Jesus Wept

Today’s message from the Easter Study Plan is based on the account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. He visited Bethany shortly before the beginning of His last week, and there He found Mary and Martha mourning because of the death of their brother Lazarus. Martha met Him first with these words: “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” In these words, we find perhaps the hint of a rebuke to Jesus, not unlike how we might pray in our moments of anguish, “Lord, how could thou let this happen? Why didn’t you prevent this?” And yet Martha believed that Jesus could still do something, for she followed up with this statement of faith: “But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.” For her, faith triumphed over her doubts, and it was redemptive and pointed towards the future. She declared this powerful belief: “I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.” After Jesus talked to Martha, He then found Mary, and she spoke to Jesus the same first words as her sister: “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” But, unlike her sister, Mary did not follow this up with an expression of faith in what He could still do. We don’t have a record of a verbal response directly to her, but instead He observed that she and the Jews were weeping, and “he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled.” He asked them, “Where have ye laid him?” They responded, “Come and see.” It was at this precise moment that we read, “Jesus wept.”

               The text does not tell us why He groaned and was troubled, or why He wept. The most common explanation for His weeping is the love He had for these sisters in their sorrow, and surely that love was great. As I have pondered this scene and the sequence of events recorded by John, though, I’m convinced that His weeping was not out of compassion for their sorrow. He realized that they would be filled with joy momentarily at the return of their brother and their sorrow would disappear. Consider, for example, what happened when He raised the daughter of Jairus from the dead. When Jairus found out she had died, and when some suggested that all hope was lost, Jesus said to him: “Be not afraid, only believe.” He then went with Jairus to where she was. Mark recorded, “And he cometh to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and seeth the tumult, and them that wept and wailed greatly. And when he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth” (Mark 5:36-39). Like it was for Lazarus, there was a large crowd of people who were there weeping over the one who had died, and in this first case, not only did Jesus not weep but He told them not to weep. He then proceeded to raise this young woman from the dead. So why did He weep shortly before raising up Lazarus in a very similar circumstance? I believe He was weeping because of their unbelief. Jesus did not weep (as far as we know) after His exchange with Martha, only after talking with Mary and the other Jews there. Perhaps this was because He saw that Martha truly believed in His power: she expressed faith in what He could still do and asked for Him to yet intervene (“even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee”). Mary and the other Jews, though, did not express the same faith in Him, neither did they ask Him to save Lazarus. They had already closed their hearts and minds to the possibility that He could still perform a miracle. The initial response of Jesus to Mary’s statement and the weeping of her and the Jews was not to weep; rather, it was to groan and be troubled. He then asked them a question that He of course already knew the answer to: “Where have ye laid him?” I believe that the question was an invitation for them to express their faith in Him to go and raise Him from the dead. He had already raised at least two from the dead, which fact they surely knew. Perhaps His question about where He was laid was really Him offering them a chance to request His help. I believe He wanted them to respond with faith, “Come and raise him up.” But instead they only answered, “Come and see,” believing that He could do nothing. It was at this point that He wept. He was mourning, I believe, because they did not believe He could do what He had already done and what He was about to do again.

               I think John gave us another indication that Jesus’s mourning was because of their unbelief in the next three verses: “Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him! And some of them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died? Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave” (John 11:36-38). The same people which interpreted His tears as coming because of a love for Lazarus also complained that He didn’t heal Lazarus. Their statement clearly suggests that they didn’t believe He could do anything at this point, and of course they were wrong. And I believe they were also wrong in interpreting His feelings and tears. Seeing this clear unbelief on their part, Jesus groaned again. Of course, I may be wrong in how I’m interpreting this, but to me the message of this story is that Jesus wants us to believe in Him, not just in what He has done in the past but what He can do for us in the future. He wants us to come to Him for help and for miracles, just as Martha did. And when we do not have enough faith to turn to Him for divine aid, when He is not the source of strength we reach out to in our distress, perhaps that is when He weeps for our unbelief.