John 11:33-37 - Transcendance and Imminence, Certainty and Emotion

John 11:33-37 "When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 'Where have you laid him?' he asked.

'Come and see, Lord,' they replied.

Jesus wept.

Then the Jews said, 'See how he loved him!'

But some of them said, 'Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?'"

These five verses are part of a larger story which can be read here. In this story, Jesus' friend, Lazarus, falls ill but Jesus stays away when He hears about it; He stays away so long, in fact, that Lazarus dies. Once Lazarus is dead, Jesus goes to Lazarus' home town of Bethany and sobs at Lazarus' death before raising Lazarus from the dead. What's going on here?

We worship a God that is both transcendent and imminent; He is both outside of our universe, having planned everything and created it, and intimately involved in our universe, intimately involved with us. In this passage, we see that Jesus, who had laid aside His transcendence during His incarnation, was following His transcendant Father in purposely letting Lazarus die so that Lazarus could be raised from the dead and Mary, Martha, Lazarus and many other Jews would have faith in Him. In short, God planned suffering for Lazarus, Mary and Martha, whom He loved, for their own good, the good of others and for His own glory, and, in the end, it all turned out better than it had been for those who had suffered.

This isn't the end of the story, however; or, rather, it is the end of the story, not the middle of the story. We live, today, in the middle of the story; we haven't seen the end yet, when everything will make sense. God does not usually resolve what He is doing within a week's time, like He did with Lazarus' death. How should we respond when we suffer and don't understand why we suffer?

Lazarus' sisters, Martha and Mary, responded in two different ways. Martha approached Jesus first and seems to be trying to reason her way through what is happening, to make sense of why Jesus did not save Lazarus from death. Mary seems to be dealing with Lazarus' death in a much more emotional way, crying as she goes to see Jesus. Now, I'm sure that Martha did her share of crying in the four days between Lazarus' death and Jesus' arrival at the tomb, and my guess is that Mary did some thinking during that time as well, but the fact remains that this story sounds very much like the first time we read about Martha and Mary.

There is an important difference, though. In this case, Jesus doesn't rebuke Martha; He comforts her. There is nothing wrong with her trying to make sense of what she didn't understand; His response was to ask her to trust Him.

Jesus also doesn't rebuke Mary; He cries with her, or, more exactly, He sobs with her and is deeply moved.

There are so many intricacies to this passage, but I want to just briefly discuss how we should deal with mourning, following Jesus' example.

As well as knowing everything and having a perspective that sees the big picture in a way that we humans can't imagine, God gets down in the nitty gritty and lives with us. He meets us where we are and doesn't rebuke us for not being transcendent like He is. In fact, I would argue that, as we are made in His image, the reason we are imminent is because He is even more imminent that we are; just as we can only grasp at the beginnings of His transcendence with our minds, I think we can only grasp at the beginnings of His imminence with our emotions.

Just as Jesus meets Martha and Mary where they are, comforting them as Martha tries to be transcendent, to see the big picture, and Mary tries to be imminent, to experience the moment, so we too ought to accept people where they are, especially when grieving. Too often we tell those who are mourning, like Mary was, to cheer up, that God has a plan, that this will all work out for the best. All of those things were even more true, in that they would resolve within the next few minutes, when Mary fell at Jesus' feet sobbing, but He did not tell her those things, so neither should we. Instead, let us bear each others' burdens and cry with each other when we hurt, like Jesus did.

In the same way, as people mourn they go through stages where they try to understand, where they approach their grief intellectually, like Martha did when she met Jesus. Jesus did not tell her that she should not try to understand God, that she was questioning God, or that she was not trusting Him enough or should not be angry with God. He merely reminded her who He was.

It is also important to notice that Martha and Mary both said one thing: Jesus, if you had been here, Lazarus would not have died. Basically, they were saying that if Jesus had wanted to, He could have stopped Lazarus from dying. This was very true, but it also sounds like something we don't tolerate much in the Church today: saying that God wanted me to suffer. When people say this, we slam down on them so quickly because it makes God scary and unsafe, but, as C.S. Lewis wrote, God is not safe, but He is good. God is powerful enough to stop all suffering, but He doesn't; the reasons why He doesn't are hotly debated, but what cannot be debated is that He can and He doesn't. When someone is suffering and points this out, don't deny that what they say is true.

Remember that God gave you both an intellect and emotions and when He created Adam and Eve with both emotions and intellect He called them "very good." When others use one or the other, don't rebuke them; instead, meet them where they are and answer them in the language they are using. Similarly, when you approach a problem with either intellect or emotion (or, more likely both, in alternating stages), don't shame yourself for how you are thinking or feeling, or for knowing that God could have made things work differently. God made you with both an intellect and emotions and He's big enough to take you using both when grappling with what He's done.