The Resurrection of Lazarus

168:0.1It was shortly af­ter noon when Martha started out to meet Je­sus as he came over the brow of the hill near Beth­any. Her brother, Laz­a­rus, had been dead four days and had been laid away in their pri­vate tomb at the far end of the gar­den late on Sun­day af­ter­noon. The stone at the en­trance of the tomb had been rolled in place on the morn­ing of this day, Thurs­day.

168:0.2When Martha and Mary sent word to Je­sus con­cern­ing Laz­a­rus’s ill­ness, they were con­fi­dent the Mas­ter would do some­thing about it. They knew that their brother was des­per­ately sick, and though they hardly dared hope that Je­sus would leave his work of teach­ing and preach­ing to come to their as­sis­tance, they had such con­fi­dence in his power to heal dis­ease that they thought he would just speak the cu­ra­tive words, and Laz­a­rus would im­me­di­ately be made whole. And when Laz­a­rus died a few hours af­ter the mes­sen­ger left Beth­any for Phil­a­del­phia, they rea­soned that it was be­cause the Mas­ter did not learn of their brother’s ill­ness un­til it was too late, un­til he had al­ready been dead for sev­eral hours.

168:0.3But they, with all of their be­liev­ing friends, were greatly puz­zled by the mes­sage which the run­ner brought back Tues­day forenoon when he reached Beth­any. The mes­sen­ger in­sisted that he heard Je­sus say, “... this sick­ness is re­ally not to the death.” Nei­ther could they un­der­stand why he sent no word to them nor oth­er­wise prof­fered as­sis­tance.

168:0.4Many friends from near-by ham­lets and oth­ers from Je­ru­sa­lem came over to com­fort the sor­row-stricken sis­ters. Laz­a­rus and his sis­ters were the chil­dren of a well-to-do and hon­or­able Jew, one who had been the lead­ing res­i­dent of the lit­tle vil­lage of Beth­any. And not­with­stand­ing that all three had long been ar­dent fol­low­ers of Je­sus, they were highly re­spected by all who knew them. They had in­her­ited ex­ten­sive vine­yards and olive or­chards in this vicin­ity, and that they were wealthy was fur­ther at­tested by the fact that they could af­ford a pri­vate burial tomb on their own premises. Both of their par­ents had al­ready been laid away in this tomb.

168:0.5Mary had given up the thought of Je­sus’ com­ing and was aban­doned to her grief, but Martha clung to the hope that Je­sus would come, even up to the time on that very morn­ing when they rolled the stone in front of the tomb and sealed the en­trance. Even then she in­structed a neigh­bor lad to keep watch down the Jeri­cho road from the brow of the hill to the east of Beth­any; and it was this lad who brought tid­ings to Martha that Je­sus and his friends were ap­proach­ing.

168:0.6When Martha met Je­sus, she fell at his feet, ex­claim­ing, “Mas­ter, if you had been here, my brother would not have died!” Many fears were pass­ing through Martha’s mind, but she gave ex­pres­sion to no doubt, nor did she ven­ture to crit­i­cize or ques­tion the Mas­ter’s con­duct as re­lated to Laz­a­rus’s death. When she had spo­ken, Je­sus reached down and, lift­ing her upon her feet, said, “Only have faith, Martha, and your brother shall rise again.” Then an­swered Martha: “I know that he will rise again in the res­ur­rec­tion of the last day; and even now I be­lieve that what­ever you shall ask of God, our Fa­ther will give you.”

168:0.7Then said Je­sus, look­ing straight into the eyes of Martha: “I am the res­ur­rec­tion and the life; he who be­lieves in me, though he dies, yet shall he live. In truth, whoso­ever lives and be­lieves in me shall never re­ally die. Martha, do you be­lieve this?” And Martha an­swered the Mas­ter: “Yes, I have long be­lieved that you are the De­liv­erer, the Son of the liv­ing God, even he who should come to this world.”

168:0.8Je­sus hav­ing in­quired for Mary, Martha went at once into the house and, whis­per­ing to her sis­ter, said, “The Mas­ter is here and has asked for you.” And when Mary heard this, she rose up quickly and has­tened out to meet Je­sus, who still tar­ried at the place, some dis­tance from the house, where Martha had first met him. The friends who were with Mary, seek­ing to com­fort her, when they saw that she rose up quickly and went out, fol­lowed her, sup­pos­ing that she was go­ing to the tomb to weep.

168:0.9Many of those pres­ent were Je­sus’ bit­ter en­e­mies. That is why Martha had come out to meet him alone, and also why she went in se­cretly to in­form Mary that he had asked for her. Martha, while crav­ing to see Je­sus, de­sired to avoid any pos­si­ble un­pleas­ant­ness which might be caused by his com­ing sud­denly into the midst of a large group of his Je­ru­sa­lem en­e­mies. It had been Martha’s in­ten­tion to re­main in the house with their friends while Mary went to greet Je­sus, but in this she failed, for they all fol­lowed Mary and so found them­selves un­ex­pect­edly in the pres­ence of the Mas­ter.

168:0.10Martha led Mary to Je­sus, and when she saw him, she fell at his feet, ex­claim­ing, “If you had only been here, my brother would not have died!” And when Je­sus saw how they all grieved over the death of Laz­a­rus, his soul was moved with com­pas­sion.

168:0.11When the mourn­ers saw that Mary had gone to greet Je­sus, they with­drew for a short dis­tance while both Martha and Mary talked with the Mas­ter and re­ceived fur­ther words of com­fort and ex­hor­ta­tion to main­tain strong faith in the Fa­ther and com­plete res­ig­na­tion to the di­vine will.

168:0.12The hu­man mind of Je­sus was might­ily moved by the con­tention be­tween his love for Laz­a­rus and the be­reaved sis­ters and his dis­dain and con­tempt for the out­ward show of af­fec­tion man­i­fested by some of these un­be­liev­ing and mur­der­ously in­ten­tioned Jews. Je­sus in­dig­nantly re­sented the show of forced and out­ward mourn­ing for Laz­a­rus by some of these pro­fessed friends inas­much as such false sor­row was as­so­ci­ated in their hearts with so much bit­ter en­mity to­ward him­self. Some of these Jews, how­ever, were sin­cere in their mourn­ing, for they were real friends of the fam­ily.