John 11:32-37

When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.

Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied.

Jesus wept.

Then 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?”

Jesus felt sympathy for Mary and Martha and the crowd but he did not weep for them. He felt pain when He saw his friend was dead but that is not why He wept either. After all Jesus rose Lazarus from the dead a few minutes after weeping; in the mind of Christ Lazarus was just sleeping.

Jesus wept for the hopelessness that he saw in Mary’s face. Jesus wept for the cynicism the crowd felt for the Creator of the Universe. Jesus wept that humanity does not understand the glory of God and only sees pain.

Lazarus died so we could know that Jesus is the resurrection and the life. How would we know that Jesus can raise the dead to life unless their was a dead man to raise? The death of Lazarus gives the rest of us hope in the resurrection.