March 9, 2008
When Jesus Gets Mad, He’s Capable of Anything
a sermon on John 11.1-44
by David C. Mauldin Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama

In Matthew 23 Jesus dressed down the scribes and Pharisees. No emotion is ascribed to Jesus in that chapter, but you can tell he isn’t happy. I have known people to do that when they get mad; they go out and give someone a piece of their mind. The classic example of Jesus giving vent to righteous anger is his cleansing of the temple, when he drove out the moneychangers, turned over their tables, set animals free, and generally wreaked havoc. Yet I am convinced he was not exploding in rage but rather thoughtfully acting out his prophecy against the temple. He stopped the sacrifices for a little while to make a memorable point. In any event, I have known people to get so mad they wreaked havoc. But what I have never heard of, in anyone else beside Jesus, is this: a person get so frustrated at a situation, so upset by it, so angry, that he raises the dead. When Jesus gets mad, he’s capable of anything. This passage—the raising of Lazarus—is one of the most important in the entire Bible. Why? Because it reveals to us God’s reaction to human suffering and death. Here we see Jesus at his most human, weeping at the tomb of his friend. And we see him at his most divine, doing something only God can do, giving life to the dead. But Jesus is one person, not two; and he is not schizophrenic, so we cannot divide up his personality and attribute some reactions to his humanity and others to his divinity. When Jesus weeps, he is God weeping. When he gets angry, as he does in this passage, he is God getting angry. The eternal, incarnate Son of God experiences the death of someone he loves, and how does he react? He gets sad, and he gets mad. These are two classic expressions of grief, and we find here that God experiences them too. The difference between God’s grief and ours is, God can do something about it. I am not going to repeat the account you just heard me read, but I do want to zero in on a couple of key words. In verse 33, Mary, a sister of the deceased Lazarus, has fallen at Jesus’ feet and she is weeping. When Jesus sees her, and all the other mourners, he is “deeply moved in spirit and troubled.” That anyway is how our Revised Standard Version pew Bibles render the Greek into English. The first word that interests us is, in Greek, embrima’omai. The textbook definition is “to have an intense, strong feeling of concern, often with the implication of indignation.” That’s pretty dry and academic. Think of it this way. This word could be used to describe a mother who hears of a shooting at her child’s school. It could describe how we felt as a nation on September 11, 2001. That’s the kind of deep-seated anxiety and anger this word names. Scripture tells us that Jesus was deeply distressed in his spirit—all the way to the very core of his
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being—and that he was “deeply moved.” This second word is tarasso. The meaning here is “distressed.” It is a word used to describe a crowd when it gets stirred up and riots. Put these together, and what do they tell us about Jesus? He is disturbed. He is distressed. Deep in his soul a riot is erupting. Why? Because Lazarus is dead. In verse 35 Jesus weeps. We see sorrow along side his anger and frustration. He feels it and he gives vent to it. He cannot keep it inside. I have always found interesting the contrast between Jesus’ calm demeanor when he tells his disciples “Lazarus is dead” and his intense grief at Bethany. As John presents it, Jesus knows what he is going to do. It seems to me he tries to be calm about it, but he can’t. Faced with the reality of death, he cannot maintain composure. Verse 38 repeats that first word describing deep concern and indignation as Jesus goes to the tomb itself. I tried to bring out the proper emotion in reading it. I imagine Jesus practically barking the order: “Take away the stone!” So what are we to make of this? Is Jesus just upset because Lazarus was his friend? I don’t want to minimize that, but I think we find something more significant here. Jesus’ reaction to the death of Lazarus is God’s reaction to human suffering and death. We could add evil to the list: evil, suffering, and death. They are all around us. They are part of the reality of our lives. We experience them, we read or hear about them happening to others, and we feel a sense of injustice. Things ought not be this way. And that feeling is right. Things ought not be this way. This is not what God intended. God did not create us in order that we might suffer all through life, wander in darkness, and then die. We know this because the Bible tells us. Also because of all that God has done to save us and get rid of evil, suffering, and death—not least what he did on the cross. Everything scripture teaches is consistent with Jesus’ reaction to Lazarus’s death, both how he felt and what he did about it. I fear I cannot impress this point on you sufficiently just by stating it. So in order to help you grasp the importance of it, I want to get a bit creative and go round the back way. What I want to try is this: Let’s imagine Jesus arriving at Bethany during the funeral for Lazarus and having different reactions. What if he didn’t get sad and mad? What if he were unmoved? What if he felt good about it? I want to go through four possible reactions and consider what each one would mean and how we would have to face suffering and death if God were like that. The first reaction I invite you to imagine is despair. Jesus arrives at Bethany. Mary runs out and falls at his feet. She is sobbing uncontrollably. Jesus sees the other mourners. He hangs his head. He heaves a big sigh. Then he says, “Well, that’s the way it goes.”
