When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.  He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”  (John 11: 32-35)

You have turned my mourning into dancing;

    you have taken off my sackcloth

    and clothed me with joy,

so that my soul may praise you and not be silent.

    O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever. (Psalm 30: 11,12)

When Mary comes to Jesus, she doesn’t offer him a tidy theological statement. She offers him the blunt sentence grief always gives us first:

“Lord, if you had been here…”

If you had been here, he wouldn’t have died.
If you had been here, my life wouldn’t have split into “before” and “after.”
If you had been here, we wouldn’t be standing on this raw edge of despair.

And Jesus doesn’t correct her.

John tells us that when Jesus sees Mary weeping—and the community weeping with her—he is “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” The scene is thick with honest sorrow: not private, not polished, not managed. The kind of sorrow that spreads through a room and makes even the air feel heavy.

And then—these words that are almost too small to hold what they contain:

“Jesus began to weep.” (John 11:35)

Not later. Not after the miracle. Not once everyone has calmed down. Jesus weeps right there, in the presence of death and love and loss and unanswered questions. He stands in the middle of despair and lets it touch him.

Which is where I want to linger for a moment, because we tend to assume faithful people should be able to “pick a lane.”

Either you have hope (smiling, resilient, strong).
Or you have despair (crumbling, doubting, failing).

But the gospel refuses that false choice.

Jesus is the resurrection and the life in this very chapter. He knows what he is about to do. He is walking toward Lazarus’ tomb with power in his bones and life in his voice.

And still—he weeps.

Hope and despair can co-exist. Not because we are weak, but because love is real.

Spring does this to us, doesn’t it?

One day the thermometer climbs and the world feels possible again. Robins tilt their heads on the lawn like they’ve always belonged. Geese write their messy sermons across the sky. There’s open water on the Rideau, flashing like a promise.

And then the night drops below freezing and the morning arrives with snow—again—and suddenly your shoulders creep up toward your ears and your heart does that familiar thing: Oh no. Not this again.

It’s not just the driving that’s treacherous. It’s the emotional whiplash. The way a late storm can make you feel foolish for believing in meltwater at all.

And yet—if you live here long enough, you know this pattern. You know March is capable of betrayal. You know winter has a few last speeches left in it.

So why does it still feel so personal?

Because hope isn’t the same as certainty.

Hope is not denial. Hope is not pretending the snow isn’t falling. Hope is standing at the window watching the storm come in, and still remembering that the earth beneath it has already begun to shift.

That’s what Jesus looks like at Lazarus’ tomb: steady enough to call forth life, tender enough to cry.

The psalm tells the truth in both directions

“You have turned my mourning into dancing;
you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy…” (Psalm 30)

Yes. Amen. We want that.

But Psalm 30 doesn’t erase the sackcloth. It assumes it was worn. It assumes mourning was real enough to require language, ritual, and time. Joy in the psalms is not cheap optimism; it’s what comes after the night has been fully night.

Which means: if you’re still in sackcloth, you’re not doing it wrong.

If you’re exhausted by one more “we’ll get through this,” one more change, one more season of uncertainty—your fatigue is not proof of faithlessness. It’s proof that you have been loving something that is changing.

I hear it everywhere: the sense that we’re in a kind of winter in the church—locally, regionally, denominationally. Not just fewer people in pews, but fewer certainties on the calendar. Fewer “this is how we’ve always done it” assurances. More stretching. More letting go. More grief that doesn’t always get named out loud because we’re trying so hard to be brave.

And still, the gospel keeps whispering: Resurrection is not canceled.

But here’s the hard, holy truth: resurrection hope does not prevent real grief.

Jesus doesn’t stand at the tomb and tell everyone to “look on the bright side.”
He doesn’t shame Mary for her anger, or Martha for her practicality, or the community for their tears.

He joins them.

And maybe that’s the deepest comfort in the shortest verse of the Bible: when we pray, we are not sending words into a void. We are speaking in the presence of a God who has already stood where we stand—who has already felt how heavy love becomes when it has nowhere to go.

“He gets us,” yes. But more than that: he stays with us.

So what if faith looks like this?

What if faith, in late-winter seasons—meteorological or spiritual—looks less like triumph and more like companionship?

What if faith is:

• crying without concluding that you’ve lost hope,
• hoping without pretending you aren’t afraid,
• showing up to the tomb even when you don’t know what Jesus will do next.

Because that’s what this story holds together: a Jesus who can be “deeply moved” and still be Life. A Christ who can weep and still call a dead man by name.

Despair and hope can co-exist.

Weeping may linger for the night.

And yes—joy comes in the morning.

But in the meantime, if snow is falling again and the roads feel slick and your heart feels tender: you are not alone. You are not failing. You are loved—right here, right now, in the strange in-between where winter and spring overlap.

Blessings today. And remember: you are Loved.

~Rev. Lynne