THE SERMON.
When I stood up to preach, I gave them no text; but, with the eleventh
chapter of the Gospel of St. John open before me, to keep me correct, I
proceeded to tell the story in the words God gave me; for who can dare to
say that he makes his own commonest speech?
"When Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and therefore our elder brother,
was going about on the earth, eating and drinking with his brothers and
sisters, there was one family he loved especially--a family of two sisters
and a brother; for, although he loves everybody as much as they can be
loved, there are some who can be loved more than others. Only God is always
trying to make us such that we can be loved more and more. There are
several stories--O, such lovely stories!--about that family and Jesus; and
we have to do with one of them now.
"They lived near the capital of the country, Jerusalem, in a village they
called Bethany; and it must have been a great relief to our Lord, when he
was worn out with the obstinacy and pride of the great men of the city, to
go out to the quiet little town and into the refuge of Lazarus's house,
where everyone was more glad at the sound of his feet than at any news that
could come to them.
"They had at this time behaved so ill to him in Jerusalem--taking up stones
to stone him even, though they dared not quite do it, mad with anger as
they were--and all because he told them the truth--that he had gone away to
the other side of the great river that divided the country, and taught the
people in that quiet place. While he was there his friend Lazarus was taken
ill; and the two sisters, Martha and Mary, sent a messenger to him, to say
to him, 'Lord, your friend is very ill.' Only they said it more beautifully
than that: 'Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.' You know, when
anyone is ill, we always want the person whom he loves most to come to him.
This is very wonderful. In the worst things that can come to us the first
thought is of love. People, like the Scribes and Pharisees, might say,
'What good can that do him?' And we may not in the least suppose that the
person we want knows any secret that can cure his pain; yet love is the
first thing we think of. And here we are more right than we know; for, at
the long last, love will cure everything: which truth, indeed, this story
will set forth to us. No doubt the heart of Lazarus, ill as he was, longed
after his friend; and, very likely, even the sight of Jesus might have
given him such strength that the life in him could have driven out the
death which had already got one foot across the threshold. But the sisters
expected more than this: they believed that Jesus, whom they knew to have
driven disease and death out of so many hearts, had only to come and touch
him--nay, only to speak a word, to look at him, and their brother was
saved. Do you think they presumed in thus expecting? The fact was, they did
not believe enough; they had not yet learned to believe that he could cure
him all the same whether he came to them or not, because he was always with
them. We cannot understand this; but our understanding is never a measure
of what is true.
"Whether Jesus knew exactly all that was going to take place I cannot tell.
Some people may feel certain upon points that I dare not feel certain upon.
One thing I am sure of: that he did not always know everything beforehand,
for he said so himself. It is infinitely more valuable to us, because more
beautiful and godlike in him, that he should trust his Father than that he
should foresee everything. At all events he knew that his Father did not
want him to go to his friends yet. So he sent them a message to the effect
that there was a particular reason for this sickness--that the end of it
was not the death of Lazarus, but the glory of God. This, I think, he told
them by the same messenger they sent to him; and then, instead of going to
them, he remained where he was.
"But O, my friends, what shall I say about this wonderful message? Think of
being sick for the glory of God! of being shipwrecked for the glory of God!
of being drowned for the glory of God! How can the sickness, the fear, the
broken-heartedness of his creatures be for the glory of God? What kind of
a God can that be? Why just a God so perfectly, absolutely good, that the
things that look least like it are only the means of clearing our eyes to
let us see how good he is. For he is so good that he is not satisfied with
_being_ good. He loves his children, so that except he can make them good
like himself, make them blessed by seeing how good he is, and desiring the
same goodness in themselves, he is not satisfied. He is not like a fine
proud benefactor, who is content with doing that which will satisfy his
sense of his own glory, but like a mother who puts her arm round her child,
and whose heart is sore till she can make her child see the love which is
her glory. The glorification of the Son of God is the glorification of the
human race; for the glory of God is the glory of man, and that glory is
love. Welcome sickness, welcome sorrow, welcome death, revealing that
glory!
"The next two verses sound very strangely together, and yet they almost
seem typical of all the perplexities of God's dealings. The old painters
and poets represented Faith as a beautiful woman, holding in her hand a cup
of wine and water, with a serpent coiled up within. Highhearted Faith!
she scruples not to drink of the life-giving wine and water; she is not
repelled by the upcoiled serpent. The serpent she takes but for the type of
the eternal wisdom that looks repellent because it is not understood. The
wine is good, the water is good; and if the hand of the supreme Fate put
that cup in her hand, the serpent itself must be good too,--harmless, at
least, to hurt the truth of the water and the wine. But let us read the
verses.
