Living in the shadow of the dominion of death

Yesterday,  I watched a video of a nurse from Novi, MI describing the chaos and death in the emergency room near Detroit. The statistics are that somewhere between 1-4% of people that contract covid-19 will die, but 1/5 will require hospitalization.  I have read harrowing accounts of some of the other 80% who have recovered at home, but with severe and deeply anxiety producing symptoms.

 I confess that I am scared.

This week the Gospel text is the familiar one about Jesus resurrecting Lazarus. It is not a favorite and it doesn't provide much comfort.  I don't know what it is that I don't like about the text.  I think in part I feel bad for Lazarus.  The poor man is going to have to die twice.  The whole scene also just strikes me as kind of monstrous: the crowd covering their noses when the tomb has been opened; Lazarus stumbling out of the tomb tripping over his grave clothes.

It is an incredibly messy resurrection.

And what lesson precisely are we to take from this passage?

Jesus wept? --every 8th grade boys favorite Bible verse.  When my brother was a teenager he had a job at a Christian Camp and part of the application process was memorizing three verses.  Of course, this is one of the verses that he memorized. So easy to memorize;  so easy to offer a facile interpretation--Jesus mourns with us. 

And attempts at complexity haven't helped me appreciate the story any more deeply.

When I was in Seminary,  I learned that what is translated "deeply moved in spirit" could be more literally translated as outraged.   I was taught that Jesus is not weeping in solidarity with Mary and Martha, he is he angry that no one believes in his power. I confess that it seems unfair for Jesus to be angry at Mary and Martha and the crowd. Mary and Martha seem to believe that Jesus would have been able to heal Lazarus. 

Jesus is clearly angry, but maybe not at his friends or at the crowd.  Perhaps, instead, he is angry at death itself.   I remember how powerful I found John Donne's poem Death be not Proud the first time that I encountered it.  Its tone mocks death "Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men..." And the poem also ends with the enraged declaration that death, you will die! 

Yet, I can't get there this morning. 

 I am still deeply troubled, terrified, frightened. 

 This is Jesus most dramatic miracle, but there is nothing permanent about the resurrection of Lazarus.  

 Lazarus will and does die a second time. 

Donne is able to write himself into a state where is no longer afraid of death.  I can't. Death is reigning in Novi, and in New York, and Iran, and Italy.   I am still terrified of its dominion of losing people that I love and of being sick or uncertain of my own health. 

 The miracle at the tomb of Lazarus is a dramatic sign that the kingdom of Jesus is in the thrall of life and not death.  Jesus is the resurrection and the life!  I know this, but I am still sad and scared.

And maybe that is one lesson we can take from this text. 

This is okay.

Jesus in his divine power faces death with rage and the calm resolve that death will die.  Jesus in his human frame faces death overwhelmed and weeping.

We can rest within the weeping of Jesus.  

As Christians we confess that 

Jesus was no less truly God while weeping over Lazarus than he was while raising Lazarus from the dead.

May we find grace with Mary and Martha and Lazarus  to live between the first and second resurrections, between the promise and the fulfillment: both hopeful and frightened.