He Loved Them, So He Waited

After the funeral, someone has to drive everyone home.

Someone has to make sure the kids eat. Someone has to talk to the funeral home about the bill. Someone has to stand at the door and thank people for coming.

Usually that someone is you.

So you hold it together. You do not cry in front of the kids because you think they need you to be strong. Later, in the shower or in the truck, it finally comes out. Or maybe it does not come out at all, and it just sits in you like a stone.

Grief is not a sin to confess. It is what love feels like when someone is gone.

The shortest verse in the Bible sits inside one of its longest stories, and the details around it matter.

It starts with a message from two sisters, Martha and Mary: “Lord, the one You love is sick” (John 11:3). Then comes a sentence that seems backward: “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So on hearing that Lazarus was sick, He stayed where He was for two days” (John 11:5 to 6). He loved them, so He waited. That will not make sense until the end of the story, and some of your own waiting will not either.

By the time Jesus arrives in Bethany, about two miles from Jerusalem, Lazarus has been in the tomb four days (John 11:17). That number was significant. Later rabbinic writings record a belief that a person’s soul stayed near the body for three days. By the fourth day, every possible hope was gone. Lazarus was not almost dead. He was beyond all hope.

The house is full of people who have come to mourn with the family, as was the custom (John 11:19). Both sisters meet Jesus with the same words: “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:21, 32). It is part faith, part accusation. He lets them say it.

Then John uses two words that are easy to miss in English.

When Jesus saw Mary and the mourners weeping, “He was deeply moved in spirit and troubled” (John 11:33). The Greek word behind “deeply moved” was used for a horse snorting, and elsewhere in the Gospels it describes stern indignation. Many scholars believe John is telling us Jesus was angry. Not at Mary. At death itself, the enemy that tears families apart.

And then, “Jesus wept.” The mourners around Him were wailing, the loud lament of a funeral. But John uses a different word for Jesus, one that means quiet tears running down His face. It appears only here in the New Testament.

The Son of God, who knew He was about to raise Lazarus, stood at the grave angry and in tears.

Then He called, “Lazarus, come out!” and a dead man walked out, still wrapped in grave cloths (John 11:43 to 44).

Read to the end of the chapter, though. Because of this miracle, the religious leaders decided Jesus had to die: “So from that day on they plotted to kill Him” (John 11:53). Giving Lazarus his life back is what set Jesus on the road to His own grave. Three days after that grave, He walked out of it. “I am the resurrection and the life” was not a slogan. He paid for it.

You do not have to rush past the sorrow to get to that hope. Jesus did not. You can weep in front of your children. You can let them see that a father who trusts Christ still mourns, and is even angry at death.

The empty tomb does not cancel your tears. It promises they will not be the last word.