Sermon for Sunday, November 3, 2024 || All Saints B || John 11:32-44

Here we are. November 3, 2024, the day we celebrate all the saints. We are two days before a momentous election that pits vastly different visions of this country against each other. The world is mired in the midst of multiple ongoing wars in which so many innocent people have died. We’re grappling with increasingly common and destructive natural disasters due to climate change. And on a personal level we are contending with issues ranging from physical and mental health to addictions to economic hardship to interpersonal relationships. Anxiety and stress are high. Time is fleeting. The future approaches, and we have no idea what it will hold. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been holding tension in my shoulders for so long that I don’t remember what it feels like to be relaxed.

With all of this swirling around, we come to this place on this day at this time. We come to worship God, to be together, to learn and grow, to confess our complicity in the great sins of the world, and to share the nourishment of the Body and Blood of Christ with one another. We come from different backgrounds and ideologies, different generations and occupations, different levels of financial stability, and yet we come together. We pray to God to stitch us together as a beloved community. If this reality is not one to celebrate in the face of a fractured and fractious world, then I don’t know what is worth celebrating.

Our celebration today doesn’t just include those of us sitting right here. It also includes all the saints who have come before us, who walk among us, and who will come after us. We are connected to a great cloud of witnesses in the faith that links us all the way back to the earliest days of the revelation of Jesus Christ. Some of those who belong to the cloud of witnesses wrote down the words Chuck just read, the words of the eleventh chapter of John’s Gospel, the beautiful story of the raising of Lazarus. And these words include the shortest verse in the Bible – two words in the King James Version and four words in the one we read: “Jesus began to weep.”

We might be tempted to ask why Jesus weeps considering he’s about to raise his friend Lazarus from the dead. Even the onlookers wondered about his tears: “Jesus began to weep. So 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?”

But the question shouldn’t be, “Why did Jesus weep?” The question should be, “How could he not?” Martha and Mary are in pain over their brother’s death. The whole community of Bethany is in pain. Jesus would have to be a pretty heartless person not to empathize, and we know Jesus cared – cared so much that he would go to the cross for these people and for us.

I think the question, “Why did Jesus weep?” comes from a very unhelpful strain of Christian thought that goes something like this: “Because I believe in Jesus, nothing bad will ever happen to me.” Ever heard that notion before? It tends to crop up around the time something bad happens. This unhelpful strain of thought runs rampant through the less well-written modern Christian rock music – the kind that says if I just believe hard enough, if I love Jesus oh so much, then my life will be perfect. When I was a camp counselor, we called this kind of music as “Jesus is my boyfriend” music.

The trouble is, clinging to a thought like, “Because I believe in Jesus, nothing bad will ever happen to me” – clinging to a thought like this leads us astray because Jesus never made this claim. Not only did Jesus not make this claim; he actually made the opposite claim. Jesus says, “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matthew 5:11). Jesus says, “You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death” (Luke 21:16). Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). Nowhere in the multiplicity of voices in the Bible does the thought exist that nothing bad will happen if we believe in Jesus. The desire for nothing bad to happen exists, but the reality is always something else, something much truer. And we find this reality in Jesus’ tears.

Jesus began to weep. The God made known in our Lord Jesus Christ lives in the midst of pain, brokenness, calamity, and death. Even though Lazarus was soon to rise, the grief was palpable. And Jesus was there, feeling it too. This is the reality of the cross. Jesus may have felt abandoned – in those agonizing hours, God may have seemed far away – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” And yet, when our pain keeps us from noticing God’s presence, it does not stop God from being present. And so Jesus is also able to cry out (in another account of the Gospel) “Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.” God was there, God was weeping for God’s son on the cross, even as God was bringing the whole of creation into something new – the reality of the resurrection on the third day.

While Jesus never claims that nothing bad will happen to those who believe, there are some things he does promise. And they all have to do with being with us and us being with him, no matter what. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep” (John 10:14-15). “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

No matter what happens this week, this month, this year, this lifetime, God is present – weeping with us when we are in pain; rejoicing with us when we celebrate. The saints, many of whom had hard, hard lives, understood this gift of God’s sustaining presence in the midst of suffering. As you go to the voting booth on Tuesday, as you pray for peace in this world, as you work to repair relationships both personal and societal, remember this truth: Jesus wept because he was present. He was there, holding hands with Martha and Mary. He was there, feeling grief in his own bones. And he is here, walking with us into the future where God is already, always, and eternally present.