Today’s Scripture:
“Jesus wept.” — John 11:35 (ESV)
Reflection
In today’s passage, Jesus talks to Mary. When Mary came to meet Jesus, she fell down at his feet and started weeping, saying the same thing as her sister had done: “Lord, if you had been there, my brother would not have died.” Jesus saw the weeping of both her and the Jews, and he felt empathy for them. Jesus started crying as well for the death of his friend, as his spirit was deeply moved and greatly troubled. Some Jews exclaimed at how Jesus loved Lazarus, but others said that if he could open the eyes of a blind man, he could have stopped Lazarus from dying.
One of the main doctrines of the Christian faith is that Jesus is fully God and fully man (hypostatic union). We often see Jesus as this perfect and holy man, but in his entirety, Jesus experienced even the bad emotions of humans. There were times when Jesus was angry, like when he cleansed the temple; there were times when he was in pain, like on the cross; and there were times when he was sad, like this passage. Today’s sermon was about hope for the downcast soul, and P. Abe directly quoted John 11:35, which says how Jesus wept, and he was downcast at times as well. I was going to cite the first part of Hebrew 4:15 but then I realized it’s kind of using the verse out of context… But the important thing is that Jesus is able to sympathize and empathize with our sorrows because he was a human and he experienced the same feelings as we do. That makes me feel comforted and understood because if Jesus didn’t experience humanity, then it would make perfection an expectation, but since Jesus already lived as the perfect human, we can live now having confidence in the perfect life of Jesus Christ.
The Jews bring up an interesting point about how Jesus could have healed Lazarus since he already demonstrated his authority with the blind man. It is true that Jesus could have healed Lazarus, but he chose not to at that point in time. One of the biggest mysteries in life is God’s perfect plan and timing. As mere humans, there’s no way for us to even guess or comprehend God’s ultimate authority and his plan for us, but we need to know that everything God does is part of his plan. God used Lazarus’s death for a purpose, and the truth is, he uses death in our lives to fulfill his will as well. Even though it’s true, I can’t tell my friend whose brother just died that the death was part of God’s plan. But as Christians, my friend and I both know that his brother’s death was for a purpose and it was part of God’s ultimate plan. I’ll discuss Jesus’s glory in tomorrow’s passage probably.