22 Mar 26 | The Raising of Lazarus
Jesus delays, arrives late by every human measure, and then stands at a tomb and weeps — and all of it is deliberate, and all of it is the point.
The Gospel: John 11:3-7, 17, 20-27, 33b-45
The sisters of Lazarus sent word to Jesus, saying,
“Master, the one you love is ill.”
When Jesus heard this he said,
“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.”
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
So when he heard that he was ill,
he remained for two days in the place where he was.
Then after this he said to his disciples,
"Let us go back to Judea.”
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus
had already been in the tomb for four days.
When Martha heard that Jesus was coming,
she went to meet him;
but Mary sat at home.
Martha said to Jesus,
“Lord, if you had been here,
my brother would not have died.
But even now I know that whatever you ask of God,
God will give you.”
Jesus said to her,
“Your brother will rise.”
Martha said,
“I know he will rise,
in the resurrection on the last day.”
Jesus told her,
“I am the resurrection and the life;
whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
Do you believe this?”
She said to him, “Yes, Lord.
I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God,
the one who is coming into the world.”
He became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said,
“Where have you laid him?”
They said to him, “Sir, come and see.”
And Jesus wept.
So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.”
But some of them said,
“Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man
have done something so that this man would not have died?”
So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb.
It was a cave, and a stone lay across it.
Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”
Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to him,
“Lord, by now there will be a stench;
he has been dead for four days.”
Jesus said to her,
“Did I not tell you that if you believe
you will see the glory of God?”
So they took away the stone.
And Jesus raised his eyes and said,
“Father, I thank you for hearing me.
I know that you always hear me;
but because of the crowd here I have said this,
that they may believe that you sent me.”
And when he had said this,
He cried out in a loud voice,
“Lazarus, come out!”
The dead man came out,
tied hand and foot with burial bands,
and his face was wrapped in a cloth.
So Jesus said to them,
“Untie him and let him go.”
Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary
and seen what he had done began to believe in him.
Today’s Focus
Jesus already knew what he was going to do. He waited anyway. He wept anyway. He walked straight into the grief before he resolved it. That is the God this passage reveals. He is not one who stands at a distance from human suffering but one who enters it fully, names it honestly, and then speaks into the darkest place available. Many who stood at that tomb believed because of what they witnessed. The same voice that called Lazarus out is still speaking. Whatever you are facing, you are not facing it alone.
In the Margins
Jesus receives word that Lazarus is ill and deliberately waits two days before moving. It is stated explicitly that Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. The delay is not indifference; it is oriented toward a larger purpose, “this illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God.” The disciples’ confusion about the delay reflects their inability to read Jesus’ actions in terms of divine timing. They think in terms of danger, going back to Judea means going back into the zone of active persecution. Jesus thinks in terms of what the Father is about to do. The gap between their framework and his is the same gap John has been diagnosing throughout the Gospel.
Lazarus having been in the tomb for four days is not an incidental detail. Jewish tradition held that the soul of the deceased hovered near the body for three days before finally departing, holding out hope of return to life. This is making it clear that the soul would have definitively departed and additionally that the body’s decomposition would be visible and the hope of natural resuscitation was completely gone. Martha’s comment about the stench confirms this. She is not being dramatic. Four days means beyond all hope by any available framework. By waiting until the fourth day Jesus is not just raising someone who has died. He is raising someone who is, by the standards of Jewish tradition, definitively, irreversibly dead.
Martha goes out to meet Jesus while Mary stays home and her point is not a rebuke. It is a profession of faith in Jesus’ healing power combined with honest grief about his absence. She follows it immediately with: “But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” When Jesus says “Your brother will rise,” Martha responds with the Pharisaic belief of him being risen on the last day. Jesus is about to push past it entirely. Jesus instead uses the fifth of the seven I Am declarations in John’s Gospel.
Jesus does not say he will bring resurrection or that he has access to life. He says he is resurrection and He is life. He says that even if one dies, he will live and everyone who lives and believes in Him will never die. The first addresses those who have already died, they will live. The second addresses those still living, they will never die in the ultimate sense. Jesus is declaring himself the answer to both dimensions of the human condition before death. Martha then offers the fullest confession of who Jesus is, calling Him the Christ, Son of God, and one who is coming into the world.
Jesus becoming upset is not directed at anyone mourning. We should read it as Jesus’ anger directed at death itself. He is upset at the destruction death has caused in people he loves. It is a visceral response to the enemy he is about to confront. We also hear that , “Jesus wept.” The verb dakryō describes quiet weeping, the flow of tears, as distinct from loud lamentation. It is a different word from the loud crying used elsewhere for public mourning. The weeping is not confusion or despair. It is genuine grief at genuine human suffering in the presence of death, even though He has already stated that the death is for the glory of God. Jesus’ prayer before the tomb is addressed to the Father and explicitly stated to be for the benefit of the crowd, “because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that you sent me.” He is clarifying why this is happening in the way that it is.
The raising of Lazarus is the pivot point of John’s Gospel and this miracle is what triggers the Sanhedrin’s final decision to have Jesus killed. The sign that most powerfully demonstrates Jesus’ power over death is the direct cause of the events that lead to his own death. This entire miracle is tied to Isaiah 26:19, that talks about the dead rising. The raising of Lazarus is the enacted fulfillment of Isaiah’s promise of resurrection. John presents Jesus not as doing something unprecedented but as doing what God promised and what only God can do.
We worship an all powerful God, Creator of Heaven and Earth with full command over life and death. This miracle is proof of that. Many who stood at that tomb believed because of what they witnessed. The sign was undeniable. What is equally striking is that Jesus entered fully into their grief before he resolved it. He wept. He was troubled. He did not stand at a distance from the pain. He walked straight into it. That is who we bring our hardships to. The plan is not always clear in the moment, and we are not promised that it will be. What we are promised is that God knows us, that nothing is beyond his reach, and that the same voice that called Lazarus out of the tomb is the voice that speaks into whatever we are facing. We can always bring it to him.
Reflection Question
Is there something you have stopped bringing to God because it feels too far gone, too long dead, too beyond hope?
A Small Invitation
If this reflection helped you, consider sharing it with someone who may benefit from hearing this message.