Jesus had a friend. The name of his friend was Lazarus. When you have a friend, and your friend needs help you do what you can.

So when Lazarus was ill, naturally they sent to Jesus for help. “You have healed others, why not your friend?” But Jesus did not do what they thought he would do.

.Jesus was late, and when he finally arrived, Lazarus was dead, and Jesus wept. He broke down and cried, because he had lost a friend, and it hurt. He mourned the death of his friend.

Mary didn’t help him in his grief. Listen to what Mary said to Jesus: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Which is to say, “Lord, why weren’t you here?”

I want you to listen to Mary, because we have been there, every one of us! We have been there with Mary.

There is nothing harder to understand than death, especially sudden death, especially the death of a friend.

“Why?”

“Why did he have to die?”

“Why weren’t you here?”

Mary wants an answer –

         “Jesus, why didn’t you do something?”

Mary wants an answer, and there is no answer.

SO, how is Mary’s question our question? When we come face to face with the death of someone we love, some very primitive fears arise – and they are often fears for ourselves.

These fears attack the very framework of our lives, the structure that helps us make sense out of life.

The supporting structure of Mary’s life had as its foundation an assumption, which went something like this: “We are friends of Jesus. Jesus will protect us from harm.”

But Lazarus died, and the framework of Mary’s life came tumbling down.

She had lost her brother, but she had also lost the structure that empowered her to make sense out of life.

As she faced the irreversible, physical evidence of Lazarus’ death, something inside her died as well.

In this world, there are many ways to die. Relationships die, belief withers, confidence in our own ability to cope evaporates. Hopes for peace, health, and happiness fade away before the harsh realities of life. Look around you, the evidence is there before your eyes that Lazarus is dead in our world as well: problems which defy solution. Emptiness and loneliness and violence.

Our Lazarus is dead, and Jesus weeps for us, every one of us.

Then Jesus did one of the strangest things he would ever do.

Even as he was weeping for his lost friend, against all the evidence that Lazarus was gone forever, Jesus trusted in God’s promise and proclaimed life.

“Lazarus, come out!”

And it was so.

It made no sense in the natural order of things, but it made perfect sense in terms of who Jesus was. Jesus prayed to his Father.

The tense of Jesus’ prayer is important. He did not pray, “Father, hear me.” Rather, “Father, you have heard me.”

“I thank you, you have heard me.”

This was not intercession for the lost life of a friend, but thanksgiving for what God had already done.

That Lazarus actually walked out of the tomb was coincidental – because Jesus was declaring that God’s glory is in the world,

So then none of the old rules are in force any more. 

Jesus helped Mary see that it is not just a matter of my faith being able to take care of me in a crisis.

Instead, the glory of God has already pronounced the death of all kinds of deaths.

When we are dried up, cut off, all hope lost, God says (to paraphrase the prophet Ezekiel 37:14):

“I will bring you home,

I will put my spirit in you,

          you will live!”

When will this be?

          Off in the future?

         Up in heaven?

NO!

“I Have Done It, 

         Says The Lord Our God…

Brothers and Sisters, in the midst of the darkest, emptiest of our days, Jesus says to us: Come out! Live!

Like Mary, we cannot be content unless we know.

When we say, “Jesus, if you had only been there …”

Then it is that he calls us to trust, not that everything will turn out for the best by-and-by, but that there is a new, freeing, life-giving creation in Jesus Christ.

When we are like Lazarus, Jesus calls us and tells us that we need not be bound and entombed by the many deaths which bind us, not even by the fear of bodily death. He unbinds and frees us and calls us, saying, “Live!”

In any of our deaths, whenever life emerges out of the tomb, it is because the glory of God has been poured out on our lives, and we can never be the same again.

When you have been unbound, like Lazarus, from death and the fear of death, then you know that the greatest thing you can do in this world is proclaim the glory of God who brings us life.

Yes, weep over the forces of death, but proclaim the life-giving glory of God with all your being.

Jesus says to you: “Come out! Live!”