Living like Lazarus
Thoughts on John 11 and 12.
I am writing this blog on the Monday of Holy week; this is the day when Jesus went to the home of His friends, Mary, Martha and Lazarus, for dinner. As we read the account in John’s Gospel, we discover that at least some of Jesus’ disciples were also invited to the meal.
Martha was serving, and we can imagine that she was largely responsible for the planning and cooking of the meal. I feel that this is a very different Martha from the one we read about in Luke 10, when she was ‘worried and upset about many things.’ What had elicited such a change?
In John 11, Martha had discovered who Jesus really is; she had opened her aching, yearning heart to Him in distress and doubt, and had been met with love, life and restoration. She now recognised Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, sent into the world, and this made all the difference.
At the point at which clarity came to Martha, nothing material had essentially changed, but she had moved from duty to devotion, from friendship to family, and now she could serve with joy, generosity and gratitude.
These two encounters pivot around the raising from the dead of Martha’s brother, Lazarus. Lazarus, we assume, was the one who took care of his two sisters, Mary and Martha, and he was dead. What where they to do? Alongside their grief they must have had some anxiety as to how they would manage. Each sister took that worry and distress to Jesus, and He wept with them.
Jesus knew that He had power over death, He knew that He would resurrect Lazarus, yet still He mourned with the sisters. Jesus has won the victory over all our battles, yet still He walks alongside us as we face trials. He doesn’t give platitudes, He shares our pains and grief.
And so, we come to this scene at the family home, Martha happily serving the meal she has lovingly prepared, Mary devotedly pouring out her precious perfume to anoint Jesus, and Lazarus – he who had been dead only days earlier – sitting at the table and sharing the meal with Jesus.
That scene is like a snapshot of the change that Jesus makes in lives.
9 Meanwhile a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came, not only because of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.
As I have re read these encounters, I have been stuck by the fact that so many people came to the house, not because they had been invited to the meal, not because they were friends of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, not, at this stage, primarily because they wanted to see Jesus, although their curiosity was piqued about Him, but because they wanted to see Lazarus who had been raised from the dead.
And that led me to wonder; might people want to find out more about Jesus because they see how my life had been changed by Him? Do others see that I have been born again? Do I live every day, as I suspect that Lazarus did, in exuberant fullness of life?
Easter gives us another opportunity to proclaim: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again”, and we have that opportunity every single day through how we live.
