Reflections After a Death

My brother died, and one thing I have always relied on for comfort is the Bible. In Psalms it says the LORD is close to the brokenhearted, and saves those who are crushed in spirit. How? I wondered. How do you feel Him when he is not physically present? And how does He save us when our spirits are crushed by grief?

There are so many questions in the midst of a tragedy. I wonder why God lets it happen. Does He love me? Does it mean someone has done something wrong? Are we being punished? Are things out of His control? Does He care about me? How could something so terrible possibly be good? Is He good?

These are all questions that I know, cognitively, the correct answers to. So I think my deep underlying question is more transcendent. Death shows me that I am not in control of almost anything, and my looking for answers is really looking for affirmation that life is not ultimately about me, about humanity; my looking for answers is really looking for hope in something greater. 

We know that we all die in the end, and if life centers around humanity and we all end up cold, silent, empty, separated from each other, then we can feel only despair. When we experience a death, we experience that cold, silent, lifeless separation. We miss the person; we grieve their absence and the end of their potential. So I turn to God and I start asking Him my questions, and I feel sadness and anger. Death is the Great Enemy, and it comes for all of us. The only hope we have in the end is to be rescued from this Great Enemy. And all my hope and the answers to my underlying questions, I found in Jesus, in a story about Him in John 11. In John 11, there is the story of some of Jesus’s friends: a family who lost somebody.

John 11 starts out: ”Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.... So the sisters sent to Him, saying, 'Lord, he whom you love is ill.’” They recognized that Jesus is God’s Son, so they thought to ask Him for help. “But when Jesus heard it He said, 'This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.'

"Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when He heard that Lazarus was ill, He stayed two days longer in the place where He was."

The first time I really thought about this verse, I felt almost sick to my stomach, because it is terrifying. The part that stuck out to me is where it says “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So… He stayed two days longer.” This is scary because it contradicts everything we think in our American Christianity, that if Jesus loves us and we belong to Him, nothing bad will happen to us. Intellectually we know this isn't true, but it's so easy to believe that good things are evidence of His love and favor and bad things are evidence of abandonment. But that explanation is simplistic and not true. It is not that Jesus doesn't care about Martha and Mary and Lazarus. It is because He loves them that He doesn't come right away. He is in control; He could have come and stopped death, but He didn't. God could have prevented Joe's death, but He loves me, and He loves Joe, and He loves my parents and Brian and our other relatives, and so... He didn't. This shows me that there must be a greater good beyond the tragedy.

I think sometimes we think that maybe Jesus loves us, but He doesn't quite have as much power as we'd thought over bad things. But we know that Jesus's decision to wait to go to Lazarus was intentional. After Jesus stayed for two days, "he said to the disciples, 'Let us go to Judea again.' The disciples said to Him, 'Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?' Jesus answered, 'Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.'" (vv. 7-11)

These verses are metaphorical. Throughout the first half of John, Jesus refers to the fact that His hour has not yet come... that is, it is still His appointed "day time" to work and accomplish His purpose. And then later on in John, Jesus talks about how His hour is at hand; that is, it is time for Him to accomplish His ultimate purpose, which was dying. Jesus has no fear of the religious leaders in Judea because He knows that His Father is in control of every single little detail and every bit of timing. I find this comforting as well, knowing that God is sovereign over every single little detail of our lives. Regardless of our own purposes, God knew, from birth, how long Joe's life would be. He knew every choice Joe would make; He knew what Joe's strengths and weaknesses would be; and He knew exactly the best time to bring him home.

And yet, even knowing that God has a good purpose, is in control, and loves us, we still need a hope for beyond death. If death is our Great Enemy, and it comes for everyone, then how could we have hope? When Jesus gets to Bethany, you can hear the same doubt and a slight accusation of abandonment when He meets the sisters. Verse 17 begins, "Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.... [W]hen Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met Him, but Mary remained seated in the house. Martha said to Jesus, 'Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.'" This was my feeling at first, the first few days. It’s a question that is also a slight accusation: How could You let this happen? I was the feeling the same way Martha was: I know You are all powerful, so where were You? 

