The Gospel of St. John: A Series of Discourses. / New Edition

by Frederick Denison Maurice

By such topics the sisters of Lazarus were tormented; for St. John says,—'Now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off: and many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother.' They endure the visitation impatiently or patiently, according to their different dispositions. 'Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met Him: but Mary sat still in the house.' The impulse of the first is to find a Friend to whom she can dare to make complaints, because she trusts Him; the other retreats into herself, and, perhaps, finds that same Friend there, teaching her another kind of lore than that which the well-meaning comforters are pouring into her ear.

'Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.' It is the language of reproach; but it is the kind of reproach which has faith and confidence for the ground of it,—which comes from a longing that the person who is the object of it should clear himself, and prove that he has not failed in the office of friendship, however he may have seemed to do so. And then, as if His face had already answered the uneasy suspicion which her words had expressed—had given her a hope of some unknown, inconceivable blessing—she adds, 'But I know that even now, whatsoever thou shalt ask of God, God will give it thee. Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again.' The words sound grand and glorious; they were really disappointing. What else she thought He might ask of God she could not say; but it was not this. She had heard often of a resurrection; the Jews, who had come to Bethany, had, no doubt, been telling her many good discourses of the elders concerning it. Ages hence he would, she thought, awake out of the dust; in the meantime, the light in their house had been quenched; he was gone from them. She said, 'I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.' If He intended to give back Lazarus to her at once, could He not have told her so? Might He not have said, 'In thy special case, for my love to Lazarus and Mary and thee, I am about to break through ordinary laws, and to raise a body out of the grave,—not at the last day, but now.' Why not? Because, if He had said so, He would have contradicted His own words, His own acts, the whole tenor of His life. He did not come into the world to show special favours, but to assert and manifest universal truth. He did not come into the world to break God's laws, but to establish them, and to show forth the will which was at the foundation of them. Therefore, instead of limiting Martha's words about a resurrection in the last day, He expanded her words,—He uttered what was a more general proposition than that one,—not bounded to a certain moment in the future, but extending over the present and the past. The resurrection in the last day,—vague and loose as Martha's thoughts were about it,—was still practically bounded by the feeling which occupied her soul in that hour. 'I know that my brother shall rise again,' did not mean very much to her; the rising of any besides her brother meant nothing. But 'I am the resurrection and the life,' were words that applied to herself as much as to Lazarus,—to her sister as much as to either. She could not apprehend them, even in the slightest degree, without feeling that they were spoken of human beings,—not merely of that being who had been lying in the grave four days. And yet how immeasurably more they met her own case, her own sorrow, than the others! 'I am the resurrection and the life.' 'You have a Friend, an almighty Friend, who restores life, who is the Giver of life. Do not task your poor, feeble, sorrow-stricken fancy to conceive of some distant world-gathering. There may be such a one; but, if you are to know anything of it, know Me first. Trust in an actual person; leave yourself and the world to Him.' And He went on: 'He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.' I do not say that she could understand this, or that we can. But I am sure she did understand that she was meant to believe in Him—to rest in Him; and that this belief and this rest might be exercised, not only by those who could look into His countenance and hear sounds coming from His lips, but by those who were out of sight,—who had passed into the unseen world. The dead might hear His word speaking to them. The dead might believe in Him. The dead might be quickened by that word and that faith. Therefore, when He asked her the question, 'Believest thou this?'—though she could not dare to say, 'I believe it all; I take it in just as Thou hast spoken it,'—she could say, 'Yea, Lord: I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.' She could trust absolutely, unreservedly in Himself, whatever His language might or might not import.

'And when she had so said, she went her way, and called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee. As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly, and came to Him.' Martha went into a presence which she felt to be dear, with a confidence that she should be welcome, with a certain sense that she had a right to speak; Mary must wait in silence and awe till she had some intimation that He was seeking for her. This difference of characters is as marked in the nineteenth century as in the first; it affects all the common subordinate relations of life; it reaches to the highest and most divine. Each has its own worth, and its own temptations. We have no business to disparage either; for Christ has imparted both, and has made each a way to Himself.

'Now Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in that place where Martha met Him. The Jews then which were with her in the house, and comforted her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out, followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there. Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.'

The good-natured comforters can give their victim no peace,—even the grave is not too sacred a place for their persecutions; her only safety is where her sister had sought it and found it. The words Mary uses are the same as Martha's; they are the simplest expressions of the thought which must have been in both of them,—the thought which each must have understood the other to be vexed with, if nothing was spoken,—the thought which Martha will have been able to utter, and which Mary will probably have kept closed within her till that moment. And is there anything in that thought to make a chasm between the household in Bethany, and any English household in the nineteenth century? Is not the feeling the very same, in the heart of every one who has lost a friend or brother? 'He might have been saved; Christ might have ordered this differently. In this and in that case He did; why not in mine?'

'When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, and said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto Him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, Behold how He loved him! And some of them said, Could not this Man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?' The strength of these words, which has been so great for those who have taken them simply and naturally, has often been diluted. 'What need had He to weep, seeing that He was about to remove the cause for weeping?' But what if that grief of Mary was in kind the grief of every sister that had lost a brother, since death entered into the world,—of every sister who shall lose one, till death be finally swallowed up in victory? What if the grief of those about her, though less earnest, yet was at least a testimony that each of us has a share and a right in that which any other is afflicted with? Would the Son of Man, who had taken man's flesh, who had entered into man's sorrows, sympathise less with her who was beside Him then, because He knew the depth and cause of her grief better than she knew it herself; because He knew that it could not be cured by the smile of a brother, or the pressure of his hand, if that were granted her again; because He knew in Himself the mystery of the death of every man, and was to bear it Himself for every man? Surely it would have been a woful thing for us, and for the world, if He had not groaned in spirit at the sight of that cave, merely because Lazarus was to come out of it; if He had not wept when He saw Mary and the Jews weep, merely because a sudden joy was to succeed their tears! And was it not a cause for groaning, that those who saw how minute, and tender, and personal His affection was for this one man, should take so poor a measure of His love as to suppose that He cared for him, and not for them,—for Mary and Martha, and not for every human sorrower,—that He might from partiality have caused that this man should not have died, but had no power of delivering all from death?

'Jesus therefore again groaning in Himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto Him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days. Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?'

He had said to her, 'Thy brother shall rise again.' He changes the language now, that He may convey a deeper sense. It was God's glory that was to be revealed in that act. Hereafter she would know how much more it concerned her, and her sister, and her brother, that Jesus should manifest that, than that He should have caused her brother not to have gone into the grave, or to come forth from it again.

'Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me. And when He thus had spoken, He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes; and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.'

The thanksgiving to His Father for the power which He felt He had been endued with to finish that work, unfolds the mystery of His life; the sense of filial dependence and trust that was at the root of it; the pressure of human misery and death which turned His confidence into cries and groans for deliverance and help; the quickening energy which answered the cry; because, as He tells us so often, He was not doing His own will, but the will of Him who sent Him. This time it was needful that the cry should be heard by others. They must be taught that He was not exercising some rare and unwonted privilege to serve a partial end,—that He could bid Lazarus come forth, because He was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, the resurrection and the life.