The interest inspired by the wonderful character of Jesus rests
especially on those incidents which are most purely human, his
private, personal friendships, his keen sympathy with the suffering
and the afflicted. Among these incidents the story and characters
of the two sisters, Martha and Mary, have been set before us with
a fine individualism of dramatic representation that seems to make
them real to us, even at this distance of time.
The two sisters of Bethany have had for ages a name and a living
power in the church. Thousands of hearts have throbbed with theirs;
thousands have wept sympathetic tears in their sorrows and rejoiced
in their joy. By a few simple touches in the narrative they are
so delicately and justly discriminated that they stand for the
representatives of two distinct classes. Some of the ancient
Christian writers considered them as types of the active and the
contemplative aspects of religion. Martha is viewed as the secular
Christian, serving God in and through the channels of worldly
business, and Mary as the more peculiarly religious person, devoted
to a life of holy meditation and the researches of heavenly truth.
The two were equally the friends of Jesus. Apparently, the two
sisters with one brother were an orphan family, united by the
strongest mutual affection, and affording a circle peculiarly
congenial to the Master.
They inhabited a rural home just outside of Jerusalem; and it seems
that here, after the labors of a day spent in teaching in the
city, our Lord found at evening a homelike retreat where he could
enjoy perfect quiet and perfect love. It would seem, from many
touches in the Gospel narrative, as if Jesus, amid the labors and
applauses and successes of a public life, yearned for privacy and
domesticity,--for that home love which he persistently renounced to
give himself wholly to mankind. There is a shade of pathos in his
answer to one who proposed to be his disciple and dwell with him:
"Foxes have holes; the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of
man hath not where to lay his head." This little orphan circle, with
their quiet home, were thus especially dear to him, and it appears
that this was his refuge during that last week of his life, when he
knew that every day was bringing him nearer to the final anguish.
It is wonderful how sharply and truly, in a narrative so brief,
the characters of Martha and Mary are individualized. Martha,
in her Judæan dress and surroundings, is, after all, exactly
such a good woman as is often seen in our modern life,--a woman
primarily endowed with the faculties necessary for getting on in
the world, yet sincerely religious. She is energetic, businesslike,
matter-of-fact, strictly orthodox, and always ready for every
emergency. She lives in the present life strongly and intensely, and
her religion exhibits itself through regular forms and agencies.
She believes in the future life orthodoxly, and is always prompt
to confess its superior importance as a matter of doctrine, though
prone to make material things the first in practice. Many such
women there are in the high places of the Christian Church, and
much good they do. They manage fairs, they dress churches, they
get up religious festivals, their names are on committees, they
are known at celebrations. They rule their own homes with activity
and diligence, and they are justly honored by all who know them.
Now, nothing is more remarkable in the history of Jesus than the
catholicity of his appreciation of character. He never found fault
with natural organization, or expected all people to be of one
pattern. He did not break with Thomas for being naturally a cautious
doubter, or Peter for being a precipitate believer; and it is
specially recorded in the history of this family that Jesus loved
Martha. He understood her, he appreciated her worth, and he loved
her.
In Mary we see the type of those deeper and more sensitive natures
who ever aspire above and beyond the material and temporal to the
eternal and divine; souls that are seeking and inquiring with a
restlessness that no earthly thing can satisfy, who can find no
peace until they find it in union with God.
In St. Luke we have a record of the manner in which the first
acquaintance with this family was formed. This historian says:
"A woman named Martha received him at her house." Evidently the
decisive and salient power of her nature caused her to be regarded
as mistress of the family. There was a grown-up brother in the
family; but this house is not called the house of Lazarus, but the
house of Martha--a form of speaking the more remarkable from the
great superiority or leadership which ancient customs awarded to the
male sex. But Martha was one of those natural leaders whom everybody
instinctively thinks of as the head of any house they may happen to
belong to. Her tone toward Mary is authoritative. The Mary-nature
is a nature apt to appear to disadvantage in physical things. It
is often puzzled, and unskilled, and unready in the details and
emergencies of a life like ours, which so little meets its deepest
feelings and most importunate wants. It acquires skill in earthly
things only as a matter of discipline and conscience, but is always
yearning above them to something higher and divine. A delicacy
of moral nature suggests to such a person a thousand scruples
of conscientious inquiry in every turn of life, which embarrass
directness of action. To the Martha-nature, practical, direct, and
prosaic, all these doubts, scruples, hesitations, and unreadinesses
appear only as pitiable weaknesses.
