Do you believe?
One would think
that Jesus could remain relatively calm when Lazarus – the one he loves – falls ill and dies, but in fact, in John’s
Gospel, Jesus becomes emotional: When Jesus saw Mary weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping, he became
perturbed and deeply troubled, and then, John tells us, Jesus wept. But why? Jesus clearly knows that he will
raise Lazarus from the dead, since he says, This
illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, that the Son of God
may be glorified through it. So why
does Jesus weep? Why is he perturbed, moved to the depth of his
being, by a death that will soon be reversed?
Perhaps Jesus weeps over his friends, over those who are trying, but
struggling, to believe. It is love that
drives Jesus’ perturbed state, love responding to the pain and grief of those
who do not yet know that death is not final, who have not yet come to full belief. The crowd notices Jesus’ extravagant love,
his compassion: see how he loved him, they say.
But they do not yet know that anyone who believes in him will live in
eternal union with God, because death cannot hold them. In the end, once Lazarus comes out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, John notes that many of the Jews who had seen what Jesus
had done began to believe in him. But their faith journey is not yet over; it will
end only once they know perfect, eternal union with God.
God has always
called God’s people to faith, to belief in God’s faithfulness. In Psalm 130, the psalmist entreats the Lord,
trusting in God’s mercy: out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord; he
seeks to live in relationship with the Lord in spite of his own breach of
covenant. In the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel,
God tells the people of Israel in exile in Babylon that God will open their graves and have them rise from
them. Ezekiel is not talking about resurrection
of the body, but of transformation: God
will bring this people, who are dead to him, having been unfaithful to covenant,
back to life as a nation by putting God’s
spirit in them, that they might live. Paul will evoke a similar idea in his letter
to the Romans, reminding them that they are
in the spirit, and that they must thus remain aware of and open to God's Spirit, the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from
the dead, who dwells in them. The
Spirit of God dwells in them, dwells in us,
because we have been baptized in Christ; now we must believe, and live that
belief with the same extravagant love that Jesus did, with extravagant compassion
for others’ suffering, extravagant self-giving to those in need, moved at the
depth of our being, moved to weep as Jesus
wept, with faith in the glory of God
revealed.
This post is based
on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
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