The Day Love Learned Something

a Lenten reflection on Lazarus

The Gospel of John is kind of the superhero chapter. John is the one that places Jesus in the creation story. John is the one that equates Jesus with the living word.

All of the gospels contain records of miracles. Mark is packed with them, often as acts demonstrating power. Matthew and Luke add a few to Mark’s tally.

John’s list is much slimmer, but its curated to add significant theological weight to the miracles.

Turning water to wine becomes a metaphor of abundance, transformation, and replacing old systems of purification with ‘new water’ and ‘new wine.’

Healing the blind man becomes a metaphor for spiritual blindness.

And raising Lazarus from the dead becomes a metaphor for ‘Jesus being the resurrection and the life.’

Jesus’ miracles, in the world the gospel of John presents to us, are telling a story.

With that backdrop, I saw something different in the Lazarus story today: Love learned something.

You know the story: Lazarus was Jesus’ friend who had two sisters, Mary and Martha. Lazarus got sick and the sisters sent word to Jesus to see if He’d help. But Jesus didn’t go. He stayed where he was for another two days. In that time, Lazarus dies.

Finally, Jesus tells the gang: “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.” (John 11:11)

By the time He shows up at Lazarus’ house, he’s been dead for four days.

Martha runs out to meet Him and says, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die…”

That’s the point.

But John won’t let the story stay that clean. Mary runs out to meet Him and says the same thing, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Jesus saw her crying and her friends and family who had come to mourn with her, and he was ‘deeply moved in spirit and troubled.’

He asked where they’d buried Lazarus, and famously, Jesus wept.

Imagine something with me:

This sign was to show that He could raise the dead, not just to raise Lazarus, but as evidence that resurrection could await us all. Jesus needed Lazarus to die to raise Lazarus from the dead.

He waited an extra two days before he traveled to make sure Lazarus was good and dead before He got there.

He showed up to prove that He brought new life and resurrection with Him, but Lazarus had two sisters. Two sisters who said, “I don’t care that you can raise Him from the dead, if you’d gotten here earlier, our brother would never have died.”

Resurrection does not prevent grief. Mary and Martha grieved because Jesus needed to show He could raise the dead.

Jesus caused them grief, and famously, Jesus wept.

There on the road to Bethany, I contend that John’s perfectly curated pattern cracks.

The God at the beginning through whom all thing were made, learned something.

Love learned to stand inside a loss it chose not to prevent. Resurrection or not, death still hurts. There’s more to redemption than fixing it later.

Jesus learned what loss was, and it broke His heart.

Infinity got a little more human.

And maybe It learned not to mess with a couple sistas next time.