Jesus hesitated. When Jesus got a message that his friend Lazarus was sick, Jesus hesitated to go to him.

though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

Jesus hesitated for two days, and when he decided to go, the disciples were against it. Why? Why the hesitation and why the opposition?

Lazarus’ house in Bethany was only two miles from the city of Jerusalem, and going to the house of Lazarus and his sisters meant going to Jerusalem.

It was not that Jesus was afraid. He would not run away. He would not run away from his ministry. He had great courage. But courage does not mean having no hesitations or questions or doubts. I believe Jesus was the divine Son of God, but, as the Creeds are careful to say, he was human, truly human, not pretend human. He was born of a woman, ate meals, made friends, sometimes got angry. In all four Gospels he faced his coming arrest and death with very great human courage. He did not run away.

In Matthew, Mark and Luke’s Gospels, after the Last Supper he went to the Garden of Gethsemane, at the foot of the Mount of Olives—the Mount he came down on the first Palm Sunday to enter the city. Just over the mount, two miles down the road, was the house of Lazarus and Martha and Mary. In the Garden he prayed:

             “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me;”

If it be possible, let what was coming, the cup he was given to drink, pass from him. The old Prayer Book word in the Litany was agony, by thine agony—indeed Luke says he sweated blood—by thine agony and bloody sweat. It is human that there be decision and sometimes agony of decision and hesitation.

Then Jesus said, teaching us to say it, teaching us the prayer, and the courage not to run away, to be obedient to facing what comes in love:

              “yet not what I want but what you want.” (Matthew 26:39) 

When Jesus said he was going to Lazarus, the disciples didn’t like it, and it was Thomas who spoke up and

said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."

Well, when Jesus was arrested they would all run away except for John and the women.  When

            Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.

In the face of his friend’s death, and indeed in the face of his own almost sure arrest and death, Jesus did three things. He said to Lazarus’ sister Martha,

            “I am the resurrection and the life.”

These words open every funeral service in St. Chrysostom’s Church, every funeral service in the Episcopal Church.

            “I am the resurrection and the life.”

More often than not, I read them walking down the aisle ahead of a casket carried into the church. At Princess Diana’s funeral in Westminster Abbey the words were sung by the choir as the casket was brought in, with people watching around the world. In the simplest setting, with only several people present, the exact same words are said:

            “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Here is the center of what we have to tell the world. Here is the center of our Easter faith. Jesus died and was buried and on the third day rose, and we believe that when we die, when those we love die, we will be raised in him and with him.

             “I am the resurrection and the life.”

We have no contemporary pictures of Jesus in his earthly ministry. We have only the portraits in words—which have inspired great artists—and among the words, we have Jesus’ own self-sketches in John’s Gospel: “I am the good shepherd” “I am the gate for the sheep” —the way in, the door in to life. In the face of his friend’s death, not in the abstract but in a real situation in real human life, intending I believe to open the door for us, Jesus said to a grieving sister:

“I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

And then he asked Martha, and asks of us, his friends and disciples, who hear his question:

            “Do you believe this?"

I believe Jesus is not asking me, “do you understand it,” because I do not. I do not know everything, I certainly do not understand everything, or really much about what happens when we go through the door of death.

I see in Jesus—in the story of Jesus—his great compassion and love, and I trust that when I see the love Jesus had for people, and when I see him lay down his life for us all in love, I am seeing what God is like. We cannot see God. God sent Jesus so we might see in him, in a human life which could be seen and remembered and pictured and we can begin to understand, what God is like.

I trust in the love I see. I believe in it. I believe in him, in his love for us. I believe the love I see in Jesus will hold me when I go through the door into life which I believe, simply, strongly, clearly, is with him.

              “Do you believe this?”  “Yes, Lord, I believe ….”

Then when Mary came to Jesus, and

Jesus saw her weeping, and (those) who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus began to weep.

In the King James Version it is even balder, simpler, two words instead of four:  Jesus wept.

Jesus’ love was real. The love of God had come to be incarnate, to take on our carne, our flesh and blood, so that it was the love of God given to us out of a real human heart, the love of someone who loved his friends, and wept for a dead friend.

And he loves his friends still, here and now, with a love that knows what it is to weep before a grave, and even more bears the scars of what it is to suffer and die.

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone."

Martha was horrified at the very idea and for perfectly good reasons.

Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"

The writer of this Gospel goes to very great lengths to highlight that the hour when we see the glory of God, is the hour when Jesus laid down his life for us on the cross. That is the hour when we see the very nature of God. That is the hour when we see the victory over death and sin. That is the hour when we see in Jesus the very sovereign power of the universe.

How I love the story we read last Sunday of the blind beggar left by the roadside (John 9), just a boy I suspect, for I don’t think blind beggars left by the roadside, put out to beg, grew old in the ancient world, or the modern for that matter. Jesus touched the beggar’s eyes. He put some mud on his fingers so the boy would know even more clearly that someone was there and touching him with compassion. And it turns out that compassion and love, shown to a beggar on an ancient road, is the very sovereign power of the universe: The glory. We see the glory.

So on the threshold of the story of the cross of Jesus, which begins in just the next chapter, just down the road from the city, we have this, the seventh extraordinary action Jesus did, in John’s telling of it, the writer calls them signs.

They took away the stone. Not many days later another stone would be moved. And Jesus stood before the open door and

            he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!"

So may each one of us one day hear him speak our name and call us into life. How it happens I do not know. I believe it will.

Jesus, I trust that at my end—our end—you will stand at the door and call us into life in your love, with you.  Amen.