Jesus Wept: Finding Hope in the Story of Lazarus | Rev Lucy Flatt
Kia ora. I'm Lucy, the vicar of St John’s Anglican Church in Johnsonville. I wonder if you've ever woken up to bad news. I wonder if you've ever had to be awake in the middle of the night for bad news. I am, unashamedly, a cricket supporter, and again, most recently, I managed to stay up for the entirety of the night to watch the Black Caps cricket team in a world final. Did I expect them to win? Always endlessly hopeful. Did they win? No, they did not.
In fact, Psalm 30 verse 5 talks about: “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning,” but when the Black Caps lose again, it doesn’t feel like there’s much joy; it just feels like there’s pain. But what about areas in others’ lives? When somebody who is on the road to recovery slips up? When somebody who’s in a mental health downward spiral can’t find the light at the end of the tunnel? These are very real situations that cause our hearts to pause and to weep.
And the gift of today’s story is that Jesus stops at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, and he weeps. Think about that for a moment. Jesus has delayed going to Lazarus. He has delayed so long that in the sickness, his friend Lazarus has died. As Mary and Martha point out, “Jesus, if you had been here, our brother would not have died.” Death wasn’t necessary for Lazarus in terms of the relational love that he had of Jesus, and Jesus had of him, and so Jesus comes to the tomb and weeps.
Isn’t that a strange thought? That our Creator God made flesh, who is the resurrection and the life, paused in his ministry, in his wanderings, in his coming into deep relationship with others, to weep.
What areas in your life are you weeping over at the moment?
The story of Lazarus is the story of sadness and hope. Sadness that Jesus has come from a place of persecution and has left a town in order to get away, only to receive news that his friend Lazarus is sick. He turns to his disciples and lets them know, “Hey, don’t worry; this sickness won’t end in death.” But then he says to his disciples, “Lazarus has fallen asleep,” and his disciples, as most normal people would assume, think that asleep means he will recover from the illness, and so there’s no need for Jesus to go and see him. And Jesus makes it plain: Lazarus is dead.
How is this possible after he has already told the disciples that it won’t end in death? To understand this, we need to go back in John to the earlier chapter — in chapter five — where Jesus says that whoever believes in him will have life. Even though he die, he will have life.
So Jesus turns up back in Bethany and meets Martha and Mary. By this stage, his friend Lazarus has been dead for four days. This is a wonderful wee detail that John gives us, because after three days there was a bit of a sense in which the body could be resurrected. There was a sense in Judaism that the soul would hover over the body, and resurrection was possible. But after three days, there is no hope of life. Four days — as Martha points out, “My Lord, there will be a stench” — by this point.
Jesus brings his disciples and he meets Martha and Mary. Martha, in her classic reasoning, comes to Jesus, and it almost sounds like an accusation: “Jesus, if you were here, my brother would not have died.” But Jesus challenges Martha’s worldview. He asks, “Martha, is your belief in the resurrection?” And she says, “Yeah, of course I believe in the resurrection; on the last day we will be raised to new life.” She believes in a bodily resurrection to come, alongside the Pharisees and alongside Jesus in their day.
But then Jesus gives her a wider challenge: “Do you believe that Lazarus can live?” Not live in general or in the last resurrection, but live presently, in this moment and in this time. Jesus gently and beautifully asks Martha to transform her future hope into a present hope.
How often have we been in moments of sadness or weeping or suffering, and we have known there is hope for the future? Revelation reminds us there will be a new heaven and a new earth, that God will wipe away every tear from every eye. Yet in that moment, do we realise that God is present with us? Do we realise that eternal life — life in all its fullness — is present with us in that moment of suffering?
As Mary comes out to meet Jesus, she does what she’s going to do in a couple of chapters, and she falls at his feet. Again, she repeats the words of Martha: “Jesus, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Jesus, comforting these women, moves on to the tomb, and out of love for Lazarus, out of love for Mary and Martha, he weeps. He pauses to deeply feel in his body the emotions he has in that moment.
And then he speaks words of life that are so surprising and remarkable for everyone. He says, “Move the stone away from the tomb.” It’s the equivalent of “Go and grab a crowbar; we’re about to hook up the coffin lid.” And again Martha says, “There’ll be a stench. It’s been four days. This is not a good idea, Jesus.” But obviously, at some point, somebody goes and moves the stone out of the way.
And Jesus, having the power of life, cries out, “Lazarus, come out!” And Lazarus, like a mummy from a movie, completely covered in all of the linen cloth that he has been buried in, walks out of the tomb.
There are many death‑to‑life stories around. There are many anecdotes that people tell of dying and being raised, but the time frame for these are very short. Four days is an extremely long time to be dead and to be raised to new life. Those who are watching what happens believe. Those who are far off believe.
In the midst of this passage, Jesus pauses to tell us another and final truth about who he is. Using ego eimi, the classic “I am,” he says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Though you die, those who believe in me shall never die.” What does he mean by this? Does he mean eternal life and life are the same thing, or are they two distinct ways of being? It’s this weird, awkward space that we live in before the resurrection of the dead in the future, where the kingdom of God is here and yet not fully. We have life, and life in all its fullness, when we are grounded in relationship with God. We are grounded in a deep sense of our identity — not in what the world has told us we are, but in who Jesus has told us we are, as beloved children of God.
God takes the time to pause and to sit with us, to weep when we are weeping, to pause in those moments of life, and to come and comfort us. No, he doesn’t always fix the moment perfectly. No, it’s not often on any sort of time frame that we have set out. But he is present with us.
What might be the invitation to invite God into the fullness of your life?
Where is your heart hurting? Your relationships broken? Your anxieties rising?
Where might you invite Jesus to come and sit with you as you weep?
As part of my role as a priest, I walk alongside a lot of people in different stages of life, and there’s one thing that leads me to weeping again and again and again — and it’s those who wish to be free from the patterns and behaviours that have held them. The people who long for newness of life and long to be able to lay down the sins that cling so closely to them, the hurts that cause them to spiral downwards.
What does Jesus have to say to these people?
What does Lazarus’ resurrection have to say to those who are mourning the actual death of real friends?
Hold fast to hope.
As Jesus wept, so he welcomes us to weep. It’s not un‑Christian to feel our deep emotions, but rather it is following in the steps of Jesus to pause and to feel all the feelings, to notice what he is doing in our bodies as well as what he is doing in our relationships.
I invite you this week, as you pause to consider the story of Lazarus, to look at where he might be inviting you to sit and to weep with him — but to sit in weeping in the knowledge that he is so present with you, and there is a future hope. This weird tension that Christians can be sad and joyful at the same time. This weird tension of the world maybe on a precipice of who knows what — but God is present with us. He cares enough about us to wipe away every tear from every eye.
May the story of Lazarus give us hope that God isn’t just at work in the big picture, but he's at work in the ordinary stories of individual lives. May we have hope that he too can be resurrection over the places in our lives that are dead. Let us have hope that as we look toward Easter, we know that Jesus is the resurrection and the life, and in him alone we live and move and have our being.
Let us trust in the one who gives us life.
Amen.
Download video here
