In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

On this Sunday of the Holy Cross, beloved in the Lord, so many avenues to the cross, aspects of the cross, would be considered. This morning, however, if I were to entitle this sermon, I would call it “The Cross and the Christian Family.” You see, Christ died for the world. He died for each of us personally. But I am persuaded that he also died for families. It is often the case that our experience of the cross comes to pass in our relationships within the family. This is the most obvious, I suppose, with respect to death. A good number of you over the last 12, 18 months have lost parents. So your suffering has to do—your cross has to do with the family. Others have lost siblings. So far we’ve been spared, in this parish, the loss of a spouse, although we’ve had quite a number of cases of the loss of children.

Besides death, there are all other kinds of ways in which the family is the setting in which we experience the cross. Some of you have splits within your family right now; in at least one case, open persecution because of the faith. The faith becomes a trial, and Jesus predicted it. Jesus predicted it, or he prophesied it. That children would rise against parents, precisely over the matter of faith. That husbands and wives would split precisely over the matter of the faith. Jesus prophesied it. He was talking about family relationships. It is simply a fact that the context of the family is often the locus in our experience of the cross. So today I want to talk about the cross and the family under three points.

First this morning I want to consider a specific family, the family at Bethany. We have this gospel every year, but it’s always on a Saturday morning, and it’s difficult to give it the full attention it needs and deserves, but we could talk about it today. Let’s talk about the cross in the context of the family at Bethany: Lazarus, Martha, and Mary.

Now we know of Martha and Mary because they’re included in another story in the tenth chapter of Luke. Otherwise, everything about Martha and Mary is found in the gospel of John. And in the gospel of John, the family at Bethany is not introduced until the setting of the Lord’s Passion. We often say, by way of explaining Orthodox practice, that we begin our reading of John on the evening of Pascha. Now, that’s true in the sense that we begin the first chapter, but actually, if we look closely, we really begin our reading of John a week earlier, and we begin it with the story of the raising of Lazarus. This is how the family at Bethany is introduced in the gospel of John. Listen closely.

Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus.

I regret that the name Lazarus is not more widely used in the Christian Church. I know of very few—I’ve baptized very few children named Lazarus. I think that’s most unfortunate. Lazarus—I checked this down in the statistics, in the Holy Land at the time of Jesus, Lazarus was the third most popular name for men. It’s a variation, of course, on the name Eliezer.

Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, at Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, “Behold, he whom you love is sick.”

Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. That’s how this story is introduced. Jesus’ love for this family. I submit that this is the key to the whole story. Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Now this is how the second half of John’s gospel begins.

I was talking to someone on the phone yesterday, and we were talking about the gospel of John, and I just mentioned in passing that more than half of the gospel of John takes place in the last week of Jesus’ life. This person was quite astounded by this, but it’s true. She looked it up right away and emailed me: “You’re right.” Yeah, really. [Laughter]

Now, as this story begins, Jesus is in Galilee. He was in Galilee because he knew there was a price on his head, literally a price on his head. His enemies put a bounty out, a bounty of 30 silver pieces, for whoever would pick it up. There was a price on his head, which is why he was reluctant to go to Judea. That’s why he was in Galilee. It was not safe for him to be in Judea. He was sure to be killed if he went there. But now comes this word that this family in Judea, in Bethany, needs him. Should he go there, knowing his life was in danger?

This is the drama we find in the latter half of the gospel of John. Jesus delays for a few days, and Lazarus dies. Now imagine the devastation felt by the family that their dear friend had not hastened to the bedside of their brother. When Jesus does finally come, he arrives four days after the funeral. And each of the sisters says to him, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” It’s a crisis of friendship, isn’t it? “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” What’s unspoken is: “But you were not here, and he’s dead.”

