“That time of year thou mayest in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.”
I couldn’t help but think of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 when I read John 11 today.
Love… but in sickness. Love… but in death.
As John 11 opens, Lazarus is sick. On his deathbed, in fact. His sisters, Mary and Martha, see in him that late fall and winter season where the trees are bare of both leaves and song birds. They see the sunset fading and the fire of life dying on its embers. It’s the love of his sisters that compels them to send word to the only person that they think can do Lazarus any good. Jesus. And they, in turn, speak to Jesus’s love for them and for their brother.
St. Augustine wrote a commentary on John, and when he got to this passage he pointed out the fact that Mary and Martha don’t send word asking for healing. They don’t ask for power or for some miraculous sign that all will be well in the end. They don’t ask for anything. They simply lay out the facts. “The one whom you love is ill.” Augustine says that for Mary and Martha to say this, it's as if they were saying, “It is enough that you know. For you are not one that loves and then abandons.” They love, and in turn they trust the one who loves them.
I do believe this is a story about Love. With that in mind there is nothing I’d like better than to gloss this text over and make this a warm-and-fuzzy-feeling post. I’d love to skip over the bulk of the text and get right to the climax, where we hear Jesus’s powerful words beckoning Lazarus to rise from his grave, to be released from the burial bands that bind him, and to be reunited with those whom he loves and those who love him. But the fact is that this is a story about Love. And Love isn’t something that can be easily glossed over.
Christians have been wrestling with this text for centuries, because it strikes at a question that has been in the heart of every Christian at least once in their lives. And it’s not just a question that we hear in the undertones of this story alone. It’s a question we hear in the Psalms as well. It’s a question we hear in Job. It’s a question we hear over and over again in Scripture, and in the poets and in the philosophers, and in the writers throughout the ages. We hear it today in our churches and within the world at large. We hear it even within our own hearts.
“Why do bad things happen to people who love God?”
If God is a God of Love, then shouldn’t God save people from the hurt of this world? If Jesus really loved Mary and Martha, wouldn’t he have healed their brother as soon as he received word from them? If Jesus really loved Lazarus, wouldn’t he have rushed to his side? Yet we have this strange verse: “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.”
I don’t know about you, but I get a little offended when I read that verse, even though I know how the story ends. It makes me really uncomfortable to hear that Jesus loved someone so he stayed away from them… and in their time of need! That’s not the feel-good message about the love of Christ that I so often want to hear. That’s not the warm-and-fuzzy kind of love story that keeps me in my Christian comfort zone.
But as I said, this is a story about Love. Not warm-fuzzy feelings. Not comfort zones. But Love. The kind of Love that sees heartache and suffering, that sees sickness and imminent death, that sees the bare trees and the fading twilight and the dying embers and continues to love well. The kind of love that stays where he was, because conquering death was more important than merely curing disease.
Perhaps in this time of Lent, in this time of fear, in this time of recognition of mortality, you are on the same end as Lazarus: the one who loves Jesus, the one whom Jesus loves… and yet you are suffering. Take heart. Maybe it seems clichéd to say, but perhaps there’s a side of the story that has yet to be seen. I imagine that there was a great deal of confusion for Lazarus in those last days. Jesus seemed to have abandoned him. Yet Christ is not one who loves and then abandons. In the moment where it seemed Love had grown weak in absence, Love ultimately proved even stronger than imagined.
The amazing thing is, this same life-giving Spirit bestowed on Lazarus lives in you and me. Even in this time, when we are starkly reminded of our own mortality, this story reminds us that Christ has conquered death and bids us to rise from the grave and be set free from the ties that bind us.
It is in those who suffer, in the Least of These, that we see the Suffering Christ. The same Christ who wept with those sisters he loved. The same Christ who wept for the friend who was lying in the tomb. The Christ who continued to love well the same people he knew he would leave ‘ere long as he continued to make his way toward Jerusalem and the cross.
As Shakespeare put it so well, Love grows all the more strong when it perceives suffering and stays, regardless of the kind of suffering it may have to endure. Christ is not one who loves and then abandons. If you are suffering, take heart that the same Christ who wept at the tomb of Lazarus weeps with you. We are reminded that we have a Great High Priest who sympathizes with us in our suffering. God sees, and God continues to love well.
Christ is not one who loves and then abandons, which also means that as his followers we are called out of our comfort and complacency to perceive the suffering of our brothers and sisters and continue to love well. We love and do not abandon. In the sharing of the bread and cup, we are reminded of our solidarity with the whole body of Christ, and that if one member suffers the whole body suffers with it. We are reminded that this is a love story, and that’s precisely what makes it anything but easy.