An Ugly Cry (John 11)

“Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD. Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.” (Psalm 130:1-2)

For centuries faithful men and women have found their voice in the words of Psalm 130. Ancient Israelites, Christian apostles, Catholic monks, Protestant reformers, and believers like us made this prayer—a prayer born of the pain and loss that shape the human condition—their own.

Psalm 130—often called De Profundis after its opening line in Latin—has also earned an esteemed place in the canon of literature and music. Writers like Oscar Wilde, C.S. Lewis, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning drew inspiration from this text, as did great composers like Bach, Mozart, and Mendelssohn.

And it’s easy to understand why.

While so many passages of scripture seem foreign to us and alien to our world, this one is at home on our lips and in our hearts.

As hard as we might try to convince others—convince ourselves, convince God—that we’ve got our stuff together and are utterly self-reliant and independent, we know something about being down, even if we don’t want to admit it.

“Out of the depths,”—not from the mountain top of my triumph, not with my best foot forward, not in my carefully curated social media presence—“Out of the depths” of my loneliness, brokenness, and pain “I cry to you, O Lord.”

The revered theologian Walter Brueggemann helps us understand Psalm 130’s radical perspective.

Brueggemann writes,

From where should the ruler of reality be addressed? One might think it should be from a posture of obedience, or at least from a situation of prosperity and success, indicating conformity to the blessed order of creation. One ought to address the king suitably dressed, properly positioned, with a disciplined, well-modulated voice. But this psalm is the miserable cry of a nobody from nowhere. The cry penetrates the veil of heaven! It is heard and received. (The Psalms and the Life of Faith, p. 104)

We’ve come together today to unite in prayer and thanksgiving because God still sees and hears the cries of nobodies from nowhere like us.

Today, we remember and give thanks that when we cry from the depths God comes into the depths so that we might be lifted up and set free.

A story about Jesus and his friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus reveals Good News to us.

Reading the 11th chapter of John, we find Jesus receiving some disturbing news.

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” (John 11:1-3)

Our experiences in hospital waiting rooms and taking and making distressed phone calls help us sense the gravity of the situation.

A loved one was dying.

When Jesus and his disciples finally made it to Bethany, Lazarus’ funeral had already happened and attention had turned to consoling his grieving sisters.

But the sisters wanted more than Jesus’ sympathy.

Sister Martha met Jesus first. The two talked there for a while about what had happened and about what Jesus might have been able to do if only he had come more quickly.

“Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” (John 11:21)

The two talked about resurrection, about their shared hope that death was not the end of Lazarus’ story, and it became clear in that moment that Martha believed Jesus had the ability to do something amazing for his friend—even if she wasn’t absolutely clear about what that amazing something might be.

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “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. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” (John 11:23-27)

Then Martha went to get her sister.

When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt [the King James Version says “she fell”] at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. (John 11:32-35)

Jesus asked to be taken to the grave, and there he began to weep. Actually, one of the Greek verbs used here says that Jesus “snorted” which indicates that there’s more than a tear on his cheek.

This is a full blown ugly cry, and that matters.

Throughout Lent, we’ve focused on the ways in which Jesus sees and hears us, and we’ve found in this quality a blessing.

It’s the promise that nothing–not our questions, not our weariness, and certainly no label that someone else has placed upon–can separate us from God’s love.

Of all the stories we’ve read this season, however, it’s what took place in Bethany that reveals the significance of this promise most clearly.

Jesus doesn’t see and hear us from a safe distance, but comes to be with us, wherever we are, even in the depths of grief, even at the grave of a loved one.

This is the power and the mystery of the Incarnation, the conviction that…

though [Jesus] existed in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be grasped,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

assuming human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a human,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death—

even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:6-8)

This early Christian hymn helps us understand what happened next.

Emptied of all but love, Jesus stood before Lazarus’ tomb.

He asked that it be opened.

He prayed, and then, “he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.”

And “the dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” (John 11:44)

The Requiem for Lazarus became a Jubilee.

So many elements of Lazarus’ story are painfully common. An unexpected death, grieving family and friends, questions about “what if” and “what could have been”—we know this story.

We’ve lived this story.

But this morning we remember the incredible turn Lazarus’ story took.

We remember that the one who said “I am the resurrection, and the life,” ugly cried at his friend’s grave.

We remember that “he who was dead came forth.”

And we remember that this wasn’t the last time a stone was moved away and a death shroud set aside.

And in those memories, we find Good News.

We’ve come together today to unite in prayer and thanksgiving because God still sees and hears the cries of nobodies from nowhere like us.

Today, we remember and give thanks that when we cry from the depths God comes into the depths so that we might be lifted up and set free.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Image: Weeping Angel