God's Homecoming

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Both of Lazarus’ sisters say the same words to Jesus: you should have been here. Lord, where were you? God, where were you? God, where are you when your children suffer? When your friends suffer? When the shadows of our grief seem to deep and dark for us to bear? Jesus, where are you – where are you going to be – when I die? Sometimes, we try to stifle these questions. We try to stifle the accusations that God didn’t show up when we thought God would show up. We tell ourselves that we don’t believe in miracles, that not every person with a terminal disease will be healed. And sometimes, we stop looking for God to show up. Perhaps we don’t believe that God will actually come. Perhaps the doctors seem more trustworthy; with looking over their charts and saying the patient’s name only after having just read it from the charts or from the marker board in the wall. But sometimes, when we know there is no other hope, we catch a glimpse of how fragile we all really are.

Martha had Mary sent a message to him to tell him that Lazarus was sick; after hearing Lazarus was sick, Jesus delayed coming to Lazarus for two days; Jesus knew full well what was happening. His reason: so that God’s glory may be revealed (John 10:4 and so that the disciples may believe (John 11:11-13). “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” I think sometimes we imagine Mary and Martha calmly saying these words. But I imagine Martha pulling Jesus aside, saying through gritted teeth what many of us want to say to Jesus when he seems to show up to help us when it seems too late, after the 11^th hour is long past and we have started to feel like we are alone, forsaken, left behind by the one in whom we placed our trust.

I imagine Mary looking up from her kneeling position, a position of humility, of deference, seeing Jesus from just under her eyelids, sharp eyes piercing Jesus’, meeting him as an equal: “Lord, if you had been here…” cold, distant, removed. Some friend. Perhaps her sharp comments to Jesus were made out of her grief, out of her desperation, out of her knowledge of what it meant for her that she would never again hear his laugh, his corny jokes, his reassuring voice when she wasn’t sure she could go forward. But Jesus hadn’t been there. And Lazarus had died. There was nothing anyone could do about it, certainly not four days after he had been buried.

When Jesus sees the scene, he reacts emotionally: he becomes troubled and frustrated. Was he surprised to see the commotion around Lazarus, with the grieving sisters and mourning friends? Was he frustrated at their lack of faith in him? “Where is he?” Jesus asks. “Come and see,” they say. “Come and see,” Lord; come and hear the words that have invited others into discipleship, that have invited communities to come and meet this miracle worker, this man who told the Woman at the Well her own life story, who calls Nathaniel’s bluff, who invites sinners to follow and believe in him. Come and see, Jesus. Come and see how life is without you. Come and see what it death looks like and smells like. Come and see the hopelessness we really feel in death, even as we say “He’s in a better place,” wishing at the exact same time that he was still here. Come and see what it feels like to hear her laugh in a dream only to roll over and realize she’s not there. Come and see. In the same way that the words “come and see” have invited others to see who Jesus really is, I think that the words “come and see” here invite Jesus to see who humans really are. Like the disciples who came to follow Jesus after these words, Jesus follows his beloved ones as they show him the tomb.

It is upon hearing these words that Jesus weeps. The line that usually follows is something about how this shows Jesus’ humanity. Perhaps. But what if Jesus’ weeping says as much about his divinity as it does about his humanity? What does it mean for God incarnate to weep? What does it mean that God grieves? If this reveals the human side of God, what of the divine side? And why do we become so convinced that we can divide Jesus between these two sides, as though God contributes one half of the Jesus’ genetic material and Mary the other. I do not think it is so easy. I think that this is God, who so loved humanity that God gave the only Son – the Word Incarnate – weeping alongside those who mourn, weeping as a mother comforts her grieving children at the loss of their grandmother, her mother, gathering her children under her wings, her tears melding with theirs. God, who chose to share this world with us, does not remain aloof in our grief.

In our accusing questions, “Where were you?” whispered through gritted teeth, it is sometimes easy to forget that we are in God’s arms. We forget that God’s home is among us. We forget that God traveled with the Israelites, that God spoke through the prophets, that God came to us and comes to us. We forget that God’s desire is to be with us, and that death is the final realization of our baptisms, the final “come and see:” Come and see that your home is where God is and God’s home is where you are.

It is not just in Lazarus’ resurrection that we catch a glimpse of the glory of God; the glory of God comes not only at the last day, after the 11^th hour; the glory of God comes in the tears of God, as God grieves with us, straining toward the new creation, straining toward the day for which God also longs: the day when S/He will wipe every tear from our eyes, and death will be no more, neither mourning nor crying will be anymore, because the first things will have passed away.” Come and see the God who refuses to allow death to have the final answer. Come and see the God who refuses to allow our mourning and tears to be in vain. Come and see that God – of infinite glory and power – comes to us in the depths of our grief and raises us, even as we are dead in our sin, to new life. Come and see the God in whom and through whom all things exist, who is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the one who travels with you until the End. Behold, God’s home is among mortals, whether in walking among us on earth, or whether gathering us into her loving embrace in the end.