The Crown and the Cross: The Life of Christ (25 page)

As she worked, Martha could not keep from her mind the thought that if Jesus had been there, Lazarus would not have died. In a way, she felt the Master had failed her.

He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.

John 11:25

It was near the end of the second day after his departure from Bethany that Martha’s servant found Jesus. The Master was preaching outside a village about a day’s journey north of Bethabara on the east bank of the Jordan. He gave Martha’s words to Jesus as he had been instructed, and described the gravity of the disease and the rapidity with which it had developed.

Jesus heard him patiently, almost as if He had been expecting the message. “This sickness is not unto death,” He said, “but to the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby.” Then He turned to Thomas who, with a few others of the disciples, was with Him, and ordered that word be sent to the rest to rejoin Him as quickly as they could from the outlying villages where they had been teaching.

The following day the other disciples arrived, tired and dusty from the journey. They had not had a successful mission and were depressed.

“Lord,” said Simon Peter to Jesus, “increase our faith.”

Jesus sat beside a black mulberry bush, called in this region a sycamine tree. “If you had faith the size of a grain of mustard seed,” He said severely, “you might say to this sycamine tree, ‘Be you plucked up by the root and planted in the sea,’ and it should obey.

“But which of you having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say to him when he comes from the field, ‘Go and sit down to eat’? And will not rather say to him, ‘Make ready wherewith I may sup and gird yourself and serve me, till I have eaten and drunk, and afterward you shall eat and drink’?

“Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? So likewise when you have done all those things that are commanded of you, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants, for we have done only that which it was our duty to do.’”

The tired and depressed disciples were not particularly pleased by His words, which they took to mean that, had they exerted themselves more in His service, they would have achieved more lasting results. Jesus did not reprimand them further, but said, “Let us go into Judea again.”

Judea was a good two days’ journey away and their last visit to Jerusalem had almost ended in a riot from which they had been lucky to escape, so some of them were shocked by the idea of going back into the zone of danger.

“The Jews sought to stone you,” one of them pointed out. “Why go there again?”

“Are there not twelve hours in the day?” Jesus asked sternly. “If any man walk in the day he does not stumble because he sees the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbles because there is no light in him.”

Again He was reproving them for their lack of faith. Whatever waited for them in Judea was God’s will. If they walked as they should, in the light of their faith in Him and His Father, they could not stumble.

In a softer tone now, Jesus explained why they must go into Judea. “Our friend Lazarus sleeps,” He said. “But I go that I may wake him out of sleep.”

“Lord,” said one of the disciples a little testily, for he was weary from the forced journey to rejoin Jesus. “If he sleeps he does well.”

“Lazarus is dead,” Jesus then explained. “I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent that you may believe. Nevertheless let us go to him.”

“Let us also go that we may die with Him,” said Thomas, and the rest of them were ashamed now at their reluctance to accompany Jesus when He was going into danger. They all set out together and after two days’ journey came to Bethany.

When Jesus arrived, Lazarus had been dead and in the tomb for four days.

The room to which Mary went when she returned from the funeral had already been prepared as a chamber of mourning, a purpose it would serve for the next thirty days. As was the custom, the couches had been upturned and chairs tumbled over in token of sorrow. The women sought to comfort Mary but she went directly to a corner and knelt there, her eyes uplifted as she prayed to God. It was not for Lazarus that she prayed, but for herself, that she might have faith in what Jesus had taught of the truth of eternal life, faith to be certain that they would all be joined with Lazarus in heaven.

While Mary prayed, the lines of grief in her face were gradually relieved as the assurance she sought came flowing into her soul. Lazarus was gone; she would mourn him, for she loved him, but even in the depth of her sorrow, she was comforted by the knowledge that the separation from her brother would be only like the absence of a loved one who has gone on a long journey.

When Mary rose from her knees, her face was composed. The other women marveled at the deep and abiding faith that showed in her eyes and one of them spoke to Martha of it.

Martha still somewhat resented that Jesus had chosen this time to be absent from Bethany when He might have saved Lazarus, and it offended her that Mary seemed to have put away her grief so quickly.

“It is not seemly to give up mourning so soon,” she said. “You look almost happy and not even a week of sorrow has passed.” By custom a special week of sorrow began the mourning period. Traditionally the first three of the seven days, always excepting the Sabbath when all mourning was suspended, were the most intense.

“Have you forgotten the words of Jesus to Nicodemus?” Mary asked.

“What do you mean?”

“When Nicodemus first talked to Jesus, the Master told him God so loved the world He sent His Son so that whoever believes in Him shall not die but have everlasting life.”

Martha was taken aback. Concerned with the present and with material things, she had lacked the inner faith and the peace it could bring.

“Lazarus is dead only for a little while,” Mary said confidently. “He will rise again in heaven and we shall be with him.”

“But he was so young to be stricken down,” Martha protested, her eyes filling with tears again. “If Jesus had been here, Lazarus would not have died.”

“But he will live again and we shall be with him.” The promise was enough for Mary, but Martha could not yet find in her soul the fundamental faith she needed in order to be comforted.

The first days of deepest mourning were not yet finished when Jesus came to Bethany. As head of the household, Martha was busy with the needs of the friends, relatives, and retainers who had come to mourn with them. For her, physical action had always served to solve the emotional problems she was unable to cope with herself. She was in the kitchen directing the servants as they baked bread in the large ovens when word came that Jesus was approaching.

