In June of this year, we said goodbye to my dear mother-in-law, Donna. It was a hard week before she died. Well, really it was a hard few months, but it all came to a head the week she was home on hospice, my sister-in-law and I tending to her night and day. I felt our role was a sacred privilege, caring for Donna in her dying days. I had never before been so close to someone in this state, and I was struck by the fact that dying appears to be very hard work. Death is, in fact, a brutal enemy. When Donna finally went from this earth, there was such relief for her in my soul. And yet, naturally, there was also grief for us left behind.
But even in that sorrow, in the moments after she took her last breath, I could hear her light, beautiful, cheerful laugh so clearly in my mind. She was then, finally, perfectly at peace! Her suffering was over… is over! It is remarkable the comfort that comes from thinking of her in the presence of her Savior. Her faith is now sight and what joy must fill her now! As Donna took her last breath on this earth, she entered heaven, and she is now more alive than she’s ever been. Praise God!
Even with those comforting thoughts, though, the pain of loss is still there. The day after Donna’s passing, I was journaling, praying, thinking, and, of course, crying, when the story of Lazarus came to mind.
I flipped open my Bible to read afresh the story of Jesus raising His friend from the dead and of Him weeping at the tomb just before the miracle. Grief, amidst hope. It’s just the thing my heart needed.
While I read, a few curious little puzzles caught my attention which were good for my soul to chew on. As I pondered them, a few beautiful truths rose to the surface. Good, meaty truths that anchor us in times of grief and sorrow.
Will you join me a moment in John 11:1-44, to puzzle with me and be encouraged by what we find?
Puzzle #1
In verses 5 and 6 we learn that Jesus loved his three friends, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. But then, right after that, a peculiar little word pops up; the word “so.” It’s peculiar because of what comes after it. Here’s what the text says:
“Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was” (John 11:5-6).
Now why is that?
Why did Jesus’ love for His friends compel Him to stay where He was instead of going straight to poor, sick Lazarus to do what I’m sure all the disciples would have expected Him to do: heal Lazarus?
I love when Scripture answers my own questions if I just keep reading! And that’s what happens here.
Jesus had already said in verse 4,
“…This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
And then in verse 15, He says,
“…for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe.”
Why did Jesus wait to go to Lazarus? Because Jesus had something better in mind than healing Lazarus from sickness. He was going to heal Him from death! And in raising Him back to life, He would show His loved ones who He really is.
Jesus’ love compels Him to do what must be done no matter how hard the circumstance, because it leads to a future greater than we can imagine.
Puzzle #2
In John 11:8 the disciples ask Jesus a question about location, but Jesus gives them an answer about time. Why does He do this? Let’s look a little closer:
Jesus said, “‘Let us go to Judea again.’ The disciples said to Him. ‘Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?’ Jesus answered, ‘If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.’”
I can just see the disciples scrunched up faces, “Huh?? What in the world is He saying?”
At least that’s what happens to me when I read His answer! And to be fair, I would be inclined to think as the disciples did: why do we want to go back to the place where there is such animosity towards you, Lord!
But Jesus is never thwarted by human threat.
He had a very clear purpose, and as long as He was “walking in the light” (which is always true because He IS the light!) there was no problem going to a “dangerous” place. He knew no one was going to take His life from Him. He was going to lay it down willingly exactly when He meant to.
We tend to think about circumstances as the disciples did: in terms of space and time and safety and danger, “What?! Go back where people want to stone you?? To wake someone up from a nap??”
But Jesus thinks about circumstances differently. It’s not just about the when and where, it’s about the what and Who.
The when and where might be uncomfortable, and we might not understand the pain, but we can always trust the what and Who; Jesus continually works for the good of His people and the glory of His name.
Interlude: The Key and the Crux
Before we get to Puzzle #3, we read in verses 17-27, a beautiful, honest, and raw exchange between a grieving Martha and her beloved Lord. She knows that if Jesus had come sooner he could have kept her brother from death. As they speak to one another, Jesus tells Martha that Lazarus will rise again.
She thinks He’s talking about the resurrection at the end of time. But Jesus was drawing her attention to the key and the crux of this entire puzzling circumstance. He said to her:
“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
What Jesus is telling Martha is incredible. She says she believes in the resurrection.
Jesus says, “I AM that resurrection.”
There is no resurrection without Jesus. This is huge. And it sets the stage for what He’s about to do for Lazarus.
It also sets up the biggest puzzle of them all, because in my mind, Jesus’ full understanding of His own person and power would lead to joyful exuberance, not tears of sorrow, which we will see in verse 35.
Puzzle #3
In John 11:35, we have the shortest verse in the Bible and one of the most famous, probably because of it’s brevity, but let us not miss the power in these words:
“Jesus wept.”
Jesus wept?
Jesus, who is the Resurrection and the Life.
Jesus, who planned this very moment.
