I am sitting in the hotel lobby, where the internet is, and a young couple are arguing about going somewhere — but everything closes soon. At 4 PM. (Which is when I will be back in the conference)

As if the life of Venice is not in the people but in the museums.

The passage today is more about people than power. It is about Lazarus rising, (which would provide for his sisters, both unwed) but Christ cries. For he sees the cost: he sees the pain: he loves Lazarus and Mary and Martha.

For Christ this is not some neat demonstration of whom he is. It is not some sign to satisfy the discussant at a conference: pointing out the flaws in every study.

For life is more important than the neat points of ideology.

When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?”

Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

(John 11:28-44 ESV)

I was listening this morning in the conference: with care, for in the first session I was chairing and in the second I was the last presenter. The studies presented were well conceived but not tested, not piloted, did not consider how people lived: and this was despite clinical input which should have dealt with these issues.

And ideology was there: from the changing of criteria for political means to the changing of laws because the cost of continuing the policy (my paper, on regulating Synthetic Cannibalistic) was more that the population could bear.

Christ did not look at raising Lazarus as a demonstration of his power (though it was: the Sanhedrin considered killing Lazarus next) but considered the pain that all three went through in the process of this. He wept for them. He wept, indeed, for himself, for he was facing the same journey as Lazarus.

Power. in this world, comes with a cost. People get hurt: and those who think there is an ideology that allows us to discount the human lives ground down by these policies we have put in place without testing but with great goodwill are in the deepest error.

For people will last. Power does not. We believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting, not in this or that political party.

So let us not get seduced into correct ideology at the cost of our friends. Our witness is our lives and our actions more than our words. Power is less to be sought than people saved.

I’m speculating, but I think Christ is still weeping at the errors we commit. With the best of intentions. And, to our horror and shame, in his name.