Martha needs a resolution, and even in her doubt she expresses hope, saying, "'But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.’ 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. Whoever believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.'" This is what we need. We need hope for the future; we need to know that more awaits us than silent, cold, abandonment. It hurts to lose someone you love; it hurts to think that one day your life, your potential, will come to an end. So I have taken great comfort in knowing that Jesus has overcome death, our Great Enemy; that our physical deaths are not the end, that instead of our lives ending in cold, still, silence, we are transitioning to a celebration, eternally fulfilled and in the presence of the One who died for us.

God has used this passage over the last two weeks to answer my questions gently. I know that He loves me, that bad things happen in spite of and even because of His love for me; I know that He has everything planned perfectly in His sovereignty; I know that death is not truly the end for anyone, because He is the resurrection and the life, and anyone who hopes in Him, "though he die, yet shall he live." And later in the story, Jesus goes on to show He has power over death by raising Lazarus from the dead. 

And there is one more question that hurts, and that is simply the matter of dealing with how much it hurts and feeling abandoned. Has God left me alone in my pain? This is the most painful part of the "Why?" question. It is easy to know cognitively that God loves me (cause He's God, so that's what He does), and yet still feel as if He is far-off, distant, and is so aware of His own good purposes, that He forgets how much we can hurt while we are still living on this broken earth. So that is the last comfort I find from John 11.

Verse 28 begins, “[Martha] went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, 'The Teacher is here and is calling for you.' And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to Him.... Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell at His feet, saying to Him, 'Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.' When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in His spirit and greatly troubled." Jesus feels compassion for the people; His knowledge that He is going to raise Lazarus from the dead shortly thereafter does not make Him distant and unsympathetic. He cares when we are hurting; Jesus knows that God's original design for the world was good, that things are not supposed to be this way, that sin has wreaked havoc on our physical beings, on our inner selves, on our relationships with others, and on our relationship with Him. The Greek words for "deeply moved" and "deeply troubled" denote that Jesus was indignant and angry, agitated and disquieted in His spirit. He knows this is how things are not supposed to be, and when we are so hurt, He feels the same restlessness in His soul that we feel in great grief. 

Verses 34 and 35 say, “And He said, 'Where have you laid him?' They said to Him, 'Lord, come and see.' Jesus wept." These verses reminded me that I am not alone. The most comforting thing in this time has been the people who are with us, who call and text and visit and show us by their presence and food and flowers, that we are not alone. And when I go home at night and everyone is asleep and I have to face my sadness and loss alone, this verse reminds me that I am not truly alone. Jesus weeps with me. What I need more than answers is Himself and His presence. He sees sin and knows how it hurts us and how life was not meant to be this way, and He uses a tragedy like this and all my questions and doubts to give me what I ultimately want and need, which is Him.

After Joe died, I felt empty and alone the first few days; I honestly wondered where Jesus was. I kept reminding myself that Jesus wept. One night, He brought to mind verse 5: "Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when He heard that Lazarus was ill, He stayed two days longer in the place where He was." And then I cried, because I realized that even if it seemed like He was staying away right then, He was actually near me, and knew what was going on, and had a purpose for my family's pain. Jesus stayed away from Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, because He knew that a death would allow them to know Him better. Although Joe had his struggles, he never abandoned his faith, and so I believe that Joe’s death has ultimately allowed him to know Jesus better than any of us who are still on earth. I loved Joe very much, and since Joe died, Jesus has been with me, and I have seen more of His character, and it is good. My life, Joe's life, anyone's life, is ultimately about Him, and He is our hope.

The Man, Jesus

I was thinking the other day about how I rarely think about Jesus as a human. Since my childhood faith, Jesus has been a historical figure of mythical proportions, someone who has always been and lives as The Savior in some strange spiritual realm. But do I ever think about Him as a man?

