Jesus Wept. Why?

In John 11, Jesus does an amazing thing: he raises Lazarus from the dead. But not fast enough for Lazarus' sisters Mary and Martha. When Lazarus falls ill, the girls call on their good friend for help. Jesus EVENTUALLY shows up but by that time Lazarus is buried and Jesus is four days late for his funeral. The girls are royally pissed.

They still believe that a miracle is possible but both would have preferred to have simply had him healed, not raised. Interesting isn't it? That Jesus, who will be the next to die a horrible death, chooses this particular time to teach his community that for those who trust him, they can begin their eternal life right now - in real time. He is not promising some future great deal - entrance into heaven - so much as he is opening a door on earth to walk into - a new life, a new way of living.

Jesus of course knows that this is going to happen and he will call Lazarus out of his little hole-in-the-wall tomb to rejoin him on earth. But everyone else is weeping and wailing - focused as they are on preventing death.

Jesus cries too. But according to Barbara Brown Taylor his tears are for a different reason. He realizes that these, his dear friends, still do not understand who he is and what he is offering. He is teaching them that trust in him results in "outliving" death (again, according to Taylor). This is a very different way of seeing.

No one knows, except for Jesus, that the rising of Lazarus will guarantee the death of Jesus. The power brokers in Jerusalem could not allow Jesus to continue to reveal his way of seeing and being in the world. This would break the system, the system that preyed on people's fears and focus on not dying. Surely if people understand that Jesus came to relieve of us our obsession with survival, our lives might become so much more abundant as we choose to cast off those chains and live a life of meaning and purpose.

Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life." Now, to quote Mary Oliver, "What are we going to do with our one wild and precious life?"