When Jesus met Lazarus, Mary and Martha

Hello and welcome to the Gathering, like weekly worship only darker and louder. That’s not meant as a description of my talk, by the way.

This morning, Andrew Lingham talked about “When Jesus met Bartimaeus”. I get to talk about another meeting Jesus had, when Jesus met Lazarus. In order to tell you the story of Lazarus’ meeting with Jesus, I will have to tell you the story of his two sisters’ meeting with Jesus, too. The sisters are Martha and Mary. The story will be very familiar to many of you, so I will try to tell it in an interesting way.

You’ll find the story described in the story of Jesus’ life written by John, in Chapter 11 of that book. The passage is long, so I won’t read all of it.

We don’t know much about Lazarus, other than what the passage tells us. At the beginning of the chapter, we’re told:

Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair. So the sisters sent word to Jesus, "Lord, the one you love is sick."

Not much to go on, is there, aside from the fact that he got ill, he died, and Jesus loved him.

Mary and Martha are rather more famous, incidentally. Mary soon after this will anoint Jesus’ feet with oil and dry them with her hair, in what is one of the most powerful expressions of love and devotion to Jesus in the whole of the New Testament. I'll come back to that in a moment.

They also feature in the first meeting of the family with Jesus, when Martha invites Jesus to their home. You may remember this story. Mary spends all her time sitting at Jesus’ feet listening to him talk, and leaves Martha to run around to care for all the guests on her own.

For years, in another spectacular own goal by the church on all things gender-related, this story has been used to make women feel guilty about doing too much domestic work. When really domestic work was all that women were allowed to do in the first place. That is not really the point of the story. Let me read you the few verses. You’ll find this in the biography of Jesus written by Luke, Chapter 10, verses 38 – 42:

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!"
"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."

The passage is not about working too much, is it? If work is the issue at all, then only in the context of finding a right balance between serving others and spending time with Jesus.

No, what has been hidden by all this controversy over how much women should or should not work is a much more revolutionary event – Mary sits at Jesus’ feet and listens to his teaching. Can you imagine how utterly extraordinary a thing it was for a woman to sit at the feet of a rabbi and listen to him teach in first-century Israel? The scandal of it would not have been greater than if the Queen today decided to go jogging through St James’ Park in her underwear. Bit of a grim image, I’m sorry.

I mean, for a woman to listen to a Rabbi’s teaching was inconceivable. Not only were women supposed to be incapable of such understanding, it was considered positively evil for women to seek knowledge. After all, it was the quest for knowledge that made Eve eat the apple in the Garden of Eden. The fact that Adam ate the apple too was conveniently forgotten.

Yet, here a woman sits right in the middle of the talk, not at the edge, but right at the master’s feet, slap bang in the middle of all these men. Not only does Jesus not tell her off. He praises her for doing it. He says she has made the right choice. I feel like shouting, “Hah, take that all you bigoted male priests and pastors who taught that it was evil for a woman to know too much.” Jesus didn’t think learning was evil in a woman. He loves the faith in Mary. She doesn’t hide away her response to him. She forgets about everything else, and like a child does with a favourite uncle or aunt, she just wants to spend time listening to his voice.

Anyway, back to Lazarus. We don’t know how much time passes between this first meeting between Jesus and Martha and Mary, and the death of Lazarus. We do know that it is long enough for Jesus to get to know Lazarus, and well enough for his sisters to say to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick”.

It’s not much of a surprise that Jesus goes to Lazarus, even if the last time he was in the area, the Jews there tried to kill him. If you take even just a short look at Jesus’ life-story, you will find plenty of instances of him going out of his way to help people. After all, Jesus once taught his disciples that if someone asked for your coat, you should give him your shirt, too.

What is surprising is that Jesus waits two more days to set off. That delay means that Jesus arrives only four days after Lazarus has died.

Now, writing this talk has caused me endless trouble, more trouble than any other talk I’ve done. And I think that is because of this – Jesus waits for his friend, the man he loves, to die. My heart quakes when I say that. I mean, let’s make it clear from the start, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. He announces as soon as he hears of Lazarus’ illness,

"This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory so that God's Son may be glorified through it."

So, at least Jesus knows what the outcome is going to be before he sets off.

But this does reveal something about Jesus’ attitude to our adversity, to when things go wrong in the lives of those of us who love him. For Jesus, our adversity is not in the first instance something that needs to be removed or solved as quickly as possible. Instead, our experience of things going wrong provides an opportunity for God to demonstrate his power and glory. For that reason, the more desperate the situation, the more obvious God’s intervention becomes. Even if God has to wait sometimes until things are really desperate.

People have argued that Jesus’ delay in coming to the aid of Lazarus is made up for by the astonishing miracle he performs – after all, he raises Lazarus from the dead. You don’t get more spectacular than that, do you? Nevertheless, I can’t help but ask, “Is that enough?”