Jesus, who, for His disciples’ sake, was “glad he was not there so that they may believe” (John 11:15),.
Jesus, who knew full well that He was about to bring Lazarus back to life.
This Jesus. He wept.
Why? How can this be?
Many people have spent much time in queries and explanations over this question of why. Among them: Was it out of love for Lazarus? Compassion for Mary and Martha? Was it out of anger for the people’s disbelief, or proof of His full humanity?
It could be any number of these, really. But something strikes me about this scenario, and I wonder if it strikes you, too.
Jesus knows better than any one of the people at Lazarus’s tomb, and better than any human being before or after, the incredible pain of death.
Death is a formidable foe. It rips a person’s soul from their body. It separates those who remain from those it takes. It’s final and cold. Shocking and intruding. It brings extraordinary sorrow for all who are touched by it.
Jesus knows the fullness of this enemy, because He was there at the creation of the world when all was “very good.” He was there in the garden before sin entered and brought death with it. He was clothed in glory and power with His Father on high before He left that perfect place to take on limiting humanity and subject Himself to the cruelty of this cursed planet, where disease destroys and everything is hard. He knows.
And this is why He came: because HE KNOWS! He knows the depth of sorrow, the pain of loss, the brokenness that we experience everyday in some measure and in great swaths during times of tragedy.
If death wasn’t so bad, He would not have come. But He did come. And that is proof that this world, is, in fact, broken. And death, is, in fact, devastating.
This hit me afresh in these recent months as I have grieved over Donna. Here is what I wrote in my journal the day after she died:
“As I ponder the loss of Donna…I am struck by the joy and sorrow that mix together. Joy, because she is free and home at last. Sorrow, because death has separated us from her…I wonder if Jesus’ tears at Lazarus’ death were similar? … If we feel the grief of the world, how much more the Son of God who created everything feels the brokenness of this world while in His humanity?”
The more I think about this, the more convinced I am that Jesus wept, not just for Martha and Mary, but for all of His friends; including His disciples, and even you and me. Perhaps He even wept for Himself seeing the tomb, knowing that He Himself would be entering one in the near future.
Isaiah 53:3 prophesied that Jesus was to be a “man of sorrow, and acquainted with grief.”
Oh how true this is! And so, Jesus wept.
But those tears are not forever. As Psalm 30:5 says,
“Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”
In just a few short moments after Jesus wept, He would call Lazarus’s name, and Lazarus would wake up! He would come out of the grave, alive! The people would see that Jesus IS the Resurrection and the Life!
And in a short while after calling Lazarus from the grave, He too, would be laid in the tomb, but not to stay! No! And not by someone else calling His name either, but by His own Spirit and power. He would wake up! and show that He had conquered this great enemy of death. Weeping remains for a night, but joy comes in the morning!
One day there will be a resurrection on a scale too big to fathom; the one that Mary referenced. Jesus will call His people out! And we will wake up! Oh what joy there will be when that happens! Those who have died will be brought back to life, and those who are still alive will also be changed, in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye as it says in 1 Corinthians 15, and God will wipe away our tears, and our joy will be full, and it will last forever and ever.
This is our hope!
Grief, Amidst Great Hope
This hope in the midst of grief is everything. But also, grief in the midst of this hope is still appropriate. Jesus grieved even while He knew the glories of heaven. And this brings such comfort to my heart, because it means that what we feel in the wake of grief is, dare I say it, good. It is good for us to know that death is not how it should be. It is normal and right for us to feel mourning in loss and tragedy.
I started this article in June while processing my mother-in-law’s passing, which happened while the devastating floods ravaged central Texas taking the lives of innocent children. And now, as I finish writing it, we, as a nation, are processing the shocking news of assassination, murder on a train, and school shootings.
If that weren’t enough, just a few short week ago, I hugged my dear cousin in the memorial garden of her little 3-year-old girl, one year after she died from a brain tumor.
Around the world conflict broods. My husband just returned from a trip to Israel, wherein he and his companions had to take cover in a bomb shelter when a missile from Yemen was fired and intercepted by the Israeli Iron Dome. Countless others around the world experience terror everyday, and the persecuted church faces possible martyrdom regularly.
The list could go on, with more of mine and your own sorrows added here as well.
Truly, this world groans, and we mourn.
And we are right to mourn; to weep.
But right on the heals of that mourning should be the remembrance of the greatest grief the world has ever known: the sacrifice of the Son of God on the cross.
And with that should come the remembrance of the greatest joy the world has ever known: the resurrection of the Son of God from the grave.
And with that should come the anticipation of the greatest comfort the world will ever know: a restoration that will transform every person belonging to Christ and permeate every atom in the entire universe when God makes all things new again one day.
We grieve what is broken. And rejoice in what’s to come!
“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:26).
I believe it. Do you? If so, remind someone today of our great hope even while you weep, as Jesus did.