned. I’m named for this amazing woman, who, standing four feet something, has always been to me a paragon of strength and love and perseverance. 

She’s the first person I loved and lost to death.

This was the day that death entered my world.

I have two other memories of that first day of spring. At Kindergarten, my teacher found me crying, and I distinctly recall coming up with a silly excuse for my tears. I couldn’t give voice to the true reason for my pain. Saying out loud that she had died would have been unbearable. 

Then, later that day, as I was playing outdoors, I came across a little bird lying dead on the ground under a tree. Seeing the earth reclaim her body brought on a fresh wave of grief and tears. I wept for Murmur, for this beautiful little bird, and for all life that is fleeting and fades. 

In today’s gospel lesson, we find Jesus weeping at the death of a friend whom he loved dearly. Lazarus has been ill, his sisters sent for Jesus, and he purposely did not go to heal him. The Evangelist John presents Jesus’ divine nature, power, and knowledge of the future as less confined by his humanity than he appears in the other gospels. He knows that he could save Lazarus and he knows that he will die—why then did he stall? 

This story eventually resolves into a happy ending—so if Jesus knew Lazarus would rise, why then his tears? And for those of us who have lost loved ones for good, what kind of consolation is there in this account of a short-lived death?

The story opens by identifying Mary as the one who later anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair, a symbol of her recognition of Jesus and a foreshadowing of his burial. This took place later, just six days before his crucifixion—the reference here casts this story in the light of Jesus’ death, and resurrection. Today’s narrative closes by noting that many who accompanied Mary at the raising of Lazarus believed in Jesus. She sees Jesus for who he is and brings other to recognize him. Mary’s witness frames this lesson. 

But to back up. Lazarus is ill, and his sisters send for Jesus to come and heal, as he has so many times before. But to their distress, he tarried in traveling down to Bethany in order, he says, to bring Glory to God and that the Son might be glorified. His intent is to offer not only healing, but also a sign of his divine nature. 

This part of the story often rubs people the wrong way. To those who have lost loved ones who were their everything, the very center of their being, this apparent flippancy in the face of the sisters’ grief feels bewildering. Just Friday, I spoke with a woman whose sister was born with mental disabilities and suffered a debilitating physical illness that led to an early death. This woman, in her pain, doesn’t see a loving God who cares even for the sparrow. To her, understandably, God feels far away and far too slow. So often, we call out of the depths and seem to be met by silence.

At this point in our story, Jesus has recently fled being stoned in Jerusalem and is at the Jordan river, where John had been baptizing. When the sisters send for him, his followers try to dissuade him from returning to Judea. Thomas’ makes clear that the disciples anticipate they will be killed if they go. This is a scary time, and for as much flak as we give the disciples for abandoning Jesus at the end, here they summon the courage to accompany him.  

In Bethany, many have come to console the sisters at their home, where Mary remains while Martha goes to meet Jesus with the words,

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 

Is this an accusation? A statement of faith in his power to heal? Both? It’s not clear, but in the course of their conversation she confesses that Jesus is the Messiah. Soon she returns home to extend Jesus’ call to her sister, and Mary rushes toward him, and echoes her sister, 

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 

When Jesus sees them crying, he is disturbed in spirit and deeply moved, and he weeps. 

And once again, a variation on the same question:

“Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

I wonder whether the refrain in this story might be the most frequent cry we level against God in our distress. If you were here. If you wanted to. If you cared. You would not have let them die.

But nature keeps taking its course, and for the most part, we don’t experience God intervening in such dramatic ways natural processes. Despite the consequences, this is a good thing because it allows for humanity to live in a universe that functions according to laws that they can come to comprehend. A world that functions according to natural laws allows for human freedom and free will. This is a blessing.

At the same time, it comes with a cost and elicits questions why God doesn’t intervene more visibly. In this liturgical year, our church has held three funerals with another on the horizon, and we walk with many more who suffer from illness or mourn the death of loved ones. 

In Bethany, we see Jesus weep with those who mourn the death of one whom he loved. He grieves their loss and shares in our sorrow when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I wonder whether he also weeps for the death he soon will face and for the pain it will cause those who love him.

The events in Bethany are out-of-the-ordinary—a miraculous sign that works on many levels. Lazarus entombed with a stone rolled in front of a cave together with the reminder of Mary’s oil offers a preview of Jesus’ immanent burial. 

When the dead man comes out, bound with strips of cloth, Jesus’ command, “Unbind him, and let him go,” has broader resonances of our liberation from sin and death through his saving grace. Lazarus’ resurrection prefigures Jesus’. Lines from today’s story run all throughout our funeral liturgy.

By entering into human brokenness and death, Jesus redeems what he takes on and restores us to our intended purpose, offering new life and resurrection to all people.

In telling Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life,” he places the power of resurrection directly in his person, rather than in a future event alone. In Jesus, all things, even life and death, take on new meaning, such that those who believe in him, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in him will never die.

Next Sunday, Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday. I urge you to join us for services that walk us through Jesus’ welcome into Jerusalem, his last supper with his followers where he models what it means to serve, his betrayal, trial, abandonment, and crucifixion, and at last, his glorious resurrection. If you want to understand how life and death are transformed in Christ, there is no better way than walking with him and the Church through Holy Week.