In John 11:32 we are told that Jesus, seeing Mary weeping and the people with her weeping, is deeply disturbed. Why?
He knew that he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead. It was the reason he had delayed going to Martha and Mary when he was first told that Lazarus was seriously ill.
He knew that glory would come from this: glory to his Father and a revelation of his glory.
If it had been me, I would have gone with a sense of excitement and anticipation – of the joy of Mary and Martha in seeing their brother alive again. But we are told in verse 38 that Jesus ‘again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb’
I want to suggest that Jesus is deeply disturbed because
1. He sees the devastation that death brings
He sees the despair and brokenness of Martha and Mary.
They have lost probably the one who was the rock of their family, and as two unmarried sisters without a brother they would have suddenly become very vulnerable
And Jesus is deeply disturbed because he sees what death does.
He sees the separation that death brings.
Love draws people together. Death tears them apart
Indeed, the more you love the more devastating the separation of death will be.
And perhaps one can see the stone placed in front of the tomb of Lazarus as a sign of that separation. It cannot, it should not be moved.
There is a well-known poem which people often have at funerals
“Death is nothing at all”
Those words were spoken by Henry Scott Holland in a sermon after the death of King Edward VII in 1910.
He speaks of two feelings when we face the death of one we love.
The first is that feeling of denial. He speaks of how, as we look at the quiet face of the dead person, who is cold and white, that it seems that they are saying to us: ‘Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped into the next room’.
The second is despair.
He speaks: “There is the familiar and instinctive recoil from [death] as embodying the supreme and irrevocable disaster. Nothing leads up to it. Nothing prepares for it. It simply traverses every line on which life runs, cutting across every hope on which life feels. .. It makes all we do here meaningless and empty”
Auden’s poem on the death of his partner speaks graphically of that sense of despair at the separation. “Stop all the clocks”: “I thought that love would last forever. I was wrong”.
Death separates. It also binds.
The body of Lazarus had been bound in grave clothes. It was a picture of how death captures us and binds us.
The ancients believed that when we die we did not go, at least first, into non-existence. The dead continued to exist but in the shadowy underworld of Sheol. It was a place that captured you, that dragged you down deeper and deeper into non being.
So Jonah, from the belly of the whale, laments:
“The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me;
weeds were wrapped around my head at the roots of the mountains.
I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever
(Jonah 2:5-6)
If you look at an icon of the resurrection, you will see how Christ stands above the pit of hades and draws Adam and Eve out of the deep.
Death here is like the invincible spider’s web that catches us. The more we struggle against it, the stronger it holds onto us.
The writer to Hebrews writes of how we are “held in slavery by the fear of death” (Hebrews 2:15)
It is that fear of death, that fear of non-being which can grip us.
Woody Allen famously said, “I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens.”
I remember when I was about 15 having the first sudden realisation that one day I would be dead. And there was that deep sinking feeling. I don’t think that you can ever quite be the same.
It is the fear that makes us fight for life sometimes at the expense of others.
A good friend of ours, someone who is giving her life on the mission field, tells of one occasion when she was our running with a friend. A ferocious dog came running toward them, barking furiously. She said that to her shame, the first thing she did was to grab her friend and pushed her in front of her!
So Jesus looks at the desolation of Martha and Mary. He sees the devastating destructiveness of death, the breaking of love and how death has bound them with grief and fear. And he is deeply disturbed.
2. Jesus is deeply disturbed because he knows that a few days later he is to ride out to do battle with this foe – with death.
He knows how huge the enemy is, how fierce the battle will be, how much it will cost him.
He knows that he will need to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, that he will be separated from those who love him, separated even from his Father God – with whom he has been for all eternity. In time, he will be cut off from him: so that he cries out ‘My God, my God (note not on this occasion, 'My father, my father') why have you forsaken me’.
He knows that he will be bound in grave clothes.
And he knows that he will be placed in a tomb, and that a stone - that symbol of separation - will be rolled in front of him. Like a full stop.
He knows that his body will be wrapped in grave clothes. Death will spin its web around him and he will be dragged down into the pit.
But it was because Jesus went into death that he has destroyed death.
As an ancient Orthodox hymn proclaims: “Death has trampled down death. And those in the grave have been given new life.”
It was because he was obedient to death, because he became the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world that he destroys death.
Jesus tells them to move the stone covering Lazarus’ tomb. He did not need to tell them to move the stone that covered his tomb because it had already been moved.
He did not need to tell them to unbind him, because his grave clothes fell off – or he passed through them. We don’t know. But we do know that death could not hold him.
It is because of Jesus, his death and resurrection, that death is no longer the final separation; that it cannot hold on to him. As the great Wesley hymn goes, ‘My chains fell off, my heart was free. I rose went forth and followed thee.’
This is the season when we remember all Saints
I like the story of the child who was asked what a saint was, and she replied, a saint is a dead vicar.
The story of Lazarus is our hope.
It is not that a Christian funeral will be like the raising of Lazarus, with the dead physically being raised there and then.
But just as Jesus raised Lazarus; just as Jesus himself was raised, so we too will be raised.
It means that death does not have the final word.
It means that by the power of the Holy Spirit we can begin to be set free from the fear and captivity of death.
It means that the separation is only temporary
Yes, there is separation.
Between us and them there is a great chasm. And it really is not wise to try and cross it.
But at another level, because of Jesus, those who are in Jesus in heaven, and those who are in Jesus on earth are connected. We are part of the same body.
So Hebrews can speak of the great cloud of witnesses of those who have gone before and put their faith in the word of God – and they are cheering us on.
And in our prayers, together with all the saints, the dead vicars and the others (!), when – for instance – we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we are praying what has become their prayer: that God’s name is honoured, that his kingdom comes and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
And when we give glory to God: Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit – we join with them in worshiping God.
And one day we will be reunited with them, and we will be with them and they will be with us, part of that huge crowd that cannot be numbered who, with the whole of creation, praise the one whose death destroyed death:
“You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals,
for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God
saints from every tribe and language and people and nation;
you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God,
and they will reign on earth.” Revelation 5:9-10