Second, let’s talk about the trip. When Jesus knows that Lazarus, “he whom you love,” has died, he determines to make the trip to Judea. The disciples who were gathered about him all the time, those who go with him, are well aware of the danger of this trip. They know that Jesus is putting his life—and their lives—in mortal peril. The most sober and rational and clear-thinking of the apostles, a man named Thomas—Thomas, the New Testament twin, the counterpart of the Old Testament Jacob—sums up the situation. “Let us go also, that we may die with him.” A very sober assessment: “Let us go also, that we may die with him.” Does Thomas intend to convey some irony there? It appears so to me.

Now why does Jesus go? We’re already told, aren’t we? Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. This is the reason he goes. “Greater love has no man than this, than he lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus goes down there—or actually, since it’s Jerusalem, it’s up there. Jesus goes there to lay down his life for his friends. This is not something abstract or general. He’s going there to lay down his life on behalf of that family. You see, Jesus lived by this principle, and now he was to die for this principle. He went down there to give his life for his friends. He gave his life to restore this family. And Martha and Mary and Lazarus, each of them, for the rest of their lives, could say, “I live by faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.”

Jesus arrives at the tomb. There we have a most mysterious and enigmatic presentation. The shortest verse in the Bible. “And Jesus wept.” Why did Jesus weep? Surely not for the sorrow that Lazarus was dead. That’s not why he’s weeping, not because Lazarus is dead. Jesus knew very well and was quite confident that Lazarus was about to rise. That’s not why he’s crying. But observe the irony with which John describes the scene. Jesus wept, and those standing around remarked, “Behold how loved him.” Now the gospel of John is full of mysterious and enigmatic statements, where a high priest says more than he knows, prophesying the death of Jesus. “Behold how he loved him.” You see, these people were saying infinitely more than they knew. “How he loved him.” Jesus wept at the tomb not for Lazarus, but for how he loved him. Jesus was fully aware that this trip to Bethany was to cost him and would cost him his own life. This scene is perhaps the closest John comes to describing an agony in the garden. The gospel of Matthew speaks about Jesus’ sadness that he was about to die; John never says that explicitly. All he says is: “And Jesus wept.”

Here at the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus takes the full measure of his life for his friends, and he is immensely saddened. He weeps. He knows the price he is paying for the resurrection of Lazarus. So at the tomb he prays a brief prayer, not dissimilar to the prayer he will say later on in chapter 17 of John, the high priestly prayer of the Last Supper.

And third, let’s talk about the response of the family. How did the family respond to the love on the part of Jesus? This family which hitherto had been preoccupied with their own domestic grief, begin to come to grips with the full drama and tragedy of what is about to transpire. They know now that there’s a price on Jesus’ head. They understand what Jesus is doing to restore this family. Over the next few days, one of the disciples will go to the high priest’s house to claim the contract. Jesus is about to die, and the family knows that Jesus is dying on their behalf, as a family.

Six days before the final Passover, the younger sister, Mary, she who loved to sit and learn at the feet of Jesus, takes a jar of precious ointment and now pours it out on those feet. She does this because Jesus is about to pay the price for the raising of her brother. “She has done this,” says our Lord, “to prepare my body for burial.” Now this is a most mysterious and ironic verse. The verb gives it away. The verb is tyrysy. She brought this oil, which she had held back; brought this ointment, which she had held back, tyrysy. She had kept this ointment. She did not use all of the ointment to anoint her brother. She held back a jar. You see the irony of that. She had kept this oil to anoint Jesus. She knew there would be a second funeral. She had not used this oil to anoint her dead brother; she held it back, had preserved it, to anoint Jesus.

Mary of Bethany knew exactly what she was doing. She knew that the death of her brother was not the final word about her family. She reserved the ointment for the family’s Friend. It became the family’s final gift to their Friend.

Jesus loved each of these people—Martha and Mary and Lazarus—as persons, one by one, because he calls each of his sheep by name. But notice that he loves them as a family. He loves them as a family, and they receive him as a family. The Christian family is very often marked dramatically with the sign of the cross. We perceive it when we lose a member of the family, and any other way a family can be pained, but Jesus, the Healer and the Restorer of life, promises his grace not just to each of us but also to our families, because we are his friends. Amen.