Again, Martha's nature attaches a vast importance to many things
which, in the view of Mary, are so fleeting and perishable, and have
so little to do with the deeper immortal wants of the soul, that it
is difficult for her even to remember and keep them in sight. The
requirements of etiquette, the changes and details of fashion, the
thousand particulars which pertain to keeping up a certain footing
in society and a certain position in the world--all these Martha has
at her fingers' ends. They are the breath of her nostrils, while
Mary is always forgetting, overlooking, and transgressing them.
Many a Mary has escaped into a convent, or joined a sisterhood, or
worn the plain dress of the Quaker in order that she might escape
from the exaction of the Marthas of her day, "careful [or, more
literally, _full of care_] and troubled about many things."
It appears that in her way Martha was a religious woman, a sincere
member of the Jewish Church, and an intense believer. The preaching
of Christ was the great religious phenomenon of the times, and
Martha, Mary, and Lazarus joined the crowd who witnessed his
miracles and listened to his words. Both women accepted his message
and believed his Messiahship--Martha, from the witness of his
splendid miracles; Mary, from the deep accord of her heart with
the wonderful words he had uttered. To Martha he was the King that
should reign in splendor at Jerusalem, and raise their nation to an
untold height of glory; to Mary he was the answer to the eternal
question--the Way, the Truth, the Life, for which she had been
always longing.
Among many who urge and press hospitality, Martha's invitation
prevails. A proud home is that, when Jesus follows her--her prize,
her captive. The woman in our day who has captured in her net of
hospitalities the orator, the poet, the warrior--the star of all
eyes, the central point of all curiosity, desire, and regard--can
best appreciate Martha's joy. She will make an entertainment
that will do credit to the occasion. She revolves prodigies of
hospitality. She invites guests to whom her Acquisition shall
be duly exhibited, and all is hurry, bustle, and commotion. But
Mary follows him, silent, with a fluttering heart. His teaching
has aroused the divine longing, the immortal pain, to a throbbing
intensity; a sweet presentiment fills her soul, that she is near One
through whom the way into the Holiest is open, and now is the hour.
She neither hears nor sees the bustle of preparation; but apart,
where the Master has seated himself, she sits down at his feet, and
her eyes, more than her voice, address to him that question and that
prayer which are the question and the one great reality of all this
fleeting, mortal life.
The question is answered; the prayer is granted. At his feet she
becomes spiritually clairvoyant. The way to God becomes clear and
open. Her soul springs toward the light; is embraced by the peace of
God that passeth understanding. It is a soul-crisis, and the Master
sees that in that hour his breath has unfolded into blossom buds
that had been struggling in darkness. Mary has received in her bosom
the "white stone with the new name, which no man knoweth save him
that receiveth it," and of which Jesus only is the giver. As Master
and disciple sit in that calm and sweet accord, in which giver and
receiver are alike blessed, suddenly Martha appears and breaks into
the interview, in a characteristically imperative sentence: "Lord,
dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bid
her, therefore, that she help me."
Nothing could more energetically indicate Martha's character than
this sentence. It shows her blunt sincerity, her conscientious,
matter-of-fact worldliness, and her dictatorial positiveness.
Evidently, here is a person accustomed to having her own way and
bearing down all about her; a person who believes in herself without
a doubt, and is so positive that her way is the only right one that
she cannot but be amazed that the Master has not at once seen as
she does. To be sure, this is in her view the Christ, the Son of
God, the King of Israel, the human being whom in her deepest heart
she reverences; but no matter, she is so positive that she is right
that she does not hesitate to say her say, and make her complaint
of him as well as of her sister. People like Martha often arraign
and question the very providence of God itself when it stands in
the way of their own plans. Martha is sure of her ground. Here is
the Messiah, the King of Israel, at her house, and she is getting
up an entertainment worthy of him, slaving herself to death for
him, and he takes no notice, and most inconsiderately allows her
dreamy sister to sit listening to him, instead of joining in the
preparation.
The reply of Jesus went, as his replies were wont to do, to the very
root-fault of Martha's life, the fault of all such natures: "Martha,
Martha! thou art careful and troubled about many things, but _one_
thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall
not be taken from her." The Master's words evidently recognize
that in that critical hour Mary had passed a boundary in her soul
history, and made an attainment of priceless value. She had gained
something that could never be taken from her; and she had gained it
by that single-hearted devotion to spiritual things which made her
prompt to know and seize the hour of opportunity.
The brief narrative there intermits; we are not told how Martha
replied, or what are the results of this plain, tender faithfulness
of reproof. The Saviour, be it observed, did not blame Martha for
her nature. He did not blame her for not being Mary; but he did
blame her for not restraining and governing her own nature and
keeping it in due subjection to higher considerations. A being
of brighter worlds, he stood looking on Martha's life,--on her
activities and bustle and care; and to him how sorrowfully worthless
the greater part of them appeared! To him they were mere toys and
playthings, such as a child is allowed to play with in the earlier,
undeveloped hours of existence; not to be harshly condemned, but
still utterly fleeting and worthless in the face of the tremendous
eternal realities, the glories and the dangers of the eternal state.
It must be said here that all we know of our Lord leads us to
feel that he was not encouraging and defending in Mary a selfish,
sentimental indulgence in her own cherished emotions and affections,
leaving the burden of necessary care on a sister who would have been
equally glad to sit at Jesus' feet. That was not his reading of
the situation. It was that Martha, engrossed in a thousand cares,
burdened herself with a weight of perplexities of which there was
no need, and found no time and had no heart to come to him and
speak of the only, the one thing that endures beyond the present
world. To how many hearts does this reproof apply? How many who call
themselves Christians are weary, wasted, worn, drained of life,
injured in health, fretted in temper, by a class of anxieties so
purely worldly that they can never bring them to Christ, or if they
do, would meet first and foremost his tender reproof, "Thou art
careful and troubled about many things; there is but _one_ thing
really needful. Seek that good part which shall never be taken away."
What fruit this rebuke bore will appear as we further pursue the
history of the sister. The subsequent story shows that Martha was
a brave, sincere, good woman, capable of yielding to reproof and
acknowledging a fault. There is precious material in such, if only
their powers be turned to the highest and best things.
It is an interesting thought that the human affection of Jesus for
one family has been made the means of leaving on record the most
consoling experience for the sorrows of bereavement that sacred
literature affords. Viewed merely on the natural side, the intensity
of human affections and the frightful possibilities of suffering
involved in their very sweetness present a fearful prospect when
compared with that stony inflexibility of natural law, which goes
forth crushing, bruising, lacerating, without the least apparent
feeling for human agony.
The God of nature appears silent, unalterable, unsympathetic,
pursuing general good without a throb of pity for individual
suffering; and that suffering is so unspeakable, so terrible! Close
shadowing every bridal, every cradle, is this awful possibility
of death that may come at any moment, unannounced and inevitable.
The joy of this hour may become the bitterness of the next; the
ring, the curl of hair, the locket, the picture, that to-day are a
treasure of hope and happiness, to-morrow may be only weapons of
bitterness that stab at every view. The silent inflexibility of God
in upholding laws that work out such terrible agonies and suffering
is something against which the human heart moans and chafes
through all ancient literature. "The gods envy the happy," was the
construction put upon the problem of life as the old sages viewed
it.
But in this second scene of the story of the sisters of Bethany
we have that view of God which is the only one powerful enough to
soothe and control the despair of the stricken heart. It says to us
that behind this seeming inflexibility, this mighty and most needful
unholding of law, is a throbbing, sympathizing heart,--bearing with
us the sorrow of this struggling period of existence, and pointing
to a perfect fulfillment in the future.
The story opens most remarkably. In the absence of the Master, the
brother is stricken down with deadly disease. Forthwith a hasty
messenger is dispatched to Jesus. "Lord, he whom thou lovest is
sick." Here is no prayer expressed; but human language could not be
more full of all the elements of the best kind of prayer. It is the
prayer of perfect trust--the prayer of love that has no shadow of
doubt. If only we let Jesus know we are in trouble, we are helped.
We need not ask, we need only say, "He whom thou lovest is sick,"
and he will understand, and the work will be done. We are safe with
him.
