In its shortest verse the Bible tells us “Jesus wept” when he stood beside the grave of his friend Lazarus. This was our Lord’s first reaction to death.
Tears.
But he didn’t stop there. I’m indebted to the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer for calling my attention to Jesus’ other emotional response to death.
“Blinding anger.”
Instead of accepting death placidly as modern followers of Jesus seem prone to do, the Scriptures tell us he was “deeply moved.” The original wording of John’s Gospel is stronger than that. Jesus was furious. Death made him mad.
In memorable lines, the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay echoes this sentiment.
Down, down, down into
the darkness of the grave,
Gently they go, the beautiful,
the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent,
the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve.
And I am not resigned.
I’m not either. When I stood beside the grave of honey-haired 5-year-old Ellen Sullivan after she lost a year-long, valiant battle against a malignant brain tumor, everything in my soul cried out against her dying. And it helped me that day to know that Jesus reacted to Lazarus’ death just as I was to Ellen’s.
I can’t think of another way to adequately describe what was going on inside me while I preached Porter White’s funeral. I was just plain mad. To think that death would snatch away a man so congenial, so unselfish, so full of goodness. Before any of us were ready to let him go.
I felt that way when we lost Lavina Nall and Ed Fike and Ray Vahue and Doyle Brazille and on the list could go off the bottom of this page. Like the apostle Paul, I see Death as “the last enemy,” an invader of my world that outrages me.
The only adequate answer to such anger is Easter with its glorious news of the Resurrection. With its certain knowledge that the One we worship is stronger than death.