If Only You Had Been Here

When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt 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. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews 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?” 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, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 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.”

            You may know that All Saints’ Day originated as a day to remember those “saints” who have died and attained Heaven. Followed the very next day with “All Souls’ Day,” which is set aside to remember those who have died but not yet reached Heaven. Eventually, Protestants consolidated the two into a day that simply remembers all of those who have died and we wish to remember in the solemnity of this day.

            And on this day, every third year, the lectionary presents us with this passage: the raising of Lazarus. Lots of folks are touched by this passage because it’s the one passage in the Gospels where Jesus weeps. Lot’s of folks like it because it is, by far, one of the most spectacular miracle stories rendered in the Four Gospels’ narratives of Jesus’ life and ministry. Many preachers use it for funerals because it provides a space to insert a bit of hope for resurrection at a time when the finality of death has been made palpable by a body lying cold in the front of the room. It’s a passage bespeaking the Christian tradition’s long celebration of Jesus’ victory over death.

But this story has never really done much for me. It’s just a bit over the top for my taste, which you can expect from the Gospel of John. Mark would have never told a story like this. This story doesn’t appear in the Gospel of Mark, but if Mark had told it would have been something like this: “Jesus came to the tomb and Mary and Martha and the others were weeping and Jesus said to them, ‘Oh, don’t worry now. Everything’ll be fine.’ And they would say to him, “But Jesus, he’s dead!” And Jesus would peek inside the tomb and say, “Lazarus…Lazarus…time to get up. Come on out, now.” And Lazarus would emerge from the tomb to the sound of celebrating women and Jesus would turn to them all and say, “Now don’t tell anyone what just happened here, ok?” And they would all leave from the tomb and say nothing to anyone. That’s how Mark tells a story.

But not John. With John, there’s a dramatic delay of Jesus in coming to Bethany, enough so that Lazarus is good and dead. Everyone is weeping and upon seeing the tomb Jesus, himself, breaks down. He tells them to “take away the stone” and get ready to see the glory of God, and in a dramatic display of piety, Jesus prays a prayer that was, by his own admission, “for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe.” And he didn’t just say, “Lazarus come out,” he “cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus come out!’” And just then, like a mummy all wrapped with strips of cloth around his face and hands and feet, Lazarus lumbers forth from the tomb.

It’s all very typically Johannine – theatrical and displaying Jesus in all his glory.

But if none of those things really do it for you, either, then what do you do with a passage like this one when it comes up in the lectionary on a day like the Feast of All Saints? Is the message for us, as Jesus said in his prayer, so that we, too, might believe – a sign of Jesus’ defeat over death in the raising of Lazarus from the tomb?

But why Lazarus and not others? He had raised a few others in the Gospels, but only children whose lives were cut short too soon: the widow’s son in Luke 7 and Jairus’ daughter in Matthew 9. But Lazarus wasn’t a spring chicken. Presumably he just died of old age or some illness like anyone else. Why Lazarus?

            Maybe if we can cut through all of the theatrics of John for a moment, we can see something very human taking place:

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

“When Jesus saw her weeping…he was greatly disturbed…and deeply moved.”

He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” And he wept.

Presumably, Mary and Martha and Lazarus were Jesus’ closest friends. He was coming back to as much of a home as he had ever known to be with his closest friends for a few days’ reprieve from the road and Lazarus had died and his sisters were beside themselves with grief.

Why Lazarus and not others? Did Jesus just want to have his friend back – to get the old gang back together again even if it meant covering the motive over with a thin veneer of prayerful piety “so that others might believe?”

I don’t know. The story’s never done much for me anyway.

But preachers like it – especially for funerals. It provides a little wiggle room for hope when all seems lost to the finality of death. They usually say something about the resurrection in the last days, Christ’s victory over death in the sweet by-and-by, and that sort of thing.

But it occurs to me that this is not quite what’s happening in this story. In fact, Jesus tries to preach that very message to Martha, doing what so many preachers in times like this: drawing on the religious language and imagery of his day to try to bring a little comfort amid despair. In the few verses just prior to the ones we read today, Jesus said to Martha in all of her grief over her brother’s death, “Your brother will rise again, Martha.” And Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day…but if you had been here!”

Jesus assures her that he will rise again but she makes it clear that she is not looking for a resurrection at the end of the age – in the sweet by-and-by. As John Caputo puts it, “She seeks the possibility of the impossible here and now, in the world, not in another one.”[1]

What she obviously wants, and what she gets, is to have Lazarus back now, in time, back here in Bethany, back in his mortal body, in the flesh where of course Lazarus will have to die again. Martha asks Jesus for a reprieve, for more time, for more life, for a life that both she and Jesus know very well will not be without death. They all knew that this victory over death is strictly temporary, strictly temporal, just for a while, that it means that Lazarus was going to have to go through this all over again. But that was good enough for them…Martha was asking Jesus for a ‘leave’ of death, an ‘instant of grace,’ for a temporary remission of the irremissible mortality of Lazarus.[2]

So on a day like All Saints Day when we remember all of those who have gone before us – some still weeping at their absence – is what we need now another message of resurrection at the end of the age? Of a reunion in the sweet by-and-by?

Or is it possible to cut through the flowery veneer of this text and all of the pious prayers of belief and glory to get at something more like what Martha sought: “the possibility of the impossible here and now, in the world, not in another one.”[3]

Caupto returns to this story to ask: What if “we are the ones for whom the past, the dead, were waiting?” Even as we weep for those gone before us, Caupto says, “The…ethics, of the tear, the poetics of the impossible, does not call for wiping away every tear but for seeing that ‘to tear is to be lost, no death without resurrection.”[4]

“If only you had been here.”

“When Jesus saw her weeping…he was greatly disturbed…and deeply moved.”

He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” And he wept.

They were waiting on you – those from every age who wept over the proliferation of violence against the innocent the world over.

They were waiting on you – those from every age who wept as they worked for justice where it was absent.

They were waiting on you – those from every age who prayed and wept for miracles like truly good news for the poor, or release for the captives, or freedom for the oppressed.

“If only you had been here,” the voices from all the saints and souls of ages past call out – you, “the ones for whom the past, the dead, were waiting.”

Perhaps, on a day like today – the Feast Day of All Saints – this passage contains a call summoning us toward the “possibility of the impossible here and now, in the world, not in another one.”[5] Prayers and tears and waiting and weeping and working for the possibility of the impossible here and now. They were waiting on you.


[1] John Caupto, The Insistence of God: A Theology of Perhaps (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013), 231.



[2] Caupto, 232.



[3] Caupto, 231.



[4] Caupto, 252.



[5] Caupto, 231.





  • The Rev. Cody J. Sanders