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I call this the Charlie Brown reaction. Often in that comic some tragedy would befall Good Ol’ Charlie Brown, and in the last panel he would sigh and say those very words: “That’s the way it goes.” It is a very human reaction. I react this way to many of life’s minor irritations. Not the big stuff. Not suffering and death. Things like a car breaking down, the copy machine breaking down, something gets lost, all the little things in life that happen and there is nothing much you can do about them. Personally I think this is a good way to deal with the small stuff. Because minor irritations are going to happen. No need to get too worked up about it. Do what you can. Deal with them as they arise. And go on. I will never forget one afternoon, I was in high school, we were watching a film in biology class. Those were the days of reel-to-reel projectors. (I am at least that old.) Right in the middle of the film, the projector’s blub blew. We heard a loud pop, then everything went dark. Our teacher just sat there for several seconds, then finally she heaved a sigh and exclaimed, “Well, good.” She cut off the projector, turned on the lights, and tried to tell us what we would have learned from the film. I thought that was a great reaction. Great, that is, for something small like a burnt light bulb. Not a good reaction at all for suffering and death. And yet so often this is the way people react to suffering and death because they feel helpless and powerless. This is stoicism, an attitude of dejection. It is how people respond when they are defeated and know there is nothing they can do. It essentially confesses, “Well, there’s nothing you can do to stop suffering and death, so you just have to endure as best you can. Just deal with it. That’s how things are.” We might excuse a person for feeling this way because after all life has a way of dealing blow after blow to some people. You and I would crack up too in their place. But what if God felt that way? What if the eternal Son of God became incarnate—took flesh and blood and came to live among us—and his response to suffering and death was stoic dejection? It would mean, for starters, that evil, suffering, and death are part of life in this universe and must be accepted. They are not alien to our existence, as the Bible says, but intrinsic. We cannot hope to be rid of them, for if God is not able to do anything about them, we simply have no hope. If this were true, the best we could ever do to deal with them would be grin and bear it. Just take your lumps as best you can. Let’s imagine another scenario. The second reaction is satisfaction. Jesus arrives at Bethany. Mary runs out and falls at his feet. She is sobbing uncontrollably. Jesus sees the other mourners. He smiles a sympathetic smile, picks Mary up, and says, “Mary, try to pull yourself together. Look on the bright side of things. Lazarus was a sinner after all, a son of Adam. We know that death is the inevitable end of all sinners. Your brother’s death is one more example of the holiness of God. God is just. God is righteousness. We ought to praise him.”
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Shocking, isn’t it? Hard to imagine. The reaction of satisfaction is so callous you rarely find it—at least you rarely find it expressed. If someone did say something like this to a person in grief, they would deserve a good smack. But remember that Jesus is not only human but also divine. He is the ultimate revelation of God. God is not different from what we see in Jesus. What if this were God’s reaction to human suffering? “Good!” he might exclaim, “Ol’ Lazarus deserved what he got. Break my commandments, will he? Those humans never learn. Oh, well, another sinner down, several billion more to go.” If this were so, we would live in a universe with justice but no grace. God would not be a God of love. He would not be full of mercy and compassion. And what would we have to hope for? Nothing at all. If God doesn’t care enough to save us, we are lost, because we are sinners. We all rebel against God, live selfishly, and hurt other people. Eternal life is not like a carnival ride with a sign out front saying, “You must be this tall (or at least this good) to enter.” Or if it is, the bar is set so high no one except Jesus has ever reached it. No human being deserves the riches of God’s grace. That’s why it’s called grace. Without it, we would have no hope at all. Consider a third possible reaction, sorrow only. Jesus arrives at Bethany. Mary runs out and falls at his feet. She is sobbing uncontrollably. Jesus sees the other mourners. He too breaks down and cries. He cries and cries and refuses to be consoled. He stops eating. He stops functioning. He just cries all the time. Is this far fetched? Yes, a little, because Lazarus was a friend, not a spouse or a child. But imaginable? I have known a couple of people who fell apart like this. Again remembering that Jesus is God, what would it mean if God’s only reaction to human suffering were sorrow? We would have a God of love, but not power. We could find comfort that God always shares our pain, but beyond that, what could we hope for? Sympathy is nice. We welcome it from human beings because we know that in most of our sorrow and suffering there is not anything they can do. You lose someone you love to death. Your friends express their love and concern, they bring food, they spend time with you, they do little things to remind you that they care, they pray for you. But you know they are powerless to bring your loved one back or to set right what you feel in your bones is wrong with the human condition. So you are grateful to them because they do what they can. You look to God, however, for more than sympathy. If God really cares, he will do something. He has the power, right? So sympathy is not quite enough; you need solutions, you need salvation from God. If Jesus’ only reaction were sorrow, we might fret whether God has the resolve and power necessary to save us. Finally, a fourth reaction might be no reaction at all. Jesus arrives at Bethany. Mary runs out and falls at his feet. She is sobbing uncontrollably. Jesus sees the other mourners. Then he simply goes on. He says, “Hey, I’ve got some teaching to do. I’m about important things. I see you are grieving, but there are more important things. I
