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

by Frederick Denison Maurice

St. John, who has told us the story with such care and minuteness, does not stop for an instant to comment upon it, or to utter any expressions of astonishment; he merely tells us: 'Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on Him. But some of them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done.'

Could he have spoken otherwise, brethren? Did he not wish us to consider this act as the sign of a truth, as the exercise of a power, which circumstances cannot affect, which is proving its vitality from age to age? Why should he comment? Why should he wonder? The commentary was to be in the history of the world; the wonder was to be renewed in the case of every brother, whom Christian hands were to lay in the grave, 'earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,' in sure and certain hope that Christ is 'the resurrection and the life, and that whosoever believeth in Him, though he were dead, yet should he live.' When we think of the return of Lazarus to his house at Bethany, it is not with an unmixed delight. We ask whether he could have welcomed the world's confusions which he had escaped? whether the thought must not have haunted him, that after a little while he should be in the same cave again? These are questions which it may be well for us to consider; though, perhaps, they are not different in kind from those which arise when any one who has been on the borders of the unseen world, who has taken leave of kinsfolk and friends, who has had glimpses of another country, suddenly recovers, and has to adapt himself once more—for a time probably with a strange sense of awkwardness and incoherency—to the business and intercourse of the earth. In one case as in the other, I conceive there is but this solution of the difficulty. The man must be glad to be placed where it pleases Christ that he should be placed. He will not certainly be nearer Him by complaining of his destiny, or by not desiring exactly the work which has been given him to do. If he has dreamed of a heaven above where he shall be under some other law than that, or where his will must not be in conformity with that law, the dream will never be realized. So, doubtless, Lazarus was taught by his discipline. And this may have been to him, if he could take it in, a greater comfort than even his appearance again beside the old hearth,—a compensation for all he might suffer then or afterwards,—that through him multitudes unborn were to learn the meaning of their own death, the secret of their own life, and who is the Friend that interprets them both. To each man who has been near the grave, and has come back to ever such commonplace duties, something of the same blessing may be given. He may think of One who hallows the common feast as well as the grave, who binds both worlds together.

To the question—

"Where wast thou, brother, those four days? There lives no record of reply, Which telling us what it is to die, Had surely added praise to praise."

So we think very naturally. And yet, if we reflect, we shall perceive that those four days can only have been a part of the education of Lazarus,—that they cannot have been separate from all his previous and all his later experience.

The first cry of life, when he came out of the womb, as much testified of One in whom is life, who is the Source of life, as the look with which he greeted his sisters or his Lord, when he was commanded to come out of the grave. The opening of every sense to take in the sights and sounds of the world around him,—the opening of every affection which apprehended his human relations,—testified of the same living Word. The revival of past acts and scenes in the memory,—the awakening of the conscience, which bound those acts and scenes to his own individual self,—declared that there is One who not only gives life, but brings it back, who is the resurrection as well as the life. As the years of manhood brought him into converse with beings of his own race, whom he must meet on equal terms, whom he must recognise as having powers, affections, and responsibilities like his own,—as creatures looking before and after like himself,—he had a witness that there must be a common life, a common resurrection. As intercourse with Jesus gradually brought him to the knowledge of One who was a friend, and more than a friend,—a Master to whom he could submit,—an inspirer of strange thoughts,—a deliverer from infinite perplexities,—the discerner of mysteries which eye could not see, or ear hear; there was a more and more direct witness to his heart and reason: 'Thou hast found the Christ. Thou hast found the resurrection and the life.'

When one looks at the subject in this way, I am not sure whether one cares so much to know what passed in those four days. Let death and the grave claim their rights and keep their secrets, as long as they can. They were to assert a higher right than they asserted over this man of Bethany. Within a few days they were to claim dominion over Him who said, 'I am the resurrection and the life;' they were to try whether they could not hold Him as their thrall for ever. If they succeeded, it does not much concern us what has happened elsewhere in the universe; there is one thick impenetrable cloud over it all. If they failed, life must have fuller and more perfect dominion in the unseen region than it has in ours. Nothing which seems to die here can be under the sway of death there. And Christ, by raising one poor man before He was raised Himself, testified that death shall have no power, that the grave shall have no power, to extinguish one faculty of the soul, one sense of the body, in any creature whose nature He has taken.

Brethren, here is the doctrine of the resurrection of the spirit and of the body taught in Christ's own manner, not in words, but in an act. And here, too, is that doctrine of a general resurrection at the last day, which Martha had learnt from the Pharisees,—which, separated from the words, 'I am the resurrection and the life,' is the hardest and most unpractical of all opinions,—which, united to them, as it is in the Burial Service of our Church, is the most consolatory. A particular resurrection for individual men, without a general resurrection of our race, without such a restitution of all things as has been spoken of by prophets since the world began, would be utterly unsatisfactory, because it would not set forth the glory of God and the love of God. The general resurrection in Scripture is described in various forms of speech, all answering to deep human necessities. It is spoken of as a revelation of the Son of God; it is spoken of as a revelation or unveiling of the sons of God in Him; it is spoken of as a gathering together in Him of all things in heaven and all in earth.

I cannot read this story without feeling that, among those things in heaven and earth that are so to be restored, the sympathies and affections of the family are some of the chief. I know not why St. John should have dwelt so much upon the sorrow of the sisters of Lazarus, and upon Christ's feeling for them, if he had not meant us to understand this. Martha, I suppose, thought before she came to Jesus, that her brother would ascend some time or other on angels' wings into a place somewhere above the stars; but that all the threads which, from their childhood upwards, had been winding round them and binding them to each other, should be broken; that the associations of home should cease for ever. I am sure she learnt a different lesson after she had seen her brother again, and had understood the declaration, 'I am the resurrection and the life.' Then she will have known that if, in the resurrection, 'they neither marry nor are given in marriage,'—if no fresh ties are formed like those which bind us together on earth,—yet that the old relationships, the old affections, are to have a new and higher life. What is sown in corruption is raised in incorruption; what is sown in weakness is raised in strength; what is sown a natural relationship is raised a spiritual. But in this case, as in every other, the change does not alter the substance of that which has been, only brings it forth in its might and purity.

Towards this resurrection all creation is groaning and travailing. And that groan which burst from Christ at the grave of Lazarus, was the expression of His sympathy in that groan of His creatures; even as His own travail hour, in the garden, on the cross, in the tomb of Joseph, showed that the path of the Shepherd is the same as that of the sheep, to victory and rest. Why cannot we enter into His sufferings? why cannot we look forward hopefully to His triumph? There are some fearful words in the text I have taken to-day—fearful in the midst of all their consolation—which explain the secret. It is said, 'He that BELIEVETH in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.' Do we not feel sometimes as if all power of believing in anything that is great and noble were departing from us? Do we not feel as if to believe in Him who is goodness and truth, were the hardest effort of all? Does it not appear as if a second death were coming upon us,—a death of all energy, of all trust, of all power to look beyond ourselves? Oh, if this numbness and coldness have overtaken us, or should overtake us,—if we should be tempted to sit down in it and sink to sleep,—let the cry which awakened Lazarus awake us. Let us be sure that He who is the resurrection and the life is saying to each of us, however deep the cave in which he is buried, 'Come forth!' however stifling the grave-clothes with which he is bound, 'Loose him, and let him go!'