thou lovest is sick._' The man who was healed at the Pool of Bethesda,
the blind man who was sent to wash in the Pool of Siloam, were merely
suffering Jews; the bread at Capernaum was given to five thousand men
gathered indiscriminately; the nobleman of Capernaum seems to have
heard for the first time of Jesus; the guests at the marriage-feast
may have been His neighbours, or even His kinsmen, but we are not told
that they were. This message is the first which directly appeals to
the private affection of the Son of Man, which calls Him to help a
friend because he is a friend. The words which follow of our Lord and
of His Apostle are worthy of all study in reference to this point.
'_When Jesus heard that, He said, This sickness is not unto death, but
for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.
Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When He had heard
therefore that he was sick, He abode two days still in the same place
where He was._' He had a work to do. This was the first thought of
all. The sickness was to glorify God, just as the blindness of the man
to whom He restored sight was to glorify God. The Son of God who had
been revealed as the Light of the world, was to be revealed as the
Restorer of life. Death was not to be conqueror here, any more than
darkness there. All other thoughts must give way to this. Yet '_Jesus
loved Martha and her sister, and Lazarus_.' The individual sympathy
was not crushed by the universal, but grew and expanded in the light
and warmth of it. He did respond to the message in His inmost heart.
The love which it assumed to be there--the love for that particular
man--was there. And in spite of it, yea, because of it, He continued
in the desert, and made no sign of moving towards Bethany. These
sentences enable us to enter into the Divine humanity of Jesus, as a
thousand prelections and discourses would not enable us to enter into
it. They do not present to us first the Divine side of His life, and
then the human, as if they were opposing aspects of the same Being.
They make us feel that the one is the only medium through which we can
behold the other.
'_Then after that He saith to His disciples, Let us go into Judæa
again. His disciples say unto Him, Master, the Jews of late sought to
stone thee; and goest thou thither again? Jesus answered, Are there
not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth
not, because he seeth the light of the world. But if a man walk in the
night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him._' I suppose
many persons have asked themselves, 'What does this sentence mean just
here? why was it introduced?' I do not know that we, who are living
easy and comfortable lives, can quite solve the question. But many a
patriot and confessor, who has been concealing himself from the anger
of those whom he wished to bless, has, I doubt not, learnt the meaning
of the sentence, and has felt the support of it. If he tried to rush
forth into danger, merely in obedience to some instinct or passion of
his own, he was walking in the night, and was sure to stumble. If he
heard a voice in his conscience bidding him go and do some work for
God,--go and aid some suffering friend,--he would be walking in a
track of light; it signified not what enemies might be awaiting him,
what stones might be cast at him, he could move on fearlessly and
safely. The sun was in the heavens,--the stones would miss until his
hour was come. If it was come, the sooner they struck the better.
'_These things said He: and after that He saith unto them, Our friend
Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep. Then
said His disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well. Howbeit Jesus
spake of his death: but they thought that He had spoken of taking of
rest in sleep. Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. And
I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may
believe; nevertheless let us go unto him. Then said Thomas, which is
called Didymus, unto his fellow-disciples, Let us also go, that we may
die with him._' These words, '_Our friend sleepeth_,' recal what was
said, in the other Gospels, of the daughter of Jairus; and they point
onwards to the language of the Epistles to the Thessalonians and to
the Corinthians, concerning those that are fallen asleep in Jesus. Our
Lord is evidently teaching His disciples a new language; a language
drawn from nature and experience; one which had mixed itself with
other forms of speech in the dialect of all nations; but yet which was
not easy for them to learn, and which we understand very imperfectly
yet. It might not help them much then, but it helped them afterwards,
that He did not speak merely of a man having fallen asleep, but of
'_our friend_' sleeping. They might not have seen Lazarus for weeks
or months, or heard any tidings of him. All the outward tokens by
which the existence of friendship is ascertained, might have ceased.
They might never meet again. Would, therefore, the name lose its
meaning or its power? What limit would you fix for that meaning or
that power? Surely there is something immortal about the name; it
prepares us for understanding how thin the thread is which separates
death from taking of rest in sleep. The words, '_I go to awake him out
of sleep_,' could, of course, convey little sense till the event
interpreted them. But the expression, '_Nevertheless let us go to
him_,' must have had a strange sound. 'Go to one who was already
dead,--what could that mean? What did it all mean?' Thomas, the
greatest doubter among them, assuredly could not tell. But he was
willing to die with his Master; and that was the best preparation for
understanding whatever He had to teach.
