Jesus Wept
28 When she had said this, she went away and called Mary, her sister, secretly, saying, “The Teacher is here and is calling you.” 29 When she heard this, she arose quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was in the place where Martha met him. 31 Then the Jews who were with her in the house and were consoling her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up quickly and went out, followed her, saying, “She is going to the tomb to weep there.” 32 Therefore when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you would have been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.” 33 When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews weeping who came with her, he groaned in the spirit and was troubled, 34 and said, “Where have you laid him?” They told him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus wept. 36 The Jews therefore said, “See how much affection he had for him!” 37 Some of them said, “Couldn’t this man, who opened the eyes of him who was blind, have also kept this man from dying?”
Mary says the same thing her sister said, and he does not answer her at all.
When she had said this, she went away and called Mary, her sister, secretly, saying, “The Teacher is here and is calling you.”
Martha goes back and delivers the message secretly, which suggests she wanted her sister to have the meeting without the crowd of mourners. The crowd follows anyway.
Therefore when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you would have been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.”
The words are Martha's exactly, and the posture is different — Martha stood on the road and argued theology; Mary is on the ground and says one sentence.
And she gets no answer. He replied to Martha with the greatest of the declarations; to Mary he says nothing at all. What she gets instead is the next verse.
When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews weeping who came with her, he groaned in the spirit and was troubled,
The first verb is unexpectedly strong. It is used elsewhere of a snort of anger, and what it describes is not sympathy but something closer to fury — a rising indignation. The second means agitated, stirred up.
What he is angry at is not stated. It is not the sisters, and it cannot be the situation's difficulty. The most natural reading is that he is looking at death itself and at what it does to people he loves, and that the response of the Lord of life to a graveyard is rage.
and said, “Where have you laid him?” They told him, “Lord, come and see.”
He asks a question he did not need to ask, which is how this Gospel keeps showing him drawing people in.
Jesus wept John 11:35.
Two words, and the shortest verse in the Bible. The verb is not the loud ceremonial mourning the crowd is doing — a different word is used of them in verse thirty-three. This is quiet: tears running down a face.
What makes it remarkable is that he knows what he is about to do. Four minutes from now the man will walk out. He weeps anyway, which means the grief is not ignorance of the outcome. He is not crying because it is hopeless; he is crying because it is terrible, and knowing the ending does not make a funeral less of a funeral.
Everything the New Testament says about a high priest touched with the feeling of our weaknesses Hebrews 4:15 is standing in these two words. And anyone who has been told that faith should have dried their eyes has this verse to hold.
The Jews therefore said, “See how much affection he had for him!”
The crowd reads the tears correctly, which is more than they usually manage.
Some of them said, “Couldn’t this man, who opened the eyes of him who was blind, have also kept this man from dying?”
And others read them as evidence of failure. The question is the sisters' reproach in a colder voice — and it concedes the healing in chapter nine while using it as an accusation.
It is also the question everybody asks. If he could, why didn't he. The chapter does not answer it in the abstract; it answers by opening a grave.
settled What this mark means