I’ve been trying to shove Jesus into a box all week. I’ve been wrestling with this passage, looking for answers, checking the Facebook, reading the commentaries, asking my Bible scholar husband, checking the Facebook, checking my email, checking my text messages and then checking my Facebook again, as if any of these places will have the answers I’m looking for. But of course they don’t. No matter how many times I refresh Facebook, or read the books, or look up what that famous preacher said, I’m not going to find what I’m looking for.
I have so many questions.
I want to know why Jesus waits so long to come to Mary and Martha in their grief. I want to know what was so important that he stayed where he was for two more days instead of going to his friends to comfort and support them?
And is Jesus really glad that he wasn’t there for Lazarus’s death, just so that people can come to believe? Isn’t there another way that we can come to believe besides waiting around for someone to die?
And what does Lazarus think about all this? Is he happy to be alive again? Is he bewildered? How will he live his life from now on? Will he dread dying again, or will he be less afraid the next time around? How will the community treat him? Will he be welcomed back, or shunned?
Will he turn into some magic guru that people will flock to just to touch? Will they make a Hallmark movie about him so everyone can feel good about themselves?
And what about Mary and Martha? Mary and Martha are just aching for Jesus’ presence — they call for him when Lazarus gets sick, and then later both of them say, “If you’d have been here, my brother would not have died” and Jesus isn’t there for them. First of all, what a sucky friend. Secondly, what does that mean for us? I mean, are there times when Jesus isn’t present for us? Is Jesus in quarantine? Showing social distance? Like Mary and Martha, I keep asking, “Where is Jesus during all of this mess?” Is he off waiting somewhere just so he can teach us a lesson?!
Jesus doesn’t do what I want him to do in this passage, and it’s maddening. I want Jesus to rush over there. I want him to heal Lazarus. Or at least just sit with Mary and Martha in their grief. I want him to stop being so preachy. I cringe when I read that, during all this confusion and grief and danger, Jesus starts talking about darkness and light and belief and resurrection. I mean, the last thing people want when they’re hurting is to be preached at.
And most of all, if Jesus is going to go around raising people from the dead, where was he when my loved ones died, and where was he during the tsunamis and the hurricanes and the tornadoes and the viruses? If Jesus can raise Lazarus, why doesn’t he raise everybody else, physically, bodily, in the here and now?
Jesus isn’t fitting into my paradigm this week. No matter how much I want to shove him in. Dan, my husband says, “Jenn, you’ve been reading this passage like it’s a Brene Brown book. And it’s not a Brene Brown book.”
Now for those of you who aren’t familiar with her, Brene Brown is this brilliant sociologist, writer, podcaster, and Ted-Talker, who writes about the redeeming act of vulnerability in our lives. She talks about the importance of being with one another during our struggles, and I’m all about her.
I want Jesus to rush over to the town of Bethany, Brene Brown style, and I want him to sit and cry and be with Mary and Martha in their grief. I want him to be vulnerable and open, I want him to be their friend for goodness sakes, and instead we get Jesus the preacher, talking about daylight and nighttime and sleeping and waking and resurrection, using Lazarus as an object lesson for belief in him as the Son of God.
He sounds so sure of himself in the beginning of this passage. He sounds like he has everything under control, like he’s got it all together, as if he’s this god hovering above us all, waiting for the opportune moment to teach us the lesson we are to learn from this tragic circumstance.
Like the well meaning mourners who say that God has a plan for us, it feels like Jesus is rushing through to the lesson before feeling the feelings of the circumstances themselves.
Like a mom in the midst of a scary pandemic, he’s trying to keep it under control, keep it together, for the sake of the kids.
And just like that, I get it.
Here he is, as human as it gets, trying to keep it together, keep control, make this whole situation a learning experience. Find the good in the bad, act like you know what’s going on. This is Jesus, trying to keep his shit together when everything around him is falling apart.
And he does a really good job at it. He’s the best at it.
He’s God, after all, so he can hold all this emotion, all this anger and grief, all this doubt and unknowing — he can hold it all, carry it all, endure it all with a stiff upper lip and no complaints.
Until he can’t anymore.
Until he, too, is faced with his own grief and despair and unknowing. Until he can’t hold it in any longer. Until he is face to face with the brokenness of the world, a brokenness that leads to death, despair, tears, pleading, and bargaining.
Because as Jesus gets closer to the situation, closer to the grief and death and tears and confusion, the more dismayed he gets. He starts off fine. First, he gets the news that Lazarus is ill, and he can keep it together. He calmly decides to stay put for a few days, and he keeps it together. When he finally decides to leave for Judea, he’s at his best, defying the angry crowds that want to stone him, preaching the good news that he is the light and salvation for us all. He’s strong and he’s tough and he’s the leader we all need during this time of fearful uncertainty. He keeps it together after he hears that Lazarus has already been in the tomb for four days, and he even keeps it together when Martha rushes out to him in tears, practically blaming him for Lazarus’s death.