"'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.'
"Strange! his friend was sick: he abode two days where he was! But remember
what we have already heard. The glory of God was infinitely more for the
final cure of a dying Lazarus, who, give him all the life he could have,
would yet, without that glory, be in death, than the mere presence of the
Son of God. I say _mere_ presence, for, compared with the glory of God, the
very presence of his Son, so dissociated, is nothing. He abode where he was
that the glory of God, the final cure of humanity, the love that triumphs
over death, might shine out and redeem the hearts of men, so that death
could not touch them.
"After the two days, the hour had arrived. He said to his disciples, 'Let
us go back to Judæa.' They expostulated, because of the danger, saying,
'Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither
again?' The answer which he gave them I am not sure whether I can
thoroughly understand; but I think, in fact I know, it must bear on the
same region of life--the will of God. I think what he means by walking
in the day is simply doing the will of God. That was the sole, the
all-embracing light in which Jesus ever walked. I think he means that now
he saw plainly what the Father wanted him to do. If he did not see that the
Father wanted him to go back to Judæa, and yet went, that would be to
go stumblingly, to walk in the darkness. There are twelve hours in the
day--one time to act--a time of light and the clear call of duty; there is
a night when a man, not seeing where or hearing how, must be content to
rest. Something not inharmonious with this, I think, he must have intended;
but I do not see the whole thought clearly enough to be sure that I am
right. I do think, further, that it points at a clearer condition of human
vision and conviction than I am good enough to understand; though I hope
one day to rise into this upper stratum of light.
"Whether his scholars had heard anything of Lazarus yet, I do not know. It
looks a little as if Jesus had not told them the message he had had from
the sisters. But he told them now that he was asleep, and that he was going
to wake him. You would think they might have understood this. The idea of
going so many miles to wake a man might have surely suggested death. But
the disciples were sorely perplexed with many of his words. Sometimes they
looked far away for the meaning when the meaning lay in their very hearts;
sometimes they looked into their hands for it when it was lost in the
grandeur of the ages. But he meant them to see into all that he said by
and by, although they could not see into it now. When they understood him
better, then they would understand what he said better. And to understand
him better they must be more like him; and to make them more like him he
must go away and give them his spirit--awful mystery which no man but
himself can understand.
"Now he had to tell them plainly that Lazarus was dead. They had not
thought of death as a sleep. I suppose this was altogether a new and
Christian idea. Do not suppose that it applied more to Lazarus than to
other dead people. He was none the less dead that Jesus meant to take a
weary two days' journey to his sepulchre and wake him. If death is not a
sleep, Jesus did not speak the truth when he said Lazarus slept. You may
say it was a figure; but a figure that is not like the thing it figures is
simply a lie.
"They set out to go back to Judæa. Here we have a glimpse of the faith of
Thomas, the doubter. For a doubter is not without faith. The very fact
that he doubts, shows that he has some faith. When I find anyone hard upon
doubters, I always doubt the _quality_ of his faith. It is of little use to
have a great cable, if the hemp is so poor that it breaks like the painter
of a boat. I have known people whose power of believing chiefly consisted
in their incapacity for seeing difficulties. Of what fine sort a faith must
be that is founded in stupidity, or far worse, in indifference to the truth
and the mere desire to get out of hell! That is not a grand belief in the
Son of God, the radiation of the Father. Thomas's want of faith was shown
in the grumbling, self-pitying way in which he said, 'Let us also go that
we may die with him.' His Master had said that he was going to wake
him. Thomas said, 'that we may die with him.' You may say, 'He did not
understand him.' True, it may be, but his unbelief was the cause of his not
understanding him. I suppose Thomas meant this as a reproach to Jesus for
putting them all in danger by going back to Judæa; if not, it was only a
poor piece of sentimentality. So much for Thomas's unbelief. But he had
good and true faith notwithstanding; for _he went with his Master_.
"By the time they reached the neighbourhood of Bethany, Lazarus had been
dead four days. Someone ran to the house and told the sisters that Jesus
was coming. Martha, as soon as she heard it, rose and went to meet him.
It might be interesting at another time to compare the difference of the
behaviour of the two sisters upon this occasion with the difference of
their behaviour upon another occasion, likewise recorded; but with the man
dead in his sepulchre, and the hope dead in these two hearts, we have no
inclination to enter upon fine distinctions of character. Death and grief
bring out the great family likenesses in the living as well as in the dead.