'_Then when Jesus came, He found that he had lain in the grave four
days already._' The commentator takes this opportunity of saying a
word about Eastern customs, and the need of a burial immediately after
death. Does he suppose that that necessity makes the story less near
and dear to the sorrower of the West? The longer he is permitted to
look at a face which appears often as if it had lost its
restlessness,--not its beauty or its life,--the more dark and terrible
must be the grave which is to hide it from him altogether, the more
earnestly he must ask, Can light ever penetrate into that darkness? It
is because the story of Lazarus has been believed to meet this
question; because it comes into contact with the fact which speaks
most directly to the senses and to the imagination of every one of us,
that we cling to it when the topics of ordinary consolation are
wearisome, unintelligible, even hateful, to us.
By such topics the sisters of Lazarus were tormented; for St. John
says,--'_Now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs
off: and many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary, to comfort them
concerning their brother_.' They endure the visitation impatiently or
patiently, according to their different dispositions. '_Then Martha,
as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met Him: but Mary
sat still in the house._' The impulse of the first is to find a Friend
to whom she can dare to make complaints, because she trusts Him; the
other retreats into herself, and, perhaps, finds that same Friend
there, teaching her another kind of lore than that which the
well-meaning comforters are pouring into her ear.
'_Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my
brother had not died._' It is the language of reproach; but it is the
kind of reproach which has faith and confidence for the ground of
it,--which comes from a longing that the person who is the object of
it should clear himself, and prove that he has not failed in the
office of friendship, however he may have seemed to do so. And then,
as if His face had already answered the uneasy suspicion which her
words had expressed--had given her a hope of some unknown,
inconceivable blessing--she adds, '_But I know that even now,
whatsoever thou shalt ask of God, God will give it thee. Jesus saith
unto her, Thy brother shall rise again._' The words sound grand and
glorious; they were really disappointing. What else she thought He
might ask of God she could not say; but it was not _this_. She had
heard often of a resurrection; the Jews, who had come to Bethany, had,
no doubt, been telling her many good discourses of the elders
concerning it. Ages hence he would, she thought, awake out of the
dust; in the meantime, the light in their house had been quenched; he
was gone from them. She said, '_I know that he shall rise again in the
resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the
resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were
dead, yet shall he live._' If He intended to give back Lazarus to her
at once, could He not have told her so? Might He not have said, 'In
thy special case, for my love to Lazarus and Mary and thee, I am about
to break through ordinary laws, and to raise a body out of the
grave,--not at the last day, but now.' Why not? Because, if He had
said so, He would have contradicted His own words, His own acts, the
whole tenor of His life. He did not come into the world to show
special favours, but to assert and manifest universal truth. He did
not come into the world to break God's laws, but to establish them,
and to show forth the will which was at the foundation of them.
Therefore, instead of limiting Martha's words about a resurrection in
the last day, He expanded her words,--He uttered what was a _more_
general proposition than that one,--not bounded to a certain moment in
the future, but extending over the present and the past. The
resurrection in the last day,--vague and loose as Martha's thoughts
were about it,--was still practically bounded by the feeling which
occupied her soul in that hour. 'I know that _my brother_ shall rise
again,' did not mean very much to her; the rising of any besides her
brother meant nothing. But '_I am the resurrection and the life_,'
were words that applied to herself as much as to Lazarus,--to her
sister as much as to either. She could not apprehend them, even in the
slightest degree, without feeling that they were spoken of _human_
beings,--not merely of that being who had been lying in the grave four
days. And yet how immeasurably more they met her own case, her own
sorrow, than the others! '_I am the resurrection and the life._' 'You
have a Friend, an almighty Friend, who restores life, who is the Giver
of life. Do not task your poor, feeble, sorrow-stricken fancy to
conceive of some distant world-gathering. There may be such a one;
but, if you are to know anything of it, know Me first. Trust in an
actual person; leave yourself and the world to Him.' And He went on:
'_He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and
whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die_.' I do not say
that she could understand this, or that we can. But I am sure she did
understand that she was meant to believe in Him--to rest in Him; and
that this belief and this rest might be exercised, not only by those
who could look into His countenance and hear sounds coming from His
lips, but by those who were out of sight,--who had passed into the
unseen world. The dead might hear His word speaking to them. The dead
might believe in Him. The dead might be quickened by that word and
that faith. Therefore, when He asked her the question, '_Believest
thou this?_'--though she could not dare to say, 'I believe it all; I
take it in just as Thou hast spoken it,'--she could say, '_Yea, Lord:
I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come
into the world_.' She could trust absolutely, unreservedly in Himself,
whatever His language might or might not import.
'_And when she had so said, she went her way, and called Mary her
sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee. As
soon as she heard that, she arose quickly, and came to Him._'
Martha went into a presence which she felt to be dear, with a
confidence that she should be welcome, with a certain sense that she
had a right to speak; Mary must wait in silence and awe till she had
some intimation that He was seeking for her. This difference of
characters is as marked in the nineteenth century as in the first; it
affects all the common subordinate relations of life; it reaches to
the highest and most divine. Each has its own worth, and its own
temptations. We have no business to disparage either; for Christ has
imparted both, and has made each a way to Himself.
