“I will open your graves"

Jesus weeps for all of us who suffer and grieve, while also showing us the promise of resurrection

Rembrandt, 1630.

My apologies for the gap in posting. As you will see below, this has been a difficult month for my family as we lost my mother-in-law. I plan to return to a regular schedule of weekly posts.

This weekend, I preached on the resurrection of Lazarus. I am in consolation ministry, and have spent a lot of time serving in hospitals, so the subject of suffering, loss, and grief are a constant theme for me, even when they don't strike so close to home.

I've known Mom since I'm 19 and I'm 57 now, so she has been a major presence for most of my life. She gave endlessly, always making sure everyone was remembered and included and loved. She was a woman of faith, even (perhaps especially) when that faith was sorely tested by trials.

My wife was with her at the last and prayed by her side after she passed. This now means that my wife was the only person present as both of my parents and both of her parents died. I am certain that the dying often “choose” when to let go, and both of my parents waited for me to leave and for her to be alone with them before they let go. For a very long time, I was upset about that. Now that it has happened four times, I can see divine Providence at work even when I do not fully understand it. This is a strange grace for her to have been given, but I do know that she is a person of immense peace and consolation, and her presence was a blessing.

The following homily was delivered over the weekend of March 22, the Fifth Sunday of Lent in Cycle A, at St Mary of the Lakes Church in Medford, New Jersey.

A few days ago we laid my mother-in-law to rest after a long illness, so suffering, death, grief, and resurrection are very much on my mind. I’ve read this gospel at funerals many times, but it landed differently as I studied it this week. Let me share some of the things that occurred to me.

If you wonder where some Jews of Jesus’s time got this idea of resurrection, our first reading offers an answer. Ezekiel is the prophet of resurrection–the prophet of a world made new by the hand of God.

“I will open your graves and have you rise from them”

Why?

“So you shall know I am the Lord.”

This is the promise of God, and we often forget that part when we talk about heaven. Heaven is the perfect bliss of being in the presence of God, but we usually imagine it without our bodies. Only our souls. That’s partly true, but it is not the full and final promise of Christ. Our promise is resurrection. The empty tombs of Lazarus and Jesus are a foretaste of what is in store for all of us.

We are made of dust and that dust will be unmade, until God breathes it to life again

Our idea of heaven is incomplete until it includes the resurrection of the body. And that’s what Jesus shows us in this miracle today: an anticipation of what’s to come.

Let’s look at what happens in this remarkable scene.

Mary, Martha, and Lazarus are Jesus’s close friends. Lazarus is sick. They know that Jesus is nearby and can heal him, but he does not come. His apostles urge him to do something, but he delays. He tells them this illness will not be the end of the story of Lazarus. They don’t understand.

Jesus allows Lazarus, his friend, to die. He allows Mary and Martha to suffer a shattering loss.

They call for Jesus to come and mourn his friend, yet he waits four more days. You need to understand the distances we’re talking about. To reach Bethany, Jesus would walk out Jerusalem’s eastern gate, down through the Kidron Valley, and up the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives: about two miles. Maybe a 30 or 40 minutes. Less than the distance from where we’re sitting right now, to our school.

That changes how you imagine the scene a bit, doesn’t it? It explains why people are so anxious, and when he arrives, why they are heartsick, even angry.

But Jesus had told them that Lazarus is not dead, only sleeping. This is true of all those who die. Elizabeth’s mom, who we laid to rest on Wednesday, only sleeps. Her dad, my parents, my friends, my family, all those I’ve seen go down into the grave. They are gone from us. We will see them no more in this world. But they only sleep.

And yet even to those know that, and believe it in our hearts, it can be very little comfort, for the ones we love are no longer here. Our sorrow is real. It can be devastating.

And this should give us a new understanding of exactly what Jesus is feeling when we come to the shortest sentence in the entire Bible.

Jesus wept.

Why would he weep when he knew Lazarus would rise?

He wept for the grief of his friends. Grief, let us be clear, that he allowed to happen, so something greater could come of it.

He waited so there would be no question that Lazarus was dead. “Lord, there will be a stench” is a hard line. Though her faith is great, Martha is angry. It wasn’t easy being friends with Jesus sometimes.

Jesus wept for her, and for all of us. In that moment, he bore the full weight of his knowledge of all things, all people, all death, all of us who grieve. Jesus was a man. He was also God. He knew all our suffering from the moment the first man ever born was struck down by his own brother, until the end of the world. He felt Eve’s pain when she buried her son. He felt my family’s pain just this week. He feels yours.

But he had something else to offer in that moment. He was the one who came into the world to defeat death. He allowed this pain of his friends to continue for a little while, so that a greater glory could be revealed.

Now let’s expand that scene from one person’s death, to everyone. Let’s expand that grief from two women, to all of us who have ever loved and lost and grieved. Let’s increase those four days, while they waited for some word of comfort from the Lord and the Lord remained silent, to all of us who listen for the voice of God to comfort us in our distress. That silence–God’s silence–is one of the hardest things to live with.

Now imagine their joy. Imagine the glory that erupted from that tomb when Lazarus shook off his shroud and answered the call of God’s voice to rise.

It’s all the history of human suffering and grief in miniature. It’s one small scene, that points to a vast truth. It’s a truth so huge we can’t get it in our heads, so Jesus made it small enough for us to understand. One man. His sisters. A few villagers. And a world turned upside down.

Because what happened in Bethany on a small scale is what will happen on an unimaginable scale to all those who die in the love of the Lord.

Death doesn’t have the last word. The pain of loss we feel will make the joy so much greater when the Lord bends down to kiss away all of our tears. And the glory displayed by Jesus that day for a handful of people, will explode across the universe as all the dead are summoned to the final judgment. That is the promise of resurrection, of the new heaven and the new earth, when the voice of the Lord will call us to come forth, and live again.