"When Martha came to Jesus, she showed her true though imperfect faith by
almost attributing her brother's death to Jesus' absence. But even in the
moment, looking in the face of the Master, a fresh hope, a new budding of
faith, began in her soul. She thought--'What if, after all, he were
to bring him to life again!' O, trusting heart, how thou leavest the
dull-plodding intellect behind thee! While the conceited intellect is
reasoning upon the impossibility of the thing, the expectant faith beholds
it accomplished. Jesus, responding instantly to her faith, granting her
half-born prayer, says, 'Thy brother shall rise again;' not meaning the
general truth recognised, or at least assented to by all but the Sadducees,
concerning the final resurrection of the dead, but meaning, 'Be it unto
thee as thou wilt. I will raise him again.' For there is no steering for a
fine effect in the words of Jesus. But these words are too good for Martha
to take them as he meant them. Her faith is not quite equal to the belief
that he actually will do it. The thing she could hope for afar off she
could hardly believe when it came to her very door. 'O, yes,' she said, her
mood falling again to the level of the commonplace, 'of course, at the last
day.' Then the Lord turns away her thoughts from the dogmas of her faith
to himself, the Life, saying, 'I am the resurrection and the life: he that
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever
liveth and believeth in me, shall never die. Believest thou this?' Martha,
without understanding what he said more than in a very poor part, answered
in words which preserved her honesty entire, and yet included all he asked,
and a thousandfold more than she could yet believe: 'Yea, Lord; I believe
that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the
world.'
"I dare not pretend to have more than a grand glimmering of the truth of
Jesus' words 'shall never die;' but I am pretty sure that when Martha came
to die, she found that there was indeed no such thing as she had meant when
she used the ghastly word _death_, and said with her first new breath,
'Verily, Lord, I am not dead.'
"But look how this declaration of her confidence in the Christ operated
upon herself. She instantly thought of her sister; the hope that the Lord
would do something swelled within her, and, leaving Jesus, she went to find
Mary. Whoever has had a true word with the elder brother, straightway
will look around him to find his brother, his sister. The family feeling
blossoms: he wants his friend to share the glory withal. Martha wants Mary
to go to Jesus too.
"Mary heard her, forgot her visitors, rose, and went. They thought she went
to the grave: she went to meet its conqueror. But when she came to him, the
woman who had chosen the good part praised of Jesus, had but the same words
to embody her hope and her grief that her careful and troubled sister had
uttered a few minutes before. How often during those four days had not the
self-same words passed between them! 'Ah, if he had been here, our brother
had not died!' She said so to himself now, and wept, and her friends who
had followed her wept likewise. A moment more, and the Master groaned; yet
a moment, and he too wept. 'Sorrow is catching;' but this was not the mere
infection of sorrow. It went deeper than mere sympathy; for he groaned in
his spirit and was troubled. What made him weep? It was when he saw them
weeping that he wept. But why should he weep, when he knew how soon their
weeping would be turned into rejoicing? It was not for their weeping, so
soon to be over, that he wept, but for the human heart everywhere swollen
with tears, yea, with griefs that can find no such relief as tears; for
these, and for all his brothers and sisters tormented with pain for lack of
faith in his Father in heaven, Jesus wept. He saw the blessed well-being
of Lazarus on the one side, and on the other the streaming eyes from whose
sight he had vanished. The veil between was so thin! yet the sight of those
eyes could not pierce it: their hearts must go on weeping--without cause,
for his Father was so good. I think it was the helplessness he felt in
the impossibility of at once sweeping away the phantasm death from their
imagination that drew the tears from the eyes of Jesus. Certainly it was
not for Lazarus; it could hardly be for these his friends--save as they
represented the humanity which he would help, but could not help even as he
was about to help them.
"The Jews saw herein proof that he loved Lazarus; but they little thought
it was for them and their people, and for the Gentiles whom they despised,
that his tears were now flowing--that the love which pressed the fountains
of his weeping was love for every human heart, from Adam on through the
ages.
"Some of them went a little farther, nearly as far as the sisters, saying,
'Could he not have kept the man from dying?' But it was such a poor thing,
after all, that they thought he might have done. They regarded merely this
unexpected illness, this early death; for I daresay Lazarus was not much
older than Jesus. They did not think that, after all, Lazarