Heartbroken, the sisters keep their vigil by the sepulchre, but among the friends coming and going to tender their sympathy, the Friend does not appear. He came not to save; He comes not to weep. The fact must have added poignancy to their grief. But wait in your judgment. Right through these dark hours Jesus loved these sisters. Do not lose sight of this fact. It may comfort you some day. He refrained from bestowing a small favor only that He might have an opportunity to bestow a greater. If he had healed Lazarus by a word, Martha and Mary would have been grateful and satisfied, but by waiting He could give them a greater blessing, and one which might be shared by sorrowing ones in all ages to come.
But Jesus is coming. Lazarus is dead, but Jesus is come at last, and is halting on the brow of the hill, just outside of the village. The news of His arrival reach the stricken sisters. How does the intelligence of His presence affect them? “Then Martha,” the dear woman, “as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him; but Mary sat still in the house.” What a contrast. Martha hastens along the village road to the brow of the hill where the Saviour had halted, doubtless that He might meet the sisters apart from the crowd, which had come in accordance with Jewish custom, to mourn with them, and as she comes running to meet Him, she exclaims, “Lord, if Thou hadst been here my brother had not died.” He certainly understood that. But in her blind grief she could not understand how, if He loved her and her sister, He could delay His coming until it was too late. In her words there was almost the accent of rebuke and reproach, “If Thou hadst been here my brother had not died.” But how graciously He deals with her. He comes to her in her argumentative state and with words the most comforting said, “Thy brother shall rise again.”
Martha could hardly believe her ears, as she certainly did not comprehend the meaning of these words with her heart, and replied, “I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” She believed in the life everlasting, but she was going to put off being comforted until “the last day.” In that Martha has many sisters.
But how patiently our Lord recalls the mind of Martha from the resurrection of the last day to Himself. He said, “I am the resurrection, and the life; he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die!” He is master of the thing that fills her heart with dread, and patiently He deals with her. Was not that beautiful?
Comforted in her heart, Martha hastened back to her home, and called Mary her sister secretly, saying, “The Master is come, and calleth for thee.” He wanted to meet Mary apart from the public mourners, as He had met Martha. The custom was for the comforters to do as the mourners. If they were silent, to remain so; if they wailed, to wail with them. The shrieks of Oriental mourners are often ear-piercing. Our Lord wanted to avoid this, and so no doubt, although it is not chronicled, He had commissioned Martha to bear the tidings of His arrival, and she went and quietly and said, “The Master wants you, Mary.”
Mary “rose quickly, and came unto Him.” But mark her coming. Unlike her sister, “when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying unto Him, Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” That’s what Martha said. Yes, but what effect did it produce upon Him when Mary said it? “When Jesus therefore saw her weeping,” and the company of mourners who had followed her soon after she left the house, “also weeping” with her, “He groaned in the spirit and was troubled,” no doubt, at the empty platitude on the part of those miserable comforters. But at the sepulchre, where lay the mortal remains of the loved Lazarus, He wept. The Son of God in tears! His great heart sharing another’s sorrow. This scene is the most precious and comforting in the record of the Saviour’s life so far as the revelation of His heart is concerned.
Martha gets His teaching, Mary gets His tears. Martha said exactly what Mary said. When Mary said it, what a difference! Which do you think was the better thing, to run after Him and get His teaching, or wait till sent for and get His tears? The reasoning mind will receive the Master’s teaching; the broken, weeping heart, His tears. Bright and luminous as were His words with resurrection glory, Mary got to deeper depths in the heart of God when she came than Martha, because she drew His tears of deepest sympathy with her sorrow.
Why did Jesus weep? Because Lazarus died? No, He is going to call Him back for a definite purpose. He knows that bereavement has broken the hearts of these two sisters, and though He is going to heal sorrow’s wound, He sympathized with their grief, and His heart went out in their distress. Every wounded heart that belongs to a child of God, the Master is going to heal by and by; yet He suffers with you in the wounding, and enters by tears with you into the sacrament of your sorrow. And so He wept when these women wept. There are times in our lives when the tears of sympathy speak greater comfort than the most eloquent words. Beloved, when you go to your friend sitting in the shadow of her deepest sorrow, spare your words, but freely mingle your tears with hers. Job’s comforters sat in silence for seven days before they spoke. But if you are not delivered out of your bereavement, may this scene in the life of our Lord comfort you with the thought that He has something better for you. The best thing came to these sisters, right after the bitter weeping.
In the third and last view we have of this blessed Bethany home, we see some of the scenes of the first view coming up to us. It is the same home, only, because of better accommodations, the feast is held in the house of Simon, but the same people are in it. But what a change there is here! Let us get the humanness as well as the divinity out of it. Look at those people, what are they doing? Sitting at the table. A lovely place for us men to sit. But Martha served. Do not miss that. She is doing what she did before,—getting supper ready. She is bustling about in her earnestness, but she has lost her grumbling. She gets through the entertainment with smiles from first to last. She is no less busy, but she is at rest in her mind. She is cumbered, but is not angry with Mary, and is not reflecting on Jesus Christ. She had learned something in the day of sorrow and darkness. It has not altered her power to serve, but the matter and the manner of her service.
What about Mary? If you have carefully studied the last few days of our Lord’s life upon the earth you have noticed that He was a lonely man, and that even His disciples failed to enter into sympathy with His suffering as it overshadowed His life. Take the story of those last six days and our Lord’s journey to Jerusalem, and you will find that it is an awful picture. He has the shadow of the cross upon Him, and He keeps calling these men to Him saying, “I am going to Jerusalem to suffer, to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will crucify Me.” His disciples broke in upon that awful revelation by asking, “Master, who is the greatest among us?”