(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “404 Error Code”,
originally shared on March 18, 2026. It was the 404th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams
of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my
wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
The Emergency Food Pantry in the church that
I served in Compton had a bumper sticker stuck to the inside of its door. It
said, “If you feel far from God, guess who moved?” Today, we’re going to find
out what that means.
We decided to
produce YouTube videos with messages for connection and encouragement that
would provide a means to reflect on what it meant to be a Christian in the LA
area and beyond.
We called them
“Streams of Living Water”, because we were never alone in the Holy Spirit and,
well, the videos were being streamed, get it? 😊
Those developed
into a blog, “Words of Living Water”, and into a podcast, “Living Water Radio.”
This week, we are producing the
404th episode of each.
Last week, I received the “404
error” message when I was searching for a website on my computer. That’s not a
good thing.
The 404 error code appears,
according to Google, when your browser is connected to the server but the
specific webpage, file, or resource requested could not be found. Also known as
the “not found” code, it usually means that the URL you’re using is misspelled,
or the page was deleted, or the link is broken.
It’s a variation of the ancient
computer principle, “Garbage in. Garbage out.”
And, it’s frustrating. Like our
weather.
We were getting torrential rain
a few weeks ago.
This week, we are having record
heat, and most of the rest of the country is having record snow.
It seems like a disconnect.
It seems like the way Mary and
Martha must have felt when their brother, Lazarus, died.
They were faithful people. They
were probably Jesus’ best friends on earth, and Jesus didn’t seem to be caring
that Lazarus was dying, at all!
That is, they had a connection
to the server, but the answer they sought was not found. They were experiencing
a 404 Error Code! 😊
The three siblings Mary, and
Martha, and Lazarus lived with one another in the village of Bethany, just over
the Mount of Olives, and about two miles east of Jerusalem. It appears to have
been Jesus’ favorite place on earth.
They were his close friends who
were not among his close disciples. We have no record of him teaching
publicly there. He just went there to relax and hang out with people who loved
him and whom he loved.
Then, one day, Lazarus was very
sick and the sisters sent a message to Jesus to let him know.
Jesus said to his disciples, in
John 11:4b,
4b“This
illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son
of God may be glorified through it.”
Phase One: “Oh, he’s
just sick.” Lazarus is sick, but Jesus starts by doing nothing. Though he loves
Lazarus and Mary and Martha, he stays put for two days. There’s some kind of
plan. But what’s going on?
Then this happens in verse 7,
7Then after
this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.”
Which, the disciples say, is
kind of crazy since he was just there and some of the people were trying to
kill him. Jesus brushes-off their concern and explains that they just don’t
understand who he is.
He describes Lazarus’ situation
in Phase Two, in John 11:11b, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen
asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.”
What?! The disciples
want to know why Jesus is going to risk his life, and maybe theirs, to wake
Lazarus up from a nap? This makes no sense to them.
Phase Three: Jesus
explains the situation, in John 11:14,
14Then Jesus
told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead.
Jesus is then ready to
go.
[Sidebar: What do you think of
when you think of the disciple named Thomas? Doubting Thomas, right? Look at
his behavior here, in verse 16,
16Thomas,
who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we
may die with him.”
Bold, huh? Thomas is a stand-up
guy!]
The story continues with verse
17,
17When Jesus
arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.
People were already coming to
console Mary and Martha. Martha hears that Jesus is coming and goes out to meet
him and says, in John 11: 21b,
21b “Lord, if
you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22But even
now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”
That had to hurt like a punch
to the gut, even as Martha speaks to Jesus with humility and faith.
Then comes the central message
of this passage, in John 11:23-27,
23Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise
again.” 24Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again
in the resurrection on the last day.” 25Jesus said to her, “I
am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they
die, will live, 26and everyone who lives and believes in me
will never die. Do you believe this?” 27She said to him, “Yes,
Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into
the world.”
Martha goes and tells Mary that
Jesus is near and is calling for her. Mary finds Jesus, kneels, and greets him
with the same stinging words as her sister, in verse 32b,
32b “Lord, if you had
been here, my brother would not have died.”
Now, I’m not normally much of a
crier. Maybe more so now that I’m older and the estrogen is kicking in. But the
floodgates open up if I see people crying. That’s it!
I remember sitting in the front
row at my mother’s funeral. She had died of complications of breast cancer at
age 53. I was trying to keep it together. That’s kind of the Norwegian way.
Stoic. And I did, until I looked to my left and saw one of my best friends
since childhood sitting with his wife, looking at me. His father had died when we
were in our early 20’s. And he looked stricken, and his face was pale and wet.
That was it for me.
That’s why I’ve usually looked
over the heads of people at the funerals I have led. I need to stay focused on
the needs of others, not my own.
Jesus wept. I don’t know if
Jesus cried often. He lamented over Jerusalem. He was fully God, and he
was fully human. Look what happens here, in John 11:33-35,
33When Jesus
saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly
disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34He said, “Where have
you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35Jesus
began to weep.
There is it. John 11:35,
“Jesus began to weep.” In some translations it’s, “Jesus wept.”, the shortest
verse in the Bible.
Do you ever picture Jesus
crying? I don’t. He seems to be above that kind of thing. He’s God. Doesn’t he
see death all the time every day?
Why would Jesus weep over
anything? He knows how it will all turn out.
Is death so unfamiliar to him?
So unexpected?
Queen Elizabeth II once said,
in a statement of condolence to the families of the British who were casualties
on 9-11, “Grief is the price we pay for love.”
Grief is the price we pay for
love.
Was that it? Were Jesus’ tears
the expression of the living relationship with the one true living God for
which we were all created and which now Jesus appears to have lost with
Lazarus? At least in this world?
The next verse tells us, in verse
36,
36So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
Others, though, were not so
empathetic. Some questioned how Jesus healed the man born blind but didn’t
heal his friend, Lazarus. Jesus was again in grief and went to the
cave-tomb. A stone was lying against it. Sound familiar? Like another
death and burial that we know is coming?
Some protested when Jesus said,
“Take away the stone”, pointing out that after four days there would be a
stench. The King James Version of the Bible translates this passage, “Lord, by
this time he stinketh”! Much of Christian art of this event shows people
holding their noses.
Jesus brushed all of that off
and says, in John 11:40b-41a,
40b “Did I
not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” 41So
they took away the stone.
Jesus prays with thanksgiving,
and then this happens, in verses 43-44,
43When he
had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44The
dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face
wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
Wow! What a moment! What must
it have been like to be there at that moment? Did all Creation hold its
breath? I wonder what the people who were there took away from this?
Well, we find out in the last
verse of this passage, John 11:45,
45Many of
the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did,
believed in him.
That’s easy to understand. But
what can we take away from this? Four things.
First, that there’s a
reason that the verses at the center of this event are so often heard at
Christian funerals, John 11:25-26,
25Jesus said
to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even
though they die, will live, 26and everyone who lives and
believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
It is the very foundation for
our hope in the new life in this world and the new heaven and the new earth in
the life to come in Jesus Christ.
Second, the answer to
the question, “Who killed Jesus?”
The award-winning and
Oscar-nominated film “The Fabelmans” is based on the life of director Steven
Spielberg. It contains a scene from when he was in high school being attacked
for being a Jew, “because the Jews killed Jesus”. The actor responds, in part,
by saying that he wasn’t around 2,000 years ago. 😊
It is true that some Jews are
shown in the Bible calling for Jesus’ crucifixion, but not one of them is alive
today. And I’ve always wondered why there isn’t more anti-Italian prejudice
directed at the descendants of the Romans who actually conduced the trial and
did the crucifixion. “Jews” didn’t kill Jesus any more than “Italians”
did.
Others say that the answer to
the question “Who killed Jesus?” is “You did.” and “I did.” Jesus died to be
the only acceptable sacrifice for our sin, to restore the created relationship
with God that our sin had broken. He would not need to have been killed if it
wasn’t for the fact that humanity had messed things up.
