Unholy Sh+t: If Jesus knew that he could raise his boyfriend from the dead, then why is he crying?

Many years ago, one of my dear friends was murdered. I will never forget the moment I found out. As I scrolled through social media, a headline appeared on the screen. Surely, it’s not him, my heart screamed. It was. Sitting there in shock and pain, I couldn’t find any words; tears just rolled down my cheeks as I wanted to yell at God. There was so much life left ahead of us, so many more memories to be made. He was an editor and one of the first people ever to encourage me to consider writing a book. The men who killed him stole everything in his home, including the first draft of a manuscript I had been working on and that Sean was editing. Many a night, I lie awake wondering how much better the words you read from me would be if he were still here. He was taken from us all for nothing more than pure greed.

His family asked if I would give his eulogy. Sean and I had spent many hours philosophizing over beer and cigars. We talked about life, love, and death (but mostly about girls). The night before his funeral, I went out to the place where we first met. The building was no longer there, but the corner of the sidewalk where we stood, smoking a cigar; I left him a beer and a smoke. I had given countless eulogies, but how was I supposed to say goodbye to him? I couldn’t just recycle the same thing I used to say when I worked as a chaplain at the funeral home; no, he deserved something better than regurgitated verses and anecdotes.

The whole funeral was a blur, and suddenly, it became time for me to speak; I felt a lump forming in my throat. Every eye was on me: his mom and dad and all those girls we used to talk about, and his former boss was standing in the back. I am pretty sure the mayor was there. As I approached the pulpit, I took a deep breath and began.

“The shortest verse in the Bible is ‘Jesus wept.’ I’ve always thought that was unfair because he immediately raised his friend from the dead. Please forgive me if I, unable to do the same, also weep.”

Unholy Sh+t: An Irreverent Bible Study

Fifth Sunday of Lent

Today’s reading: John 11:1-45

I’ve always found Lazarus to be a strange character. He’s pivotal to the story of Jesus in many ways. He is not listed amongst the ranks of the apostles, but the affection is clearly there. He is seemingly the only person in the entire narrative who stands out as an actual friend, not an acolyte of any kind. When the sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha, send word to Jesus that their brother is sick, their note simply says, “…the one you love is sick.” Everyone knew that Jesus and Lazarus were close, like Jonathan and David kind of close. Without much imagination, historians might even refer to Jesus and Lazarus as *clears throat* roommates.

This is one of those situations where Jesus’ privilege is showing. Being the Son of God has its perks, and here we see Jesus riding that nepotism train full steam ahead. Unbothered, Jesus hangs around a few more days doing whatever deities do when roaming the earth. People start to notice how seemingly unconcerned Jesus is. Even his response to finding out that his friend is sick is just so, grossly foreshadow-y, “This story won’t end in death.” Nice for you, Jesus, but the rest of us have to actually suffer through the pain of losing people. It just always seems to get under my skin. It’s almost like Jesus is saying, “Don’t worry, y’all! This is going to be a great moment for me to show everyone how dope my necromancy skills are, er, I mean to give glory to God (which is also me; it’s going to give glory to me).” Must be nice.

So Jesus hangs around turning water into wine or whatever it is that Jesus does when he’s just dilly-dallying while his friend is on his deathbed.

When Jesus finally decides to bother himself with his sick friend, he arrives to find out that Lazarus has already died. And you know what, good for him. Honestly, haven’t we all been in a situation where we didn’t feel well or got badly hurt, and the people we loved didn’t take us seriously? Wouldn’t it be nice to die for just a couple of days so we could then come rushing out of the grave yelling, “See, I told you I didn’t feel well, and YOU didn’t believe me!”

When Jesus arrives on the scene of his definitely-not-boyfriend wake, needless to say, not everyone is pumped about Jesus showing up.

First, you’ve got to understand that healers aren’t unusual during the time of Jesus. In a world without penicillin or hand washing, magic was your only hope for survival if you so much as stubbed your toe. However, Jesus has proved himself to be impressive compared to your run-of-the-mill wizards prancing around Judea. The point I’m getting at is healing the sick was kind of a normal routine for messiah candidates. As Jesus approaches the grave, quite a few people scolded Jesus for not showing up sooner because he could have just healed Lazarus, and he wouldn’t have died, but now Lazarus is not mostly dead; he’s all the way dead. As we all know, there’s not much you can do with all the way dead exempt for go through his pocket and look for loose change.