Leaving the house, she ran to meet Him and came upon Him and His party before they reached the yard surrounding the house. Dropping to her knees before Him, she said impetuously, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Jesus sensed the reproof in her tone and, knowing how she had loved Lazarus, understood. As soon as she spoke, however, Martha realized her presumption and, overcome now with shame, she added quickly, “But I know that even now whatever You ask of God, God will give it to You.”

Martha’s expression of faith had come belatedly, but Jesus was compassionate for the frailties of human character. As on that other occasion when she had protested that Mary sat at His feet while she labored with the household duties, He understood Martha’s good qualities as well as her weaknesses and was gentle with her. Taking her by the hand, He lifted her to her feet.

“Your brother shall rise again,” He told her.

Martha had not yet been able to find in her own heart Mary’s joyful confidence that they would be joined again with Lazarus in the resurrection. She thought mainly of the present and material, Mary of the spiritual and eternal, and it had been hard for her to find a meeting ground between the two.

“I know he shall rise again on the resurrection at the last day,” she said, but still somewhat doubtfully.

When Martha had run to meet Jesus, most of those gathered in the courtyard outside the house had followed her. Some were followers of Jesus while others were merely curious to see what the prophet of Nazareth would do for these people who were among His closest friends. They had stood a small distance away and the disciples, too, had held back while Jesus was talking to Martha, hesitating to intrude upon the meeting between Him and the bereaved sister. Jesus lifted His voice now so all could hear.

“I am the resurrection and the life,” He said. “He that believes in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whoever lives and believes in Me will never die.”

Turning to Martha again, He asked in a lower tone, “Do you believe this?”

Martha could not yet understand what Jesus was promising her. She believed that He could have kept Lazarus from death if He had been at Bethany when her brother became ill. But Lazarus was dead now; four days ago she had seen his body washed and anointed and placed in the tomb. Her practical mind recoiled from a death that was not death.

“Lord, I believe You are the Christ,” she said humbly. The Son of God, which should come into the world.”

Belatedly Martha remembered that Mary sat with the mourners in the upstairs chamber and she went to tell her sister of Jesus’ arrival. Mary left the mourning chamber and ran immediately to kneel before the Master.

“Lord,” she said, “if You had been here my brother would not have died.”

The words were those Martha had used, but there was an infinity of difference in the meaning. Where Martha had reproached Jesus for being absent and letting Lazarus die, Mary was stating a truth she had instinctively realized deep in her soul through that warm communion of spirit which existed between her and Jesus, the truth that those who stood beside Him could never die, even though they went through the tomb itself.

Tears filled Jesus’ eyes and ran down His cheeks. For whom did He weep?

Certainly He wept for the “lost sheep of Israel” whose faith did not even equal that of Martha and could never equal that of Mary. And for that lack of faith, they must die, not like Lazarus, with the certainty of resurrection to life eternal, but condemned eternally for their refusal to see the light.

Once again Mary had “chosen that good part,” the sublime conviction of faith in God and His Son “which shall not be taken away from her.”

Jesus’ travail lasted only a moment. The time left Him was growing short.

“Where have you laid him?” He asked.

Mary and Martha answered together. “Lord, come and see.”

As Jesus and Mary and Martha now moved through the garden toward the tomb, one of the men watching said wonderingly, “Behold, how He loved him!”

But another, of the same practical turn of mind as Martha, said, “Could not this Man who opened the eyes of the blind have kept Lazarus from dying?”

At the end of the garden the three stopped before the tomb, with the
golel
, the great stone, guarding it.

“Take away the stone,” Jesus directed.

Again Martha’s sense of the practical overrode her faith.

“Lord, by this time he stinks!” she cried, horrified at the thought of exposing a rotting body, the ultimate of defilement under Jewish ritual beliefs. “He has been dead four days.”

“Did I not say to you, if you believe, you would see the glory of God?” Jesus asked.

Ashamed, Martha made no more objections and some of the disciples joined the men who had come to mourn in pushing away the stone.

Standing before the cave, Jesus raised His eyes to heaven in prayer. ‘Father, I thank You that You have heard Me,” He said. “And I know that You hear Me always. But because of the people who stand by I spoke it, that they may believe You have sent Me.”

Then He lowered His eyes and said in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!”

Something stirred in the gloomy depths of the tomb, and then a white-robed figure slowly arose from the niche where the body of Lazarus had been placed. Stumbling a little, for the napkin was still bound across his face, Lazarus walked from the tomb.

“Loose him,” Jesus directed, “and let him go.”

In the garden and the courtyard outside the house, people were falling to their knees to worship Jesus and beg Him to teach them to believe. But a few slipped away to Jerusalem, eager to be the first to bring Caiaphas and Elam the news that the prophet of Nazareth had accomplished, almost on the doorstep of the temple, the ultimate miracle, that of raising a man dead four days and wrapped in his grave clothes.

In raising Lazarus, Jesus had now cast down the gage. The final phase of the conflict between Him and the authorities at Jerusalem had begun and its climax was inevitable.

News that Jesus had returned to Bethany and raised Lazarus from the dead struck Caiaphas with amazement. Previously Jesus had visited Jerusalem only at the time of the religious festivals, and Caiaphas had already begun to make plans which he expected to put into effect when the forthcoming Passover season began. Now Jesus was in Judea well before the Passover and, if the excited reports from Bethany were to be believed, making a startling impression upon the people who had seen Him raise Lazarus from the dead or heard the reports of it that were being circulated.