John 11:25-26

The scene is a funeral. Lazarus has been dead four days, and Martha meets Jesus with a line that mixes faith and complaint: "if you would have been here, my brother wouldn't have died".

Jesus answers in the present tense. He does not say "there will be a resurrection" — Martha already believed that, as many Jews of the period did. He says "I am the resurrection". Hope stops being a distant event and becomes a person available right there, beside a grieving woman.

Notice the double structure: "even if he dies, yet will he live" and "whoever lives and believes in me will never die". One line for the one who has gone, another for the one who stays.

And it is worth reading on: a few verses later the text records that Jesus wept — before performing any miracle. That is why this chapter is read at so many funerals: it does not rush grief.