Dead Man Walking

I worked in a paper mill for a summer after my first year of college. It was some of the most grueling and demanding work that I have ever done and I was one of the only females employed. I worked on a giant machine bigger than my house, and being the lowest (wo)man on the totem pole, I did all the grunt work. A normal day usually involved the sheet of paper breaking and me having to climb into the scorching hot machine to weave the paper back through and into the winder where the paper rolls on to large cores. One hot night in August, as I was working the graveyard shift, I turned the corner to walk by the machine next to mine. As I did, I saw the 5th Hand (the guy that had the same job as me, just on a difference machine) had been pulled into the winder. His entire arm was wedged between thousands of pounds of paper and steel and he was losing consciousness. I began to panic; the only thing I could think to do was scream, but the sound of the howling machines easily drowned out my frightened yell. I watched lifelessness elegantly waltz its way through the length of his body, as the chaos of people around him accompanied effortlessly.

Death is indefinitely on the guest list. It is the guest that never RSVP's but you know at any moment could show up. When it took away the brother of Mary and Martha, it left them devastated. And worse yet, Jesus hadn't shown up in time to stop it from making its brutal appearance. As I was reading this story in John 11 this past week, I couldn't help but go back to the question, "why did Jesus weep?"

It seemed to me odd that he would be so deeply moved to tears simply because he loved Lazarus. Don't get me wrong, death is something that does cause people to weep and mourn, but the fact that Jesus tells the disciples of Lazarus' death and resurrection before they had even gotten word that it had happened brought me back to the same question. What did Jesus weep when he, 1. already knew that Lazarus was dead, and 2. knew that he was going to bring him back to life?

The image in my mind of this moment is so vivid. I see Mary falling at Jesus feet in dispair, I hear the wails of other Jewish women thickening the air. Jesus, in all his humaness, bearing the heartache with his beloved friends.

However, maybe the loss and love of Lazarus wasn't only what moved Jesus to weep.

Maybe Jesus was moved to tears because of the reality of how affected his sheep are by death. Maybe the power and authority of death was so tangible in the lives of Mary and Martha that Jesus wept for the hopelessness in their hearts. Up until now, no man had been able to conquer and control death. Jesus looked into the heart of the woman crying at his feet and was troubled in all his humaness by the dispair that this death had brought. It was an enemy that had ruled for too long.

Jesus calls Lazarus to "come forth" in a beautiful display of the power of our Almighty God. This was only a foreshadowing of the ultimate display that was to come through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Hebrews 2:14-15 says, "¹⁴ Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— ¹⁵ and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death." 


I love the lyrics by John Mark McMillan that say, "The Man Jesus Christ laid death in his grave." I sit here simply amazed at the authority and power of the one we serve. I think back to the night in the paper mill where the fear of death became a reality to me. Jesus came to conquer death and give us hope in a eternal life with him. The word eternal implies the complete and utter absence of death. This concept is one of the most life-changing things that my mind can begin to comprehend; that the Man Jesus Christ laid death in his grave.

And where death dies, all things live.