But the fact is, and it is the
record of scriptures, that, ultimately, nobody took Jesus’ life. He gave
it.
In John 10:17-18, where
Jesus speaks about being the good shepherd and how the good shepherd lays down
his life for the sheep, Jesus says,
17For this reason the Father loves
me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 18No one takes it from me, but I lay
it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take
it up again.
We see God’s power over
life and death in Jesus’ raising of Lazarus from the dead. We see it in the
gift of God in Jesus Christ, that Jesus gives his life on the cross
as fully God and fully human being, and that he then he takes it up again in
the Resurrection.
Third, that we have good
news to share: that Jesus is the Resurrection and the life.
Our lives are transformed, they are made new, through a living relationship
with the one true living God that we call “faith”. Lazarus was raised from the
dead by Jesus, but he is given new life, eternal life, in
Jesus, and that is much more important.
Lazarus would die again,
eventually. His eternal life is assured in Jesus. “Those who believe
in me, even though they die, will live, 26and everyone who
lives and believes in me will never die.” The question that follows is, “Do
you believe this?”
A colleague, a predecessor at a
congregation I served, told me about the night he had a Church Council meeting,
and he knew it would be a late evening. He called his wife and told her not to
make a dinner for him. He would just stop by MacDonald’s on the way home, which
he did. But, as he got out of his car to order inside, someone jumped out at
him, pointed a gun at him and told him to give him all his money or he’d kill
him.
He told me, “I wish I could say
that I was brave, but the truth is that I was just tired, and I said, ‘You
can’t kill me. I’ve already died in Jesus Christ.’”
All the color drained from the
other person’s face, and he turned and ran away!
That brings us to the Fourth
lesson, that we have already died. We died in our baptism. Death is a
past-tense experience for us. Does that mean we are the “Living Dead?”
In a sense, it does.
Paul writes, in Romans 6:3-5,
3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into
Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we have
been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised
from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of
life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we
will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
And Fifth, that God
suffers with us in our suffering.
Jesus wept. He was greatly
distressed. He was “disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” That in
itself is a sign to us pointing to the nature of God.
I remember very clearly when my
father was dying. My brothers and sister and I were at the hospital. Our dad
was in and out of consciousness. His organs were shutting down. We took turns
sitting with our dad while the others sat in the hallway.
I’ve been in that space
countless times as the pastor. I’ve struggled with the right things to say in
that moment.
I remember when the pastor from
our hometown church, our dad’s pastor, came to visit. He didn’t say anything.
He didn’t have to. The look on his face said everything. We so appreciated his
visit, his empathy and his concern. He just had to be there to express all of
that.
People say weird things when
people have died. Even Christians. Things like, “I guess God needed another
angel”, or “Everything happens for a reason.” or “Don’t cry, they’re with the
Lord now.” or “God won’t give you any more than you can handle.” But none of
these reach us at the point of our pain. But I don’t criticize people for
saying them. People just don’t know what to say in their grief, in the face of
death, and they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing.
The best we can do is to
be present in the hallways of people’s hearts. To sit with them. To share their
grief even in the midst of our hope.
This is what God does. God
loves us at the point of our pain. God weeps at the point of our loss and
reminds us of His eternal promises in our suffering: love everlasting.
We have no need to fear death.
It’s just a transition to another way of living. But we feel that pain in the
pain of others even as we rejoice in the promise of eternal life given to us by
Jesus Christ on the cross.
The question is, do you believe it? Do you believe
that the key to life and death is Jesus Christ? That true life is not something
we achieve, but something we receive as the gift of God in Jesus Christ?
That he gave his life and then took it back
again? That Jesus has set everyone free from the effects of sin, death
and the power of the devil who believes and is baptized?
Sometimes we may feel
that we have experienced a “404 Error Code:, that we are disconnected from the
server, that we are far from God. But that’s not on God.
Jesus has restored us to our
true selves!
Jesus has unbound us, and let
us go!
“Do you believe this?” Share the good news.
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