Jesus weeps new life

Jesus weeps for his friends in their grief. He weeps at the death of Lazarus. He weeps as he stands on the edge. To raise Lazarus will change everything. He will deliberately begin his journey into his end – our journey to the cross.hree years ago everything changed for us, for better and for worse. Since Covid hit the news and then our shores we lived fear and grief. In this time war has erupted in Ukraine which has further exacerbated the western world’s Covid induced cost of living crisis. This year we have endured flooding and cyclones and watched people’s lives being inundated. It almost feels like we have stood at the cross for a long time. Jesus continues to weep.

In this Sundays gospel reading (John 11:1-45) Jesus says that he is the resurrection and the life. Too often we drop “life” out of this and just read “resurrection” as refereeing to something happening later after we die. But this is all about now. Mary, Martha and Lazarus are invited to live life now in God’s image.

N.T. Wright in “The Day the Revolution Began” says that Jesus, the gospel writers and Paul, were all about the renewal of the earth and renewal of the people of God as image bearers.

Howard Wallace offers us these thoughts.

“Today’s gospel reading, the story of the raising of Lazarus (John 11:1-45), has obvious and clear parallels to the Ezekiel passage. …. Together, they challenge our thinking about the full significance of resurrection in Jesus Christ. Resurrection is not simply a matter of being raised from the dead, and in Lazarus’ case it is a unique case for presumably Lazarus would have died again at some later time. Resurrection is not simply concerned with the ‘after life’ but with the raising of broken spirits, of bodies as good as dead, of hearts that lack strength and courage, of communities that are fractured, of relationships that have waned or become fractious, of peoples who have lost hope etc. While Ezekiel’s vision may not have direct connection to resurrection in the way we might normally see it, it does remind us that the resurrection that is in Jesus Christ and the risen life in him reaches to this side of the grave too giving new life and hope where there has been only ‘dry bones’ in the past.”[1]

How do the readings this week live with new life and hope, knowing Jesus is the resurrection and the life?

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[1] http://hwallace.unitingchurch.org.au/WebOTcomments/LentA/Lent5A%20Ezek37.html