“If you had been here, Lord, my brother would not have died,” she says. And still he keeps it together when she tells him that even now he can do something about this. Even now, God will give whatever Jesus asks. He can do something about this. He can change their situation.
He holds it all together. He has his eye on the prize, he’s focused on the goal, he’s ready to reveal the greatness and goodness of God through power and control and miraculous deeds.
He keeps it together, that is, until he sees Mary, who has run to him, until Mary, who is weeping at his feet. He can hold it all in, all his grief about the death of his friend, his fear about what is to come, his frustration at the lack of belief in his followers, all of it, until he sees Mary. Mary, and the other Jews weeping, devastated, angry, mourning.
And then he loses it.
Like a parent who can’t keep it together one more minute, who can’t find answers to the questions and comfort for the scared, who can’t build walls high enough to keep the ones he loves safe, Jesus loses it. And Mary doesn’t hold it in. She, too, like Martha, tells Jesus exactly how she feels. “You could have stopped this, Lord. You could have kept Lazarus from dying.”
And here it is.
This is the moment. This is the messy moment of raw vulnerability and emotion. Here’s his Brene Brown moment. He can’t hold it in any longer. He loses it. He gets upset. He was “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” Other translations say he is deeply moved in spirit and troubled, some say he’s groaning, he’s sighing, he’s angry and blaming, he’s agitated, he’s conflicted.
And in all that emotion, in all the fear and frustration and hopelessness he feels, he asks a question, “Where have you laid him?”
Suddenly he’s not preaching, he’s not promoting, he’s not teaching or rebuking, he’s asking about his friend, he needs to see and touch and feel the full pain of this experience. He needs to be there. He needs to weep. He’s kept it all together until now, and now, he falls apart.
As he gets closer to the tomb, the more agitated and upset he becomes. He needs to see Lazarus for himself, he needs to come to terms with the brokenness of the world and the brokenness of his friend, for himself. He needs to enter in to the questions and the emotions, not just stand outside of it with all the answers.
“Open the tomb,” he says.
Open the tomb and let it out.
Let it all out. The death, the sorrow, the confusion and the frustration. Let it out. Let it all come out. Jesus lets it out. He lets it all out. Even when Martha warns him of the smell, Jesus pushes forward into it, into the pain, into the sorrow.
“Did I not tell you,” he says, “that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” Is he saying this only to her, or to somehow convince himself, too?
He’s telling her, and himself, that the only way out is through.
The only way out of the pain and the heartbreak is to go through. To feel the feelings, to smell the smells, to get close to the sorrow, face to face with the grief.
So they take away the stone. They take away everything that separates them from the sorrow, and somehow, Jesus gets it together again. Somehow, Jesus remembers who he is and whose he is. He goes to God with thanksgiving. He goes to God for the sake of the crowd. He gets it together enough to go to God.
Or maybe it’s precisely the opposite.
Maybe he’s fallen apart enough to go to God. Maybe he gets so close to God’s grief, he gets so close to the brokenness of the world, that he is no longer separated from God or from us. “Lazarus, come out!” he calls. Come out into the world. Come back out into the sorrow and the pain and the frustration, but also come out into the beauty and the light and the hope. Come out. Come back out into the messiness of life.
Jesus calls us out. Jesus gets so close to our pain, so close to our sorrow and our confusion and our doubt, Jesus experiences it all, so he can call us out, out of our tombs of grief and pain and addiction and anger, into the light, into beauty and community and reconciliation.
You can tell when someone just gets it. You can tell when someone has seen hard times. There’s something about their demeanor, how they carry themselves, that says, “Yes, I’ve seen it too.” And because they get it, a little bit of grief is lifted, a connection is made, some hope is restored. And with the death of his friend, Jesus gets it.
He, like most of us humans, tries to keep it all together, he tries to hold on, but the closer he gets to the sorrow, the less control he has, and that is the life-giving redemption in our story. Not that Jesus did some magic trick to raise a man from the dead, but that Jesus connected with us so deeply, united with us so fully, mourned with us so completely, that he became one of us. The division between God and humanity is dissolved, the line between life and death is eroded, and we are raised from death - all the little and big kinds of deaths that we suffer. We are resurrected.
If you’re looking for resurrection, look for it in the tombs. Look for it in the scruff of last year’s yard debris, in the dead trees that have lost their leaves, look for it in the ICUs and the emergency rooms, in the NA meetings and the psych wards. Look for it under the bridges and in the bars, look for it in our own broken hearts. Look for it in the struggle and the sadness, in the broken relationships and the addictions, in the hurt feelings and the loss of hope. If you’re looking for resurrection, look for it in the places you thought were dead. Feel the feelings. Go to the tomb. Move through the hurt. Ask the questions. Get frustrated and angry and try and fail to put Jesus in a box. The only way out is through. But life is on the other side.
Thanks be to God.
No comments:
Post a Comment