Jesus Wept (5th Lent A)
- Guillermo Arboleda
- Mar 22
- 8 min read
A sermon by the Rev. Guillermo A. Arboleda, written for and delivered at All Saints' Episcopal Church, Tybee Island, GA, on Sunday, March 22, 2026, the 5th Sunday in Lent (Year A).
Primary Bible Reading(s)
John 11:1-45 (NRSVue)
1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. 3 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus,[a] “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” 4 But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather, it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” 5 Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6 after having heard that Lazarus[b] was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
7 Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” 8 The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” 9 Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble because they see the light of this world. 10 But those who walk at night stumble because the light is not in them.” 11 After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” 12 The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.”[c] 13 Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. 14 Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. 15 For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” 16 Thomas, who was called the Twin,[d] said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus[e] had already been in the tomb four days. 18 Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” 23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life.[f] Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah,[g] the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
28 When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” 29 And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet come to the village but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31 The Jews who were with her in the house consoling her saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32 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.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34 He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus began to weep. 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39 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.” 40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42 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.” 43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 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.” 45 Many of the Jews, therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did believed in him.
Jesus Wept
By the Rev. Guillermo A. Arboleda, Program Manager for New Starts, ELCA
The last time I was with you, I shared a story from a book I was reading. It was about a non-churchgoing woman named Renate whose father died. Renate’s coworker, Mary Ann, became a sounding board for her grief. Mary Ann introduced Renate to her church’s “Swedish death cleaning team.”[1] This group of volunteers from Mary Ann’s church went around to help people clean out their dead relatives’ homes. They accompanied people in their time of grief by handling one of the biggest practical annoyances. And in the story, the Swedish death cleaning team was so dedicated to their ministry, that they went all the way from San Diego to Phoenix to help Renate (a friend of their friend Mary Ann who they didn’t know beforehand). They showed great love by being with Renate while she was depressed and sorrowful.
Well, I finished reading the book, and let me tell you, the story gets even better. As juicy as the narrative is, this book, Evangelism in an Age of Despair by Andrew Root, is not actually a novel. It’s an academic theology book with Mary Ann’s story woven through each chapter to illustrate the author’s points. So before you decide to read it, be prepared to learn about lots of dead French and German philosophers. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.
That said, let me continue a bit of the story. After Renate’s father’s funeral, she drops out of the story for a few chapters. Renate thanked everyone for their hard work and for burying her father, but then she didn’t join the church. It was never about that. We don’t perform our ministries to manipulate people. Mercy and love cannot have strings attached.
So the church’s story continues through many twists and turns. A few years later, Mary Ann gets diagnosed with late stage lung cancer. Mary Ann spent months seeking the best possible medical treatment, but nothing seemed to work. Her friends from Bible study (most of whom were on the Swedish death cleaning team) prayed with her and for her for healing. But the writing was on the wall. She thought she needed to keep “fighting” the cancer with every resource available to her. She thought she needed to “tough it out.” But she was so tired and weak. One day, Mary Ann dragged herself out of bed to come to the Bible study because she needed her friends to help her figure out which treatment to seek next. She poured out her frustration with the whole ordeal. Finally, after a long silence, her friend said, “I think we’d better face the facts, Mary Ann: you[‘re] gonna die. It makes me sad, but living and dying in God is what we do as human beings. And it seems it’s your time to die.” And suddenly, Mary Anne felt relief. No one but her church had been willing to tell her the hard truth. She was going to die. She accepted it. And now she could say goodbye.
Mary Ann resolved to die well. Her church family wrapped their arms around her. They threw her a pre-death “goodbye service,” a true celebration of life in which everyone could say what they loved about Mary Ann before she passed on, and she could hear it all. And everyone gave testimonies about the ways that Mary Ann had loved them through their worst days… including, very surprisingly, Renate. They had lost touch for years, but Renate came back to the church to honor and thank Mary Ann again for helping her mourn her father. Renate had spent most of her life running away from negativity and discomfort. But now, after receiving love in her time of need, she ran toward the pain. Renate sat with Mary Ann almost every day for the next couple of weeks. As Mary Ann got weaker, she asked Renate to read her passages from the Gospels. It was the first time that Renate had ever read the Bible and heard most of these stories about Jesus. This went on until the cancer overtook Mary Ann, and she died peacefully at home. Two Sundays later, Renate got baptized in Mary Ann’s church. It was Renate’s church now too.
Today’s Gospel story is also about grief and the power of consolation. Jesus didn’t need to go to Bethany. There was plenty of other work to do. He could have kept preaching, teaching, and healing through the countryside. He could have kept sharing the Good News of God’s salvation with more and more people to grow the future church. But instead of focusing on quantity, Jesus focused on quality. Returning to Bethany to be with Mary and Martha was a way of living the Good News. Obviously, this story is remembered because of the miracle of resurrection. Jesus called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead.
But the other miracle is that Jesus loved his friends enough to travel great distances to be with them when their hearts were broken. Jesus loved his friends enough to listen to them process their grief. He loved them enough to weep with them, to mourn with those who mourn, and to offer heavenly comfort. Jesus drew near to Martha and Mary in their grief, and Jesus brought new life. That’s exactly how Jesus acts now. We find Jesus in sorrow because Jesus always comes to us when we need him. And even when this mortal life ends, Jesus brings hope and peace. And for a little while, all of us have the opportunity to be Jesus’ hands and feet too. We get to practice the ministry of consolation, being the Body of Christ for one another. And when our time draws near, like Mary Ann, other members of the Body will show Christ to us. For our sake and for the rest of the human family, let us follow Jesus into the sorrow. Amen.
Notes
[1] Story adapted from Andrew Root, Evangelism in an Age of Despair: Hope Beyond the Failed Promise of Happiness (Ada, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2025), 101-131.
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