Then comes the seeming contradiction--the trial of faith--that
gives this story such a value: "Now Jesus loved Martha and her
sister and Lazarus. When, therefore, he heard that he was sick, he
abode two days in the same place where he was." Because he loved
them, he delayed; because he loved them, he resisted that most
touching appeal that heart can make,--the appeal of utter trust. We
can imagine the wonder, the anguish, the conflict of spirit, when
death at last shut the door in the face of their prayers. Had God
forgotten to be gracious? Had he in anger shut up his tender mercy?
Did not Jesus love them? Had he not power to heal? Why then had he
suffered this? Ah! this is exactly the strait in which thousands of
Christ's own beloved ones must stand in the future; and Mary and
Martha, unconsciously to themselves, were suffering with Christ in
the great work of human consolation. Their distress and anguish and
sorrow were necessary to work out a great experience of God's love,
where multitudes of anguished hearts have laid themselves down as on
a pillow of repose, and have been comforted.
Something of this is shadowed in the Master's words: "This sickness
is not unto death, but for the glory of God,--that the Son of God
might be glorified thereby." What was that glory of God? Not most
his natural power, but his sympathetic tenderness, his loving heart.
What is the glory of the Son of God? Not the mere display of power,
but power used to console, in manifesting to the world that this
cruel _death_--the shadow that haunts all human life, that appalls
and terrifies, that scatters anguish and despair--is _not_ death,
but the gateway of a brighter life, in which Jesus shall restore
love to love, in eternal reunion.
In the scene with the sisters before the Saviour arrives, we are
struck with the consideration in which the family is held. This
house is thronged with sympathizing friends, and, as appears from
some incidents afterwards, friends among the higher classes of the
nation. Martha hears of the approach of Jesus, and goes forth to
meet him.
In all the scene which follows we are impressed with the dignity
and worth of Martha's character. We see in the scene of sorrow that
Martha has been the strong, practical woman, on whom all rely in
the hour of sickness, and whose energy is equal to any emergency.
We see her unsubdued by emotion, ready to go forth to receive
Jesus, and prompt to meet the issues of the moment. We see, too,
that the appreciation of the worth of her character, which had led
him to admonish her against the materialistic tendencies of such
a nature, was justified by the fruits of that rebuke. Martha had
grown more spiritual by intercourse with the Master, and as she
falls at Jesus' feet the half-complaint which her sorrow wrings
from her is here merged in the expression of her faith: "Lord, if
thou hadst been here my brother had not died; but I know that even
now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it to thee.
Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again." Like every
well-trained religious Jew of her day, Martha was versed in the
doctrine of the general resurrection. That this belief was a more
actively operating motive with the ancient Jewish than with the
modern Christian Church of our day is attested by the affecting
history of the martyrdom of the mother and her seven sons, in the
Book of Maccabees. Martha therefore makes prompt answer, "I know
that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day." Jesus
answered her in words which no mere mortal could have uttered--words
of a divine fullness of meaning--"I am the Resurrection and the
Life: he that believeth in me, though dead, shall live, and
whosoever believeth in me is immortal."
In these words he claims to be the great source of Life,--the
absolute Lord and Controller of all that relates to life, death, and
eternity; and he makes the appeal to Martha's faith: "Believest thou
this?" "Yea, Lord," she responds, "I believe thou art the Christ of
God that should come into the world." And then she runs and calls
her sister secretly, saying, "The Master is come and calleth for
thee." As a majestic symphony modulates into a tender and pathetic
minor passage, so the tone of the narrative here changes to the most
exquisite pathos. Mary, attended by her weeping friends, comes and
falls at Jesus' feet, and sobs out: "Lord, if thou hadst been here
my brother had not died!"
It indicates the delicate sense of character which ever marked
the intercourse of our Lord, that to this helpless, heart-broken
child prostrate at his feet he addresses no appeal to reason or
faith. He felt within himself the overwhelming power of that tide
of emotion which for the time bore down both reason and faith in
helpless anguish. With such sorrow there was no arguing, and Jesus
did not attempt argument; for the story goes on: "When Jesus saw her
weeping, and the Jews also weeping that came with her, he groaned in
spirit and was troubled; and he said, Where have ye laid him? And
they said, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept." Those tears interpreted
for all time God's silence and apparent indifference to human
suffering; and wherever Christ is worshiped as the brightness of
the Father's glory and the express image of his person, they bear
witness that the God who upholds the laws that wound and divide
human affections still feels with us the sorrow which he permits.