Martha is upset and yells at Jesus, “If you had come sooner, he wouldn’t be dead!”

“You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles,” Jesus responded.

Now, this is where the big line comes in about Jesus getting all teary-eyed over Lazarus dying. Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I had always been taught to believe that Jesus was so overcome with grief that he started crying uncontrollably, as anyone would at a funeral. However, that always seemed a bit weird to be because why is he crying if he knows damn well that he can raise his *Dr. Evil air quote motion* “best friend” from the dead?

Jesus is being arrogant in this story. From the onset, he’s utterly unconcerned with the idea of Lazarus dying. He doesn’t get worked up over the note the sisters send him; he even leans over and tells the disciples that he knows Lazarus is already dead, and he keeps telling everyone how cool it will be when he does this new trick. So why the f+ck is he crying? I’m on Martha’s side; you could have just gone and hugged your friend at the hospital, told him everything was going to be okay, shared his GoFundMe for all the medical bills, and I don’t know, just not been an absolute sh+t bag about the whole thing. When I imagine the scene, I think of Martha just running up to Jesus, beating his chest with her hands before she breaks down into tears, asking him why the man who always dropped everyone for him wasn’t good enough for Jesus to just take a f+cking day off of work. F+cking influencers. What right does he have to be crying?

It says in the Gospel of John that “when Jesus saw Martha and the others weeping, he was deeply moved and troubled.”

I have no theological basis for making the claim I’m about to make. I’ve never read any works on the subject to imply that my theory is sound at all, but I have a hunch I might know what’s going on here. Jesus is a pretty overly confident dude. There is absolutely zero imposters syndrome present in the King of Kings. He just strolls through life knowing that it’s all going to work out, well, minus when he has to come to terms with his own mortality, but we will get to that later. Then again, he is God, so that means he’s been able to hang out with the dead. He has a direct line to Daddy God, and he knows that when people die, they just pop up over to his other house, and he will see them later. To Jesus, death isn’t scary; it’s like walking from one room to another. The rest of us don’t have that kind of access to the ones we love when they are gone.

Jesus is having to face this reality. He just thought it would be cool to raise someone from the dead so he could show off how powerful he is (his words, not mine; go read the verse yourself). Instead, now he’s looking into the face of his besties little sister, and he sees her heartbreak. She’s never going to see her brother again. Suddenly, this prank Jesus pulled isn’t funny; Steve-O actually got hurt this time. Sometimes, the car crashes and Ryan Dunn is gone. It’s not always enough to be able to fix a problem; the pain is real and palpable. Jesus might be an asshole sometimes, but he also genuinely does care about the people in his life. He’s just a little off sometimes.

I think what we are seeing happen in this verse is Jesus learning what it’s like to be human. He’s seeing the pain in his friends and having to understand how permanent death has been for the rest of us. I think he got hit right in the feels with empathy. I don’t think he is just crying over his friend but coming to terms with how horrible an idea death was. Maybe putting those trees in the garden wasn’t such a brilliant idea, after all, pal. There have been consequences for the rest of us. Our mortality has meant billions of goodbyes for eons. We have been stuck on an endless loop of suffering, childhood cancer, and senseless wars over whose Sky Daddy is bigger. This has been all Their fault, and we have been all collectively nothing more than casualties of war.

Jesus wept, but I don’t think it was for Lazarus.

He was crying for Martha, for Mary, for you, me, and everyone else who has been stung by death: he wept for all of us not blessed with the Black Gift. Jesus had to look into the eyes of his earthly friends and family to realize what a deep pain we feel when death isn’t someone walking from one ethereal plane to the next but that they are really, really gone, rotting away in a tomb and we will have to think about that every day for the rest of our lives, entirely uncertain if we will ever see them again.

I think the lesson from this story is that Jesus wasn’t here just to teach us but also to learn. The hard lesson he got that day is that death hurts and that the promise of an eternal life really isn’t enough.

Or, in other words, “I want my father back, you son of a b+tch!”