Very soon Holy Week will be here. Let us be frank. Jesus will go from the status of great healer and holy man to that of a common criminal who is humiliated and put to death.

What could he be thinking as he goes toward such a fate? What was Jesus’ attitude toward death and Good Friday? Was he unmoved by such a prospect?

This Sunday gives us a clue.

It seems that he gives a real life illustration. Even though our Gospel reading says, “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus,” yet oddly he had remained out of town during the days of his friend’s illness and death. He could have gone but delayed instead. When he finally makes the trip, Martha says, "if you had been here, my brother would not have died." Hard words. She sends for her sister Mary who says, “Where were you!”

As the psalm puts it, God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

When Jesus sees the tears of Mary and the friends who surrounded her, he “becomes disturbed and deeply troubled.” This is a picture of Jesus we do not ordinarily see. The famous words that follow are unlike any others in the Gospels:

“And Jesus wept.”

Jesus was not indifferent toward death or toward his loved ones, not at all. But his tears make Mary and Martha’s question still more poignant. “You love us and you loved him; why did you not come to us when he was still alive, when you could have saved him?” I think many of us are tempted to ask God that same question when a loved one dies.

Look back at the beginning of Sunday’s Gospel to find the answer. Jesus told the disciples, “this illness of my friend is not going to end in death.” What? It isn’t? Lazarus is dead!

And then we see Jesus’ re-arrangement of human values. “This is happening for the Glory of God,” he tells them.

He is saying that he knows this is hard for them to comprehend so he has to show them in the flesh that even sorrow and death are immersed in God’s always gentle love. They are like flowers sprouting out of an “earth” which is love. The glorious love of God undergirds everything else. Every other love gets its growth from God’s love. Even life gets its life from God’s love.

So Jesus calls out in a loud voice, calls to the love where Lazarus’ soul is resting even in the midst of death and decay. He calls to God’s pregnant love. From that womb the life of Lazarus was born and now is born again. Out of the tomb he walks.

And so Jesus is right. Lazarus’ illness does not lead to final death. We usually have it backwards. We always think of love as an emotion that springs from the fact that we are alive. But the opposite is true. Life is a condition that springs from the fact that we are rooted in God’s love. This love is the real earth and real ground. When life ends, we are drawn back into love’s rich loam.

Jesus cast his voice into this fertile ground when he said, “Lazarus, come out!” And love, stronger than life or death, gladly obeyed, letting earthly life be there again.

The cross is referred to in advance here. Jesus’ own death and resurrection are foretold. Very soon Jesus will have to trust in his own words, that his suffering “will not end in death,” death of his oneness with the Father. “It would be happening for the Glory of God.”

Trust love. Life has its roots there.