The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Lent 5A
Jesus began to weep. So they said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
One of the shortest sentences of Scripture is “Jesus wept” – though we get a wordier translation of that sentence today. Jesus wept. He shows his human tenderness so powerfully in this Gospel story as we make our final climb to Holy Week.
Some people saw the tenderness of Jesus in his weeping. He loved Lazarus, loved Martha, loved Mary; he knew the miracle that soon would happen, but grief and pain draw his deep love to the surface in his tears.
But notice the other response some people had. They did not see tenderness, and they did not have compassion for the tears of Jesus. They responded with a razor-sharp question: “Were you powerless to keep him alive? Why did you fail?” Were they mocking him? Were they pointing out this supposed Messiah’s mistakes and flaws? Even if you take it as them asking an honest question, we are all familiar with people who ask “honest questions” but conceal a sharp edge underneath that honesty.
The musical, “Jesus Christ Superstar” puts a similar sentiment in the figure of King Herod:
So if You are the Christ
You’re the great Jesus Christ
Prove to me that You’re no fool
Walk across my swimming pool
If You do that for me
Then I’ll let You go free
C’mon, King of the Jews
I only ask things I’d ask any superstar
What is it that You have got
That puts You where You are?
I am waiting, yes, I’m a captive fan
I’m dying to be shown
That You are not just any man
So if You are the Christ
Yes, the great Jesus Christ
Feed my household with this bread
You can do it on Your head
Or has something gone wrong?
Why do You take so long?
Come on, King of the Jews!
In his song from the musical, Herod gives a mockingly playful tone to this expectation that Jesus’ miracles are a command performance, a sign that can be conjured up at an instant, and that anything less is a sign of his failure. If he is more than human, then we can expect more from him than we expect of humans. If he’s divine, if he’s the Messiah, then why isn’t everything fixed? Even as we claim as Christians that Jesus is both human and divine, an accusing finger goes straight to his divinity with an expectation for superhuman results.
But, truth be told, we still expect of “more than human” results from mere humans, too. We learn that “Great Men” (and great women) were the movers and the shakers of history, that it was these great persons with their readable biographies that shaped history. It was up to these towering figures to change the course of history – everyone else was a background character on a stage dominated by a select few with nearly superhuman ability and drive. It didn’t matter that all of these “Great People” were taught, supported, encouraged, challenged by others: by parents, family, friends, teachers, donors, colleagues, students, and, so frequently, unmentioned spouses. No, all of the labor from those people is disregarded or absorbed into the Great Person’s work.[1]
And so our eyes are peeled for the next Great Person – either on the large scale or the small scale. We see it in our politics: if we just support this Great Politician, then we will have the world we want to see with no effort from us, no hard work on building community and building the world we want to see ourselves. And when they fail, we start looking for the next Great Person to fill their shoes (or, as we sometimes see, unwavering support that refuses to see their failures).
In the Church, we sometimes get overawed by the category of “Saint” – that the mark of being a successful Christian is fame and eventually getting listed in the Lesser Feasts and Fasts … or, on the flip side, that our role as a Christian is to be passive and let the better, more important people take charge. Let the Great Ones figure this out, I’m not good enough.
But that’s not how being human works.
We humans are social beings. We benefit one another, and we benefit *from* one another. We make things happen together. There is a power in our solidarity with one another – when we see ourselves as part of the whole body of Christ, part of the whole community. The church community – and the rest of humanity – are not little islands of greatness floating in an undifferentiated swamp of human failure and mediocrity. Not how it works.
Yet, we seem to think that sometimes. And then we get mad at what we think is a little island of greatness for being more like us than we’d like.
These people who ask their razor-sharp question of Jesus see Jesus’ tears as a sign that he is, in fact, not as great as everyone seems to think. If he were great, then Lazarus would not have died. John’s Gospel even tells us that Jesus *waits* to go. Jesus sets himself up for failure – the point is not saving Lazarus from dying, it’s saving Lazarus from the power of death itself.
And even though Jesus seems to have it all planned, he still weeps. He’s overcome with love and human tenderness as he stands there; Lazarus is dead, Mary and Martha weep for their brother, and Martha proclaims an abiding faith. It is a powerful moment, a most holy moment, and an incredibly human moment. For this humanity, they mock Jesus.
But before we get too judgmental about their behavior, we need to turn our gaze on ourselves. How do we mock the humanity of others – and stop seeing their humanity at all? How might we be expecting people to play the role of Greatness, and refuse to be part of the work together? Do we expect the Great Persons to fix the problems that we see, and will we turn on them the second they are less than superhuman?
Next week we enter into Holy Week. We take our part in the story as members of the crowd that mock Jesus, shout for his blood to be upon us, shout for the authorities to crucify him. We take the role of the people we might be condemning this week for their mockery. This liturgical, dramatic switch keeps us connected to their humanity, too. Humans are capable of great love – that is what God made us to do, that is what it means to be made in the image of God. From this great love, Jesus weeps, and from this great love Jesus walks his way of the cross. And humans are also capable of turning away from that love, too – and our response as Christians should be to turn to them in human love, to call them back to the way of Christ’s love. And out of the abundance of Christ’s love in our hearts, let us all take our part in the work of Christ in the world – we need not be Great to do it – all we need to do is to be human. Amen.
[1] Indebted to Julian DeShazier’s article, “The Great Man Theory Is Poison for the Church”, The Christian Century, Aug 2024. https://www.christiancentury.org/voices/great-man-theory-poison-church