March 22, 2026 at St Peter and Saint William Parishes in Naples, FL
Ezekiel 37: 12-14 + Psalm 130 + Romans 8: 8-11 + John 11: 1-45
Now comes the last of the seven signs in John’s Gospel, and with it a lesson on waiting and grieving. Martha and Mary wait. Even these much-loved disciples and friends of Jesus cannot snap their fingers and have their wish fulfilled. Then Jesus says: “Let’s go” and the final days of his journey to Jerusalem begin. He’s not going to Lazarus. He is going to his death. Along the way, he will bring Lazarus to live again for a while until he finds his way home at last. But not before hope is nearly lost because Lazarus has been four days in a tomb.
A question is always there when hope grows dim. “What if”, and Martha says it with a broken heart. Grief does that to us all. It robs us of hope. Martha may not be the only one asking that question. Perhaps even Jesus asks: “What if” as he weeps. Is it grief over the loss of a friend, or is it the pain of the friends standing around him who are so stricken? Does he feel as though he let them down by not coming earlier?
More likely the tears of Jesus speak to his acceptance of death as an inevitable tragic part of human experience. People are born. People die. Even if Jesus had arrived earlier and healed Lazarus, eventually the man would have died. Certainly, even after Lazarus was raised from the dead, at some point he died again. Death cannot be avoided. On his way to Jerusalem now, Jesus had to be aware that his powerful enemies were out to destroy him. He weeps.
The reasons for his tears however are not as important as the fact that he allowed the tears to flow. He did not do what we are often told to do. He did not hold back tears, bottle-up his emotions, or maintain self-control. We can learn from this story to be free, to cry in the face of something that could prompt those tears and stand without shame or embarrassment with those who grieve and express their pain so openly. The tears, the grief, the sadness must never rob us of hope that is so easily lost in all the emotions around death. Martha’s hope expressed in her talk with Jesus leads him to the tomb where her brother will emerge to live again.