You see, my family and I are experiencing adversity at the moment. I’m only very part-time employed. My plans for earning more money have not come to anything, yet. A lot of people here tonight will be experiencing adversity – the economic survival of a lot of us is at least in question, if not yet under threat. Is God waiting right now for things to get even more desperate before he does something about it, to make the proof of his power even more spectacular? That feels uncomfortable, doesn’t it? I’d rather that God fixes things now, thank you very much.

That feeling seems to be shared by Mary and Martha. When Jesus finally arrives in Lazarus’ village, Martha is the first to come to him and say,

"Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Can you feel the accusation in that? Why did you delay so long to come, Jesus? You could have prevented all this from happening.

Yet, Martha goes beyond that unspoken accusation. She says to Jesus, “But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask."

That’s an astonishing demonstration of faith, isn’t it? Her brother is dead. Already, she has told Jesus that he could have done better than he did. And nevertheless, she still believes that he can change the situation if he chooses to do so.

What happens next? Let me return to the passage:

Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."
Martha answered, "I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day."
Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"
"Yes, Lord," she told him, "I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world."

I find that awe-inspiring. If anyone would have had the right to be angry with Jesus, and to stop trusting him at all, it would have been Martha. He hasn’t done the easy thing, to cure Lazarus when he was just ill. Healing people is something Jesus has done a lot. Nevertheless, even though Jesus has failed to heal Lazarus, Martha believes that he is capable of a much more spectacular miracle – to raise him from the dead.

I find some comfort from Martha’s expression of her doubt, and Jesus’ response. He doesn’t tell her, “Stop questioning me, puny human. I am God, I get to do what I like.” And, to be fair, he could have said that. No, his first response is to make a promise – your brother will rise again, he says. He promises to change the situation, and so acknowledges that she has a right to feel angry about how things have developed so far.

I find more comfort in Jesus’ response to Mary, when she finally comes to him. You see, when Jesus arrives in Bethany, only Martha goes out to meet him. Mary stays at home. I can imagine that she was rather too upset to want to see him. Only when Martha encourages her to go to him, does Mary go. She falls at Jesus’ feet and says, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” I wonder, did Mary fall at his feet so that she wouldn’t punch him in the face?
Jesus’ response indicates something of the intensity of her grief. We’re told,

Jesus wept.

The other Jews think that he weeps for Lazarus. But that can’t be true. Jesus has just told Martha that he will raise Lazarus from the dead, so it doesn’t make sense for Jesus to weep for Lazarus.

No, I think Jesus weeps for someone else. I think, he weeps for Mary. He weeps for the grief that she has had to experience. He weeps for the pain he has had to cause two women he loves dearly, by delaying deliberately to intervene in Lazarus’s life. Even if the purpose of his delay was to make an even more spectacular demonstration of God’s power and glory.

That fact that Jesus weeps, gives me comfort. It tells me that even if Jesus is delaying to intervene in my adversity now, because if he intervenes later it will be even clearer that it was him who did it, the delay hurts him as much as it hurts me. And he will only delay because there is something much more spectacular to come.

And then Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, by the simple expedient of saying, “Lazarus, come out!”

Now, those are some breath-taking words, don’t you think? I can feel the whole universe ring with their power. Because Jesus says much more here than just, “Hey you, Lazarus, come on out, you don’t quite get to go to heaven yet.”
He says here that there are no lost causes anymore. There is no situation so desperate, or so far beyond any help, that Jesus can’t change it. There is no boundary anymore to the victory of life over death, of light over darkness. Even death itself is overcome. Now that is a truly spectacular miracle.

Do you believe that? Do you believe that Jesus can, literally, raise people from the dead? Do you believe that Jesus can transform whatever is utterly hopeless in your life?

One final note, just because I love the end of this story. We’re not told in the passage describing Lazarus’ resurrection, what Mary and Martha think or feel or do in response. That response comes in the next chapter:

Six days before the Passover,
[that is, six days before Jesus himself will be killed on the cross,]
Jesus arrived at Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesus' honour. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume
[That’s a bit of an understatement. The value of the oil she uses is about a year’s wages at the time]
; she poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

This is Mary’s response to Jesus’ miracle. The joy does not lie in the value in the oil, by the way. The joy lies in her act of worship, in anointing Jesus, and wiping his feet with her hair. The action is of course symbolic. By anointing his feet, Mary is preparing Jesus, even without knowing it, for burial. She is already pointing ahead at Jesus’ own death and resurrection. And by wiping his feet with her hair, she declares herself his servant, as utterly and completely his. Her action comes out of and expresses the deepest love for and devotion to Jesus.

Let us stand.

I think we should pray for our those situations in our lives that feel like they are beyond hope, beyond a cure. Some of us may have to say to Jesus that we are angry – if only you had acted sooner, then this or that would never have happened, Lord.
Some of us will have to say, “But I still believe you are the son of God, and God will do whatever you ask of him.”