Thursday, July 21

John 11:28, 32

And after she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary… When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

It is not unusual, in my pastoral experience, to hear grieving people express their pain through questions. A family huddles in an I.C.U. waiting room and whispers, “Why has this happened to us?” A parent stands before the casket of a child and groans, “Why our child?”

When my youngest brother, John, died in a traffic accident over 20 years ago – I spent a great deal of time and energy trying to find answers to the “Why?” question – only to find none.

When Jesus arrives in Bethany, both Mary and Martha make the same statement.

“Lord, if you had been here, our brother would not have died.”
I believe this statement is really a series of questions.

“Why didn’t you come right away when we sent word that Lazarus was sick?”

“Why didn’t you do something to intervene in our situation?”

“Why didn’t you choose to heal our brother?”

“Why did our brother have to die? Why now?”

If you have ever experienced the loss of a loved one – my guess is that you can relate to Mary and Martha. For while grief is produced by love – it also brings with it a whole series of questions that, humanly speaking, have no answer.

Notice several things about Jesus’ response to the sisters. He does not scold them for, in a sense, blaming him for not doing anything to help Lazarus. He does not scold them for their thinly veiled questions about his goodness and timing. He simply goes about doing something else.

What he does is reveal who he is by raising Lazarus from the dead.

Grief is the normal human response to death and loss. Grief tends to prompt us to ask questions – we instinctively want to find reasons and answers for our pain. This story tells us that Jesus understands our pain and our questions. This story tells us we can come to him with all of our pain, doubt – and even our anger. The story tells us that Jesus may not give us reasons or answers for our pain, but he does give us the promise that he will redeem our pain though his life.

I sometimes tell people that I have a lot of questions I would like to ask God when I get to heaven – some of them about my own brother’s untimely (at least to me) death at the age of 20. But somehow I think when I finally meet Jesus face to face, those questions will either be answered completely – or simply cease to be important any longer! Thank God for the hope and promise of Jesus!

Pastor Brian Coffey