Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
There is a passage of scripture that has always bothered me.
It has always seemed like one of those dreaded “contradictions” in the Bible that we try so hard to ignore when we can’t easily explain them away, and this one has been nagging me for a very long time.
But before I get to the passage that bugs me, let me first talk about one that has been a supreme encouragement in my life for the last 10 or 11 years. And that would be the ever-mocked John 11:35, the shortest verse in the entire Bible.
We all know what that verse says, right? It simply says, “Jesus wept” in one configuration or another. Some translations might say, “And then Jesus wept,” or even just “He wept,” but you all get the gist of it. In John 11:35, Jesus cries.
There are a lot of different theories floating around out there as to why Jesus is crying in this chapter. If you don’t remember, John 11:1-44 tells the story of Lazarus and his death. So in the first part of the chapter, Jesus receives a message that his good friend Lazarus is dying.
My wife and I took a trip out west to Wyoming several years ago. In fact, the main photo from one of my last posts was taken on that trip. Leading up to that trip, we’d known that my grandfather was sick. It wasn’t likely that he would be with us much longer, but I had been assured before we left that he would probably live for another month or so and we were only supposed to be gone for a week.
Fast forward to Thursday morning of that trip and I’m woken up by a very early phone call from my mother. I didn’t even answer it because I knew exactly what it was. There was no other reason for her to call at that time of day. Just a few minutes later, I decided to roll over and call her back. As expected, my grandfather was no longer with us.
When I knew that my grandfather had died, all I wanted to do was hop in the car and drive home. Either that, or lay in bed and do nothing. I was broken. My grandfather had died while I was about 1,600 miles away and I had been unable to really say goodbye.
Jesus gets a message that his friend is sick, though, and he decides to sit around a few days. Keep in mind, I could cover the driving distance from the westernmost points of Wyoming to metro-Atlanta in about two days of really hard driving. And I did a couple days later. Jesus was most likely going to walk wherever he was going, so you would think that urgency would be at the forefront of His mind. Except…it wasn’t.
After a few days, Jesus tells his disciples that Lazarus is dead, and that now they’re going to hop on back to Judea to see everyone.
When Jesus arrives, there are a lot of mixed reactions. Some people are confused why Jesus didn’t come quicker, thinking that Jesus surely could have healed Lazarus if only He’d gotten there sooner. Lazarus’ sisters even bring up the fact that Jesus could have healed their brother.
But let’s see what happens when Jesus starts to witness their mourning.
When Jesus saw her weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within him, and he was deeply troubled. “Where have you put him?” he asked them.
They told him, “Lord, come and see.” Then Jesus wept. The people who were standing nearby said, “See how much he loved him!” But some said, “This man healed a blind man. Couldn’t he have kept Lazarus from dying?”
John 11:33-37 (NLT)
Was Jesus crying because Lazarus was dead?
I don’t think that makes any sense. Why would Lazarus’ death make Jesus sad when Jesus knows good and well what’s about to happen? Jesus had planned all along to let Lazarus die just so he could be resurrected. Jesus was not upset about Lazarus’ death.
The way I heard one preacher put it about a decade ago was that Jesus was moved by seeing those He loved in mourning. We see a similar sentiment on the cross when Jesus sees His mother mourning, and then Jesus tells John to take her in as if she were his own mother (John 19:25-27).
I cannot tell you how deeply I felt this passage when that preacher explained it like this. One of my closest friends was preparing for the death of a loved one from cancer and my grandmother had just suffered a massive stroke a few months prior. There are precious few times in life when I have found myself literally on my face in tears before the Lord, and after hearing this sermon was one of them.
We always hear that Jesus loves us, and most of us believe it. But let me put it this way. I tell my wife I love her every day, and I think she believes me. However, she is going to believe it a whole lot more when she wakes up to find that the dishes have been cleaned or that I’ve taken her car to fill it up with gas so she doesn’t have to stop on the way to work. When I do something practical to show her a specific way that I love her, that’s when she really sees it.
The same was true for me with this passage. I know Jesus loves me, but reading this passage highlighted one specific way that Jesus loves me. And it was the exact way I needed to know it at that time.
But to bring us back to the “contradiction” that I have always been bothered by, we have to take a look at Matthew 8. This passage has just never sat right with me because it seems to show an exact opposite reaction from Jesus.
When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he instructed his disciples to cross to the other side of the lake.
Then one of the teachers of religious law said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”
But Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens to live in, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place even to lay his head.”
Another of his disciples said, “Lord, first let me return home and bury my father.”
But Jesus told him, “Follow me now. Let the spiritually dead bury their own dead.”
Matthew 8:18-22 (NLT)
That is a hard pill to swallow, is it not? Jesus tells this dude who’s father just died that he has to let someone else take care of the dead dad. “Let the dead bury their own dead” is just about one of the most callous things you could tell someone who has just experienced a loss, and here is the ever-compassionate Jesus saying something like that.
So…what? How are we supposed to handle this image of Jesus that is so incredibly different from the one we expect?
Some phone calls you just don’t forget.
Two quick observations here. First, the second man is at least honest. The first man in this story tries to impress Jesus with some false piety, to which Jesus replies, “Have you really thought this through?” The second man is at least honest about the fact that he wants to follow Jesus, but there’s something else pulling him away.
I can respect that second man a whole lot more than the first because we’ve all been there. We want to follow Jesus, but we also kinda want to do something else. And this man has a pretty good excuse, doesn’t he? It’s an understandable distraction, even if it isn’t exactly okay to just ignore Jesus.
And that’s the second thing I noticed. When I saw it, I felt a great relief because it all actually made sense.
See, Jesus had just given them a direct, specific command: “Go over there!” No matter what, we have to answer Jesus when He calls. If we say we are going to follow Jesus, then we can’t call take-backs. It isn’t that Jesus was callous to this man’s loss. This really is still the same Jesus we saw in John 11. However, even in His understanding, Jesus is directing this man to do something else.
I remember hearing David Platt speak about this exact passage a few years back. He mentioned that his own dad had died while he was out in the mission field, and all Platt wanted to do was go home and be with family. But then he remembered what Jesus said in Matthew 8.
Look. This is still a hard passage to digest. Hearing that Jesus expects us to carry on with His purpose even when we’ve lost loved ones is, shall we say, difficult. I have been very blessed in my life to suffer minimal losses of family members or other loved ones. I really haven’t had to deal with a lot of shocking, unexpected deaths. And yet, every time I get that phone call that someone I love has died, all I want to do is lay down and cry. I don’t want to do anything that requires effort or mental concentration.
And I certainly don’t want to go out and do ministry.
This is still a difficult passage. No amount of subtle wording will ever change that. But at least we can recognize that the same Jesus who said that working towards the glory of God is more important than burying a loved one is the same Jesus who cried bitter, angry tears at seeing his loved ones mourn death.
After all, death is the enemy. And it is the ultimate enemy that Jesus will one day destroy.
After that the end will come, when he will turn the Kingdom over to God the Father, having destroyed every ruler and authority and power. For Christ must reign until he humbles all his enemies beneath his feet. And the last enemy to be destroyed is death.
1 Corinthians 15:24-26 (NLT) [Whole chapter for context]
The same Jesus who weeps with us when we mourn is the same Jesus who will have the last say.
So when the time comes to mourn, it’s okay to mourn. We do not have a God who is unsympathetic to our mourning, but we also cannot forget our ultimate purpose in serving God. Just like we can’t forget that God has promised victory over death and that our mourning will have an end.