“Jesus wept”: the raising of Lazarus in John 11

The shortest verse in the English Bible has two words: “Jesus wept.” It comes in one of the most dramatic chapters in the Gospels, just before Jesus calls a dead man out of his tomb.

The message and the delay

Lazarus lived in Bethany, near Jerusalem, with his sisters Martha and Mary. They were close friends of Jesus. When Lazarus fell sick, the sisters sent word: “Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.” John records something surprising. Jesus loved Martha, Mary and Lazarus, yet when he heard the news, he stayed where he was two more days. He told his disciples that the sickness was “for the glory of God”. By the time he arrived, Lazarus had been in the tomb four days.

Martha and Mary

Martha went out to meet him. “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” Jesus replied, “Thy brother shall rise again.” Martha thought he meant the resurrection at the last day. Then Jesus said: “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” Martha answered with a confession of faith: “I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God.”

Mary came next and fell at his feet with the same words: “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” She was weeping, and the people with her were weeping.

Jesus wept

Jesus “groaned in the spirit, and was troubled”. He asked where they had laid Lazarus. Then he wept. Some of the onlookers said, “Behold how he loved him!” He knew what he was about to do, yet he still wept. His grief was real. The tomb was a cave with a stone across it. Jesus told them to take away the stone. Martha objected that the body would already smell. Jesus prayed aloud to his Father, then cried with a loud voice: “Lazarus, come forth.”

Lazarus came out, bound hand and foot with graveclothes, his face wrapped in a cloth. “Loose him, and let him go,” Jesus said.

Tears first

Many who saw it believed. But John also records that the event led religious leaders to plot Jesus’s death, setting the stage for the cross. John 11:25 is one of the most common readings at Christian funerals in Ghana and across Africa. It speaks directly to families in grief, promising that death is not the end.

Jesus could have gone straight to the tomb and spoken the word. He stopped to weep with his friends first. The order matters: comfort in grief comes before the answer, and the one who raises the dead also cries at the graveside.