'_Now Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in that place
where Martha met Him. The Jews then which were with her in the house,
and comforted her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and
went out, followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep
there. Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell
down at His feet, saying, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother
had not died._'
The good-natured comforters can give their victim no peace,--even the
grave is not too sacred a place for their persecutions; her only
safety is where her sister had sought it and found it. The words Mary
uses are the same as Martha's; they are the simplest expressions of
the thought which must have been in both of them,--the thought which
each must have understood the other to be vexed with, if nothing was
spoken,--the thought which Martha will have been able to utter, and
which Mary will probably have kept closed within her till that moment.
And is there anything in that thought to make a chasm between the
household in Bethany, and any English household in the nineteenth
century? Is not the feeling the very same, in the heart of every one
who has lost a friend or brother? 'He might have been saved; Christ
might have ordered this differently. In this and in that case He did;
why not in mine?'
'_When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping
which came with her, He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, and
said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto Him, Lord, come and see.
Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, Behold how He loved him! And some of
them said, Could not this Man, which opened the eyes of the blind,
have caused that even this man should not have died?_' The strength of
these words, which has been so great for those who have taken them
simply and naturally, has often been diluted. 'What need had He to
weep, seeing that He was about to remove the cause for weeping?' But
what if that grief of Mary was in kind the grief of every sister that
had lost a brother, since death entered into the world,--of every
sister who shall lose one, till death be finally swallowed up in
victory? What if the grief of those about her, though less earnest,
yet was at least a testimony that each of us has a share and a right
in that which any other is afflicted with? Would the Son of Man, who
had taken man's flesh, who had entered into man's sorrows, sympathise
less with her who was beside Him then, because He knew the depth and
cause of her grief better than she knew it herself; because He knew
that it could not be cured by the smile of a brother, or the pressure
of his hand, if that were granted her again; because He knew in
Himself the mystery of the death of every man, and was to bear it
Himself for every man? Surely it would have been a woful thing for us,
and for the world, if He had not groaned in spirit at the sight of
that cave, merely because Lazarus was to come out of it; if He had not
wept when He saw Mary and the Jews weep, merely because a sudden joy
was to succeed their tears! And was it not a cause for groaning, that
those who saw how minute, and tender, and personal His affection was
for this one man, should take so poor a measure of His love as to
suppose that He cared for him, and not for them,--for Mary and Martha,
and not for every human sorrower,--that He might from partiality have
caused that this man should not have died, but had no power of
delivering all from death?
'_Jesus therefore again groaning in Himself cometh to the grave. It
was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, Take ye away the
stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto Him, Lord,
by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days. Jesus saith
unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou
shouldest see the glory of God?_'
He had said to her, '_Thy brother shall rise again_.' He changes the
language now, that He may convey a deeper sense. It was God's glory
that was to be revealed in that act. Hereafter she would know how much
more it concerned her, and her sister, and her brother, that Jesus
should manifest that, than that He should have caused her brother not
to have gone into the grave, or to come forth from it again.
'_Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was
laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee
that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always: but
because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe
that thou hast sent me. And when He thus had spoken, He cried with a_
_loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth,
bound hand and foot with grave-clothes; and his face was bound about
with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go._'
The thanksgiving to His Father for the power which He felt He had been
endued with to finish that work, unfolds the mystery of His life; the
sense of filial dependence and trust that was at the root of it; the
pressure of human misery and death which turned His confidence into
cries and groans for deliverance and help; the quickening energy which
answered the cry; because, as He tells us so often, He was not doing
His own will, but the will of Him who sent Him. This time it was
needful that the cry should be heard by others. They must be taught
that He was not exercising some rare and unwonted privilege to serve a
partial end,--that He could bid Lazarus come forth, because He was in
the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, the resurrection and the
life.
