I feel like this is a conversation we have all had with Jesus. If you had just been there!!!! We plead and pray for Jesus to show up. We watch and wait for God to do something. And when we don’t see God doing something, showing up in some way we tend to get frustrated and angry. “It would all be different if you had just been there!!!”
As I read the first section of this story, I heard the sisters send Jesus a note, and then he waited 2 days and then he set out. I counted 4 days total. But this passage says that when Jesus got to Bethany, to the siblings, Lazarus had been dead for 4 days. So either, he died right after his sisters sent the note, or Jesus took his sweet time walking from
the Jordan back to Bethany. Either way, he’s been dead 4 days. Four days of grieving and what ifs. Imagine the sisters…with their brother as he dies, waiting on their rabbi, friend and healer, and then losing their beloved brother--what if we had just called for Jesus sooner? What if he hadn’t even left in the first place? What’s taking him so long? Why isn’t he hurrying? What if we had had different medicine?
Something…anything…what if some part of any of this had played out differently? Then our brother would be alive and all of this would be ok. But he isn’t and it isn’t ok.
And then Jesus comes…
I don’t know about you, but I imagine myself as one of those sisters. I can imagine their expectation that Jesus would come and help and then their broken hearts when their brother died and Jesus wasn’t there. And then 4 days of grief. Four days wondering where in the heck Jesus was. And then, and then when Martha finally heard Jesus was close to town…running out to see him…the relief of seeing a good friend—wanting to be held by him and comforted by him and knowing he could help somehow, and…and.. the anger that he wasn’t there. If you had only been there, he would be alive. I know God does what you ask. Even now, God would do it.
Do you hear it? Grief and anger and hope all mixed in there. You weren’t there. You should have been there. We needed you with us. But you could still do something.
And Jesus replies, you brother will rise up.
And Mary, so faithful and trusting, yes, I know he will rise in the resurrection some day. It’s a beautiful show of her understanding of what Jesus has taught and of the promises of faith. And to be honest, I’m not sure I’m that good. I tend to have a bit more bite in my words—I’m afraid I’d reply with something more like, “well, a lot of good that’ll do me. He’s dead now!! Yay for some day…”
Y’all thought it was the righteous who get called to being pastors, but you were wrong. Just know if you’re a snarky cynic like me God loves you and can call you to do God’s work anyway. =)
In all seriousness, it’s not just about the loss of someone they loved. Remember, in the first century women were still considered property, they had no livelihood without the care and protection of a man. Father, husband, or…brother. We never hear about their parents, so we are left to assume that it was just the three siblings. So without Lazarus the sisters are in trouble. They can’t work. They may or may not own their home and it may or may not default to someone else. And even if there is a cousin or an uncle who would take them in, it wouldn’t be the same…imagine it. Their future rests in the well-being of their brother and now he’s gone. And the consolation Jesus offers Martha is “he’ll rise again.”
And in the meantime…what? Who’s going to take care of us? Who’s going to protect us??? But instead Martha rests in faith. I know, I’ll see him again someday.
And Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
And Martha says yes, she believes. And we’d hardly expect anything less. She knows what Jesus has taught and she believes it. (point to head) Up here. She believes with her mind. But, if you were with us last week, you might remember that “believe” in the Greek is really “trust”. Jesus wants her to trust with her heart, more than he wants her to believe with her mind. And at this point, I’m not sure if she sees that. She might, but we don’t have that confirmed. We’ll get there…eventually…
From there Martha goes to the house to get her sister Mary. She says Jesus is here and he wants to talk with you. So Mary rushes out and the mourners go with her. Now, if you’re unfamiliar, lots of cultures mourn collectively. These may have been people who knew and loved Lazarus, but they might have also been other mourners who came as part of the grieving process. Regardless, there’s a crowd and they follow Mary out to Jesus where she falls to her knees and shares a similar lament to what her sister did: If you had only been here, he’d still be alive.
As she cries the mourners cry with her. There’s great compassion and empathy in this community. They don’t shy away from their emotions, they lean into them—they weep together, they lament together, they grieve together. And Jesus cries with them. Then Jesus asks to go to Lazarus. And the people see Jesus’ love for the family, they acknowledge that he was a miracle worker, and again we hear….if only he had been there. And that’s where we stop for today.
I imagine that might be frustrating. We want the rest of the story. We want the resolution, the answer, the miracle. That’s often the case, isn’t it? When we go to the scriptures we want the perfect answer. We want a nice bow on the story that assures us everything will be ok. We want some end to our own grief and suffering. And yet, sometimes, if we dare to go in the rhythm of the story, we’ll find that we have to wait. This story isn’t over. We know that. But we aren’t encouraged to rush through it either. The reality is stories of faith take place over time…including ours. And just as the sisters had to wait, we have to wait. We too wait for Jesus. We too will wonder what’s taking so long. We’ll look for our own answers and solutions. Remedies to end our suffering. And sometimes we won’t hear the answers we want. Sometimes we’re stuck with the part where Jesus has failed us (at least for what we can see and understand)—where we want to beat him on his chest and bemoan his absence. If only you had been there.
And that’s ok. One of the beautiful things we find here is that Jesus doesn’t criticize anyone—not Mary, not Martha, not the mourners—not for their emotions, neither their sadness or their anger. He gets it. He feels with them and acknowledges how hard it is. And, he offers hope. To them and to each of us, Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” He promises to be what we need. Now, he doesn’t promise to give us all the things. He promises to be the thing. He doesn’t say, “I’ll give you resurrection and life.” He says, “I am resurrection and life.” It’s in him—in relationship with him, in believing him—pisteuo—in trusting him that we find resurrection and life.
This week I would encourage you to grieve and to lament the things you have lost. Without their brother, the women lost life as they knew it, and it seems as though all of us have lost life as we knew it. For some that loss is more drastic than for others, but there’s loss for each of us. We can’t go where we want, see whom we want, buy what we want, work where we want…it’s all different, and it’s ok to grieve each of those things. And it’s ok to look for Jesus and even be frustrated and angry—if only you had been there…if only you had gotten here sooner, none of this would be this way.
But don’t stop there…Jesus is with us…feeling our deep emotions and promising us hope. And he’s inviting us to believe—to pisteuo—to trust him. Lean into Jesus. He is the resurrection and the life. What that looks like specifically for each of us will be different, but it is promised. If that promise is unclear to you, I invite you to ask Jesus to reveal it to you.