"In all our afflictions he is afflicted."
And now came the sublime and solemn scene when he who had claimed
to be the Resurrection and the Life made good his claim. Standing
by the grave he called, as he shall one day call to all the dead,
"Lazarus, come forth!" And here the curtain drops over the scene of
restoration.
We do not see this family circle again till just before the final
scene of the great tragedy of Christ's life. The hour was at hand,
of suffering, betrayal, rejection, denial, shame, agony, and death;
and with the shadow of this awful cloud over his mind, Jesus comes
for the last time to Jerusalem. To the eye of the thoughtless,
Jesus was never so popular, so beloved, as at the moment when he
entered the last week of his life at Jerusalem. Palm branches and
flowers strewed his way, hosannas greeted him on every side, and
the chief priests and Scribes said, "Perceive ye how ye prevail
nothing? Behold the world is gone after him!" But the mind of Jesus
was wrapped in that awful shade of the events that were so soon to
follow.
He passes out, after his first day in Jerusalem, to Bethany, and
takes refuge in this dear circle. There they make him a feast,
and Martha serves, but Lazarus, as a restored treasure, sits at
the table. Then took Mary a pound of ointment, very precious, and
anointed the head of Jesus, and anointed his feet with the ointment,
and wiped them with her hair.
There is something in the action that marks the poetic and sensitive
nature of Mary. Her heart was overburdened with gratitude and love.
She longed to give something, and how little was there that she
could give! She buys the most rare, the most costly of perfumes,
breaks the vase, and sheds it upon his head. Could she have put
her whole life, her whole existence, into that fleeting perfume
and poured it out for him, she gladly would have done it. That was
what the action said, and what Jesus understood. Forthwith comes
the criticism of Judas: "What a waste! It were better to give the
money to the poor than to expend it in mere sentimentalism." Jesus
defended her with all the warmth of his nature, in words tinged with
the presentiment of his approaching doom: "Let her alone; she is
come aforehand to anoint my body for the burial." Then, as if deeply
touched with the reality of that love which thus devoted itself to
him, he adds, "Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout
the world, there shall what this woman hath done be had in
remembrance." The value set upon pure love, upon that unconsidering
devotion which gives its best and utmost freely and wholly, is
expressed in these words. A loving God seeks love; and he who thus
spoke is he who afterward, when he appeared in glory, declared his
abhorrence of lukewarmness in his followers: "I would thou wert cold
or hot; because thou art lukewarm I will spue thee out of my mouth."
It is significant of the change which had passed upon Martha that no
criticism of Mary's action in this case came from her. There might
have been a time when this inconsiderate devotion of a poetic nature
would have annoyed her and called out remonstrance. In her silence
we feel a sympathetic acquiescence.
After this scene we meet the family no more. Doubtless the three
were among the early watchers upon the resurrection morning;
doubtless they were of the number among whom Jesus stood after the
resurrection, saying, "Peace be unto you;" doubtless they were of
those who went out with him to the Mount of Olives when he was taken
up into heaven; and doubtless they are now with him in glory: for it
is an affecting thought that no human personality is ever lost or to
be lost. In the future ages it may be our happiness to see and know
those whose history has touched our hearts so deeply.
One lesson from this history we pray may be taken into every
mourning heart. The Apostle says that Jesus upholds all things by
the word of his power. The laws by which accident, sickness, loss,
and death are constantly bringing despair and sorrow to sensitive
hearts are upheld by that same Jesus who wept at the grave of
Lazarus, and who is declared to be Jesus Christ, the same yesterday
and forever. When we see the exceeding preciousness of human love
in his eyes, and realize his sympathetic nature, and then remember
that he is RESURRECTION AND LIFE, can we not trust him with our
best beloved, and look to him for that hour of reunion which he has
promised?
The doctrine of the resurrection of the body is a precious
concession to human weakness and human love. How dear the outward
form of our child,--how distressing to think we shall never see it
again! But Christ promises we shall. Here is a mystery. St. Paul
says, that as the seed buried in the earth is to the new plant or
flower, so is our present mortal body to the new immortal one that
shall spring from it. It shall be our friend, our child, familiar
to us with all that mysterious charm of personal identity, yet
clothed with the life and beauty of the skies; and then the Lord God
will wipe away all tears from all faces.