Saint John 11:32-44
No one mourns the wicked.” Are the opening words sung by the chorus in the Broadway musical Wicked immediately after the death of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. The Citizens of Oz rejoice, celebrating the demise of their supposed enemy. “No one mourns the wicked. No one lays a lily on their grave.”
However, Glinda the good witch, seems to be able to pick up on the loneliness and isolation of the ones who nobody seems to be interested in mourning: “The Wicked’s lives are lonely. Goodness knows the Wicked die alone. It just shows when you’re wicked, you’re left only on your own.”1
While nobody may mourn the wicked it is a sure and certain thing that everybody will mourn.
Our own beloved, Dr. Martin Marty, in his book A Cry of Absence, tells of a famous public man with no recognizable faith who died and was buried.
His family and friends commandeered an underused but reminiscently appropriate college chapel for the occasion.
The powerful and the rich were present. Lacking a book of rites and ceremonies, those who sponsored the service did what moderns do: they invented a nice little liturgy of their own. Several bleak songs by a near-contemporary composer were the only sounds verging and anything sacral that participants heard. They were also treated to numerous — some remember ten — eulogies. We learned of the administrative, anecdotal, scholarly, and charitable activities of the departed. All this took place without an amplifying system to make all parts of the service audible. The event occurred before the chapel was air-conditioned. The elite people of the city melted pounds away in the steam and fumed away other pounds in discontent of the muffled sounds.2
They may not have known how to mourn or simply wished to soften their mourning to the point where it didn’t seem to hurt so much.
This was not so with Mary and Martha, when they mourned the whole community mourned with them. That was their tradition, where no loss went unnoticed.
And this one really hurt because after Lazarus died a request went unanswered. The sisters sent word to Jesus that a man who he knew, who he considered such a friend to have dined with him on more than one occasion, had died.
Even we know what we are supposed to do. We are to put together a peach cobbler and a green bean casserole and head over to the house to offer comfort. We know that this is a time to order flowers, buy a sympathy card, give memorial, or, at the very least, light a candle.
The sisters sent word to Jesus that his friend had died and we are told by a very reliable sympathetic source that even “after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.”3
Imagine the commotion this caused in Mary and Martha’s community. The sisters stopping every few hours, every few minutes, to look down the garden path to see if their friend was coming. The townsfolk asking the kind of questions that, at the best of times can drive a person nuts but in a time of stress can work one’s last nerve.
“Have you heard anything from your friend Jesus?” “Are you sure he’s coming?” “Are you sure you sent the message to the right address?” “What are you going to do if he moved on?”
Is it any wonder why when Martha caught a glimpse of Jesus finally making his appearance, she let him have it. Never one to suffer fools, any fool, gladly Martha lets him have it: “Master, if you’d been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.”4
In another church, in another life, I once read this in the sternest, most angry voice possible and was accosted by a couple after church who said, “No one would ever talk to Jesus that way!” Martha would and did.
She may have been tempted to temper the surprise at what she heard herself saying and perhaps even the surprise on Jesus’ face with a little theological reflection: “But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”5
Nothing like a little theological conversation to diffuse the situation or muddy the waters as the case may be. The talk turns to the how and when of resurrection to which Jesus says: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.”6
It is all too much for Jesus. There are no words to describe Jesus' reaction. Some suggest he was shaken to his very bones. It’s a sob. It’s a shudder. It’s a wail! “Jesus wept.”
That Jesus — the most accurate revelation of the divine we will ever have — stands at the grave of his friend and cries. When Jesus cries, he assures Mary not only that her beloved brother is worth crying for, but also that she is worth crying with.8
And he is telling us that at the depths of our despair we are worth crying for too.
But a sobbing Saviour standing at the foot of a grave only gets us so far. Jesus has to do more.
He walks to the grave and over the objections of the onlookers, who know a little about decomposition, orders it opened. Then he cries out as one author described it with a voice so loud it seemed like the roar of a thousand lions, “Lazarus! Come Out!”
And before you know it there is a formerly dead man walking. Stumbling actually until Jesus completes his gigantic gesture with a simple loving one: ““Unbind him, and let him go.”9 Or, my favourite paraphrase: ““Unwrap him and let him loose.”10
Lazarus on the loose! Lazarus on the go! It frightened some and hardened their hearts against Jesus so much that it made them more determined than ever to do away with him.
But what of the rest? What of Lazarus’ sisters who have spent the last few days teetering between disappointment and downright anger at Jesus for taking so long? What of the townsfolk whose tears moved Jesus so deeply that he did the unthinkable, the unbelievable? What of them all with their red eyes, raspy voices and head aching from so much crying?
I think they had a celebration. A celebration like we see on the television after a person or even a puppy is lifted out of what, at one time, seemed to be an inescapable situation.
I think the funeral luncheon was something to behold with Lazarus at the head table receiving back slaps, and hugs, and handshakes all around. And Mary and Martha standing off to the side with Jesus who is reminding them that, at one time or another, everybody mourns but not you, not now.
This whole story reminds me of one of those New Orleans funerals in the old south.
You know how they go. A jazz band leads a parade of mourners slowly, ever so slowly, to the cemetery playing “Just a closer walk with thee” in a minor key and at a tempo so slow that it surpasses any time signature in the history of music. Women are weeping and men, trying to remain strong have almost bitten their lower lip through.
The casket is lowered. “Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord. And may perpetual light shine upon them.”
Then something happens that affirms that Lazarus and his kind are on the loose. Something happens that proclaims that Jesus is the resurrection and the life.
The key changes from the minor to the major. The tune changes too. The tempo is upbeat and the somber crowd marches back into town with a new vigour in their step because the band is playing “When the Saints Go Marching In!”
They know that people will mourn them and mourn them well. They know that lilies will be laid on their grave. They know that they are the saints who will come marching in.
Lord, I want to be in that number. When the saints come marching in. And because of Christ, we will be. We will be.
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1. Mario Sulivan, “The Meaning behind the Song: No One Mourns the Wicked by Kristin Chenoweth,” Beat Crave, July 12, 2024, https://beatcrave.com/w2/the-meaning-behind-the-song-no-one-mourns-the-wicked-by-kristin-chenoweth
2. Martin E. Marty, A Cry of Absence Reflections for the Winter of the Heart (New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1983).
3. St. John 11:6. (NRSV) [NRSV= The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]
4. St. John 11:21-22. (MESSAGE) [The Message=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2004).
5. St. John 11:22. (NIV) [NIV= The New International Version]
6. St. John 11:25. (NRSV)
7. St. John 11:32. (NRSV)
8. Debie Thomas, “When Jesus Weeps,” Journey with Jesus, October 28, 2018, https://journeywithjesus.net/essays/1999-when-jesus-weeps.
9. St. John 10:44. (NRSV)
10, St. John 10:44 (MESSAGE)
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