Mentally I affirm my Christian beliefs, that Jesus of Nazareth, an actual person, was both completely God and completely human. Every once in a while I realize how crazy this sounds, and so I sit there trying to figure out whether I am the intellectual equivalent of a sane person who truly believes in the tooth fairy. However, most of the time I do believe this.

But I also don't think about Him as an actual breathing person. Even now, writing His name, I am thinking of His spirit and His personhood in the Trinity, but to picture Him as someone who, on the surface, was so ordinary that Isaiah said there would be nothing to attract us to Him, I can't think of Him as a man.

I look around me and I see men. Some are tall, some are short; they are fat and thin, fair and dark, muscular and flabby, down-to-earth and erudite. I believe that Jesus existed from eternity, and yet at some point in the history of the earth, while continuing to be God, He voluntarily put aside some of His divine characteristics to take on the dust-based flesh of creatures that He formed and breathed life into a long, long time ago.

He was a real infant. He was born in a tiny body, without the ability to keep His head from flopping over, without the ability to see clearly more than a couple feet beyond His face, without the ability to consciously use His fingers to grasp something He wanted. Utter helplessness. His parents had to flee their country just to keep Him from being killed by Herod (Matthew 2:13).

Jesus is His name in Greek, and that His name in Aramaic would have been Yeshua (where we get our modern Joshua), a much more common name. It would be like if the Messiah were American and born in the States with a name like Mike or Chris. A completely ordinary name, with nothing special, at least on the surface, to clue someone in to the idea that this Mike or Chris is actually God Himself.

Because I am a Christian, I believe that Jesus never sinned. But does that mean Mary and Joseph never reprimanded Him? Sometimes kids have to be reprimanded simply because they are children and are ignorant and foolish. So did Jesus have to be disciplined because, at four years old, maybe He asked a rude question at a solemn social function? I just wonder. He was actually a kid.

And if He was a human, that meant He probably thought about sex. He wouldn't have sinned in thinking about it, again, because the Bible says that He "knew no sin" (2 Corinthians 5:21) But He had hormones (I'm thinking of you, testosterone), and pheromones, and He would have been adolescent at one point, and actual blood flowing in actual veins. I am not trying to be vulgar or write things just for shock value. I am trying to begin to grasp the idea that my Savior is a real human.

He had a brain. He thought and felt via firing neurons. I do believe that God feels emotions, yet is perfectly in control of them and they are right and justified every time. So when God the Son was in a human body, did He ever struggle with feelings? Maybe at some point His blood sugar was low, and His perfect soul was battling with the chemicals and neurons in His earthly brain, staving off unrighteous sadness or irritation. And the fact that Jesus was perfect and occasionally sad or irritated means that those emotions are not, in themselves, wrong.

Hebrews says that Jesus "in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin." (4:15) In every respect? Do I actual believe that Jesus can relate to the temptation to disobey God, or feel pride, or lust, or gossip about someone, or to wallow in anger; and what's more, do I not only believe that He can relate to those feelings but also never once sinned by giving in to those desires?

I was thinking about these facets of Jesus being human, and I pictured myself in front of the actual historical Jesus of Nazareth: someone who wasn't attractive, wasn't the fair, solemn, white man portrayed in old church portraits. He was probably not tall, bearded, dark rather than fair, plain, and essentially poor and homeless during His earthly ministry (at one point, He tells a potential follower that He has "nowhere to lay His head"). He was so clearly human that his disciples were terrified and surprised when He calmed the wind and waves, and John the Baptist tells the crowd that someone among them is the Messiah, and there is no indication that the crowd around Jesus has any idea who John is talking about.

I was reflecting on His humanity, and picturing myself prostrate before a Jewish man, and felt a sense of wrongness, of idolatry. And to fall down and worship any other person would be idolatry. Yet to cast myself at the feet of Jesus son of Joseph, of Nazareth, is to cast myself at the flesh-and-blood feet of God Almighty.

So anyway, that's all for today. It's still weird to me. If anyone else has any thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them.