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need to be about them.” What would it mean if Jesus (who is God) were unmoved in the face of human suffering and death? In this case we would have a God of power, but not love. Jesus could do something about it if he really wanted to. Mary’s opening line is almost an accusation as things really happened: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Is she testing Jesus? Is she worried about the depth of his concern? Where was he? Why didn’t he do something, if he cared? Well, Jesus does care, and she is about to find that out. But in our imaginary scenario, her worst fear would be confirmed: Jesus simply would not care enough to do something. God simply would not love us enough to save us. Once again, we would nothing to hope for. This may be the most depressing of the imaginary scenarios, but every one of them leaves us in exactly the same pitiful condition and without hope. Now … with these alternatives in the background, let’s revisit what actually did happen and ask ourselves the same two questions? What does this mean? And, how then do we handle suffering and death? Evil, suffering, and death are alien to God’s original design for us. The Bible teaches they are the result of our rebellion against God. We sought to be autonomous, to stand alongside God (or even above him), and to be our own god. When the crown of God’s creation fell this way—we who bear God’s image and have dominion over all creation—the whole project was thrown out of whack. Naturally God is not happy about this. But, although he reacts with sorrow and anger, he is gracious. Rather than destroy the whole thing and start over, rather than condemn and destroy us, he desires to make things right. That’s why Jesus came. That is what his death and resurrection are all about. This, according to the promises of scripture, is where God will bring us out in the end. So Jesus confronts suffering and death, not as an abstract philosophical problem, but concretely in the death of his friend. Jesus knows this is not God’s ultimate will. Jesus knows God loves Lazarus and wants something better for him. And deep inside him, his soul rebels against the way things are in this broken world. His heart breaks and his blood boils, and Jesus decides he will not stand for it. He knows he has come to set things right. He knows his own death is God’s purpose for him. And because of this, because the time is near, he decides it is time to make a statement. It is time to show what he is about. It is time to put the powers that be on notice. He’s mad, and he’s not going to take it anymore. Anger easily turns into sin. Usually when folks give way to their anger, things get broken rather than fixed. Yet anger is a proper response to evil and injustice. We ought not grin and bear it. Especially if there is something we can do about it—for example, children in poverty—we ought to get roused up enough to take action, positive action. Jesus did. He got so mad he raised Lazarus from the dead.
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This is God’s reaction. He grieves at the brokenness of creation. He loves us. He is full of grace and mercy. And he has the power and the desire to make things right. This is why Jesus went to the cross. There he suffered the worst evil ever perpetrated by our rebellious race. We scorned and crucified the eternal Son of God who had come to us because God loves us. He took upon himself all our evil and its consequences. He squared the books. He balanced the scales of justice. He paid the tab. Justice was done, because every evil deed ever committed is punished, its punishment brought down either on the perpetrator or upon the crucified Jesus. Mercy was done, because once he paid our debt, we became free. God’s grace and love triumphed over human evil. But of course, God being God, he could not stand for the innocent Jesus to suffer, end of story. God would not let death have the last word. That too would be wrong. God refused to stand for it. So the Father raised the Son through the power of the Spirit. The promise of life Jesus gave when he raised Lazarus became reality as he himself rose from the dead. That’s the kind of universe we live in, and that’s the kind of God we have. Given this truth, how ought we face evil, suffering, and death? First, we ought to fight against them, knowing that when we do so, we fight on God’s side. If for example, we thought that sickness were God’s way of punishing sinners, then doctors and nurses would be going against the will of God. If God wants people to suffer, we ought not relieve their suffering. But we know this is not so. God does not delight in our misery. Whenever we relieve suffering, we are doing God’s will. We are carrying on the ministry of Jesus. We ought to go out looking for ways to relieve suffering—in all its forms. We will never have to look hard to find it. Second, we can endure our own suffering and loss with hope. Maybe there is nothing we can do. We lose a loved one to death, and we are helpless. But that doesn’t mean we have to become despairing stoics. We can put our trust in the love and power of God. We can trust his promises. And, as we think about facing our own evil, we can accept his offer of grace. Bow before him and ask forgiveness. Since Jesus has suffered the punishment you deserve, there is no reason to reject this grace and suffer it yourself. Third, and this is big as we approach Holy Week and Easter, rejoice and praise God. Be happy that God is who he is. Praise him for his compassion. Celebrate the salvation he gives. After all, if you, like Jesus, get sad and mad about all the evil, suffering, and death you see, then you ought to be happy and grateful when you see what God does about it. Amen. rev_mauldin@yahoo.com