St. John, who has told us the story with such care and minuteness,
does not stop for an instant to comment upon it, or to utter any
expressions of astonishment; he merely tells us: '_Then many of the
Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did,
believed on Him. But some of them went their ways to the Pharisees,
and told them what things Jesus had done._'
Could he have spoken otherwise, brethren? Did he not wish us to
consider this act as the sign of a truth, as the exercise of a power,
which circumstances cannot affect, which is proving its vitality from
age to age? Why should he comment? Why should he wonder? The
commentary was to be in the history of the world; the wonder was to
be renewed in the case of every brother, whom Christian hands were to
lay in the grave, 'earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,' in
sure and certain hope that Christ is '_the resurrection and the life,
and that whosoever believeth in Him, though he were dead, yet should
he live_.' When we think of the return of Lazarus to his house at
Bethany, it is not with an unmixed delight. We ask whether he could
have welcomed the world's confusions which he had escaped? whether the
thought must not have haunted him, that after a little while he should
be in the same cave again? These are questions which it may be well
for us to consider; though, perhaps, they are not different in kind
from those which arise when any one who has been on the borders of the
unseen world, who has taken leave of kinsfolk and friends, who has had
glimpses of another country, suddenly recovers, and has to adapt
himself once more--for a time probably with a strange sense of
awkwardness and incoherency--to the business and intercourse of the
earth. In one case as in the other, I conceive there is but this
solution of the difficulty. The man must be glad to be placed where it
pleases Christ that he should be placed. He will not certainly be
nearer Him by complaining of his destiny, or by not desiring exactly
the work which has been given him to do. If he has dreamed of a heaven
above where he shall be under some other law than that, or where his
will must not be in conformity with that law, the dream will never be
realized. So, doubtless, Lazarus was taught by his discipline. And
this may have been to him, if he could take it in, a greater comfort
than even his appearance again beside the old hearth,--a compensation
for all he might suffer then or afterwards,--that through him
multitudes unborn were to learn the meaning of their own death, the
secret of their own life, and who is the Friend that interprets them
both. To each man who has been near the grave, and has come back to
ever such commonplace duties, something of the same blessing may be
given. He may think of One who hallows the common feast as well as the
grave, who binds both worlds together.
To the question--
"Where wast thou, brother, those four days?
There lives no record of reply,
Which telling us what it is to die,
Had surely added praise to praise."
So we think very naturally. And yet, if we reflect, we shall perceive
that those four days can only have been a part of the education of
Lazarus,--that they cannot have been separate from all his previous
and all his later experience.
The first cry of life, when he came out of the womb, as much testified
of One in whom is life, who is the Source of life, as the look with
which he greeted his sisters or his Lord, when he was commanded to
come out of the grave. The opening of every sense to take in the
sights and sounds of the world around him,--the opening of every
affection which apprehended his human relations,--testified of the
same living Word. The revival of past acts and scenes in the
memory,--the awakening of the conscience, which bound those acts and
scenes to his own individual self,--declared that there is One who not
only gives life, but brings it back, who is the resurrection as well
as the life. As the years of manhood brought him into converse with
beings of his own race, whom he must meet on equal terms, whom he must
recognise as having powers, affections, and responsibilities like his
own,--as creatures looking before and after like himself,--he had a
witness that there must be a common life, a common resurrection. As
intercourse with Jesus gradually brought him to the knowledge of One
who was a friend, and more than a friend,--a Master to whom he could
submit,--an inspirer of strange thoughts,--a deliverer from infinite
perplexities,--the discerner of mysteries which eye could not see, or
ear hear; there was a more and more direct witness to his heart and
reason: 'Thou hast found the Christ. Thou hast found the resurrection
and the life.'
When one looks at the subject in this way, I am not sure whether one
cares so much to know what passed in those four days. Let death and
the grave claim their rights and keep their secrets, as long as they
can. They were to assert a higher right than they asserted over this
man of Bethany. Within a few days they were to claim dominion over Him
who said, '_I am the resurrection and the life_;' they were to try
whether they could not hold Him as their thrall for ever. If they
succeeded, it does not much concern us what has happened elsewhere in
the universe; there is one thick impenetrable cloud over it all. If
they failed, life must have fuller and more perfect dominion in the
unseen region than it has in ours. Nothing which seems to die here can
be under the sway of death there. And Christ, by raising one poor man
before He was raised Himself, testified that death shall have no
power, that the grave shall have no power, to extinguish one faculty
of the soul, one sense of the body, in any creature whose nature He
has taken.
Brethren, here is the doctrine of the resurrection of the spirit and
of the body taught in Christ's own manner, not in words, but in an
act. And here, too, is that doctrine of a general resurrection at the
last day, which Martha had learnt from the Pharisees,--which,
separated from the words, '_I am the resurrection and the life_,' is
the hardest and most unpractical of all opinions,--which, united to
them, as it is in the Burial Service of our Church, is the most
consolatory. A particular resurrection for individual men, without a
general resurrection of our race, without such a restitution of all
things as has been spoken of by prophets since the world began, would
be utterly unsatisfactory, because it would not set forth the glory of
God and the love of God. The general resurrection in Scripture is
described in various forms of speech, all answering to deep human
necessities. It is spoken of as a revelation of the Son of God; it is
spoken of as a revelation or unveiling of the sons of God in Him; it
is spoken of as a gathering together in Him of all things in heaven
and all in earth.