Can these bones live?
John 11:17-37
Rev. Emily Labrecque, Westmoreland UCC
March 22, 2026

We find ourselves with yet another long story, full of conversation between Mary, Martha, Jesus, and the disciples.

Jesus has already heard that Lazarus is dying – and stayed put for two more days. By the time he arrives, Lazarus has been dead four days. (In the Jewish tradition the soul stays with the body for three days, so it’s meaningful that he has been dead for four because in their minds, there’s nothing left of him: he is truly dead.) It is then, when Jesus approaches Bethany, that he meets up with Martha, who can’t even wait for him to arrive at their home before chastising him for not having been there. She had sent word DAYS ago. She knew the signs and wonders Jesus had performed. She knew what he was capable of. Surely if he had been there, Lazarus would not have died. She’s absolutely convinced.

Jesus tries to convince her that Lazarus will rise from the dead because he can make that happen. Not fully convinced, Martha fetches her sister Mary who comes running. And says the exact same thing: Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. She was weeping, her friends who had traveled to sit shiva were weeping, and then, what happens next in the story reveals to us, most poignantly, the divinity AND humanity of Jesus in one fell swoop. Before Jesus ever resuscitates Lazarus, he weeps.

Some scholars read the original Greek not as weeping but as rage. That what actually happened, the text says, is Jesus became angry. But at what? Angry at his friend’s death? Angry at death in general? Angry at the people for not understanding he could make this right? Angry for being chastised by his nearest and dearest friends?

Martha, Mary, and Jesus express here the thing we often feel in the face of loss, anguish, and death as well. Grief and anger, together. These are the feelings we often experience and that I often hear as a pastor, whether it’s the result of losing someone too young or too soon or to self-harm. Or in the face of a situation that seems it could have been prevented. Or more globally speaking, what we feel when we are confronted by a nation and its leaders gone awry, school shootings, or any other kind of senseless death.

If only you, God, had been there ... if only you, God, had been there ... this would not have happened.

This is a very human response to our experience of not having any control over a situation. If we couldn’t stop this death, violence, disaster, then couldn’t God have done something? Doesn’t God have control over life and death? Over who lives and dies? Over the natural disasters and the decisions people make?

And here we have Jesus, God incarnate, fully human and fully divine saying, yes, God is powerful and yet, life still takes its course. We are humans given free will who have the ability to help and to hurt, to get sick and to get well.

So, the question then becomes: where is God in the midst of our grief and anger? If God is not some grand puppet master in the sky, how is God showing up for us? And that question is not a failure of faith. It is, in itself, faithful.

And so here, in our story today, we get a glimpse into the answer. God grieves and rages with us. God shows us through Jesus and his friends that the divine comes alongside us, walks with us, and accompanies us through our most terrible of tragedies.

Some of us grieve and rage openly, some of us shove it under the bed as if in a shoebox that we never unearth, some of us mute our feelings so as to not make others uncomfortable. But here, too, we are provided an example by Jesus to feel our feelings. He was weeping or raging so much so that people noticed. “See how he loved him,” they said. Jesus was deeply moved by this experience. He let it crack him open.

This is such a universally human moment, the Sufi poet Hafiz, writing centuries later from a completely different tradition, understood this. He writes:

Do not surrender to your grief so quickly.
Let it cut more deeply.
Let it ferment and season you.
As few human or even divine ingredients can.
Something is missing in my heart
that has made my eyes so soft.
and my voice so tender,
and my need for God so absolutely clear.

Sometimes, I think we are afraid that if we really let ourselves feel the rage and grief we have inside of us that we fear we will never come back from it. That we will never find our way back to some sort of emotional equilibrium. But what Hafiz and Jesus remind us is that when we allow ourselves to feel the fullness of our rage and grief, we come to greater clarity. We see that we cannot do this life on our own. God shows up for us and walks alongside us in all kinds of ways. Some of you feel the warmth of the presence of God in your prayer time. Others feel it when you come to church. And I know that you too have friends who have shown up for you in the depths of despair, in the midst of tragedy, and they too are God with skin on.

Beloveds, we live in a world of humans, a world full of mistakes and illness and despair and death. We cannot escape that reality. But neither can we escape the love of God. So the next time you feel rage or grief or loneliness, remember that the God we believe in is a God who walks alongside you. Who weeps and rages with you. That God is always running toward you, just as Martha and Mary ran toward Jesus. You are loved. You are never alone. And that is good news.

Amen.