Four days late

Lazarus is ill and his sisters send for Jesus, who loves them — and he stays where he is for two more days. By the time he arrives Lazarus has been in the tomb four days. Both sisters say the same sentence to him: Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Martha gets a promise and a claim: I am the resurrection and the life. Mary gets something else. She falls at his feet weeping, and John writes the shortest verse in the Bible: Jesus wept. He knows exactly what he is about to do, and he still cries at the grave of his friend. Then he calls Lazarus out by name, and a dead man walks out bound in grave clothes. It is the last public sign in John's gospel, and it is what decides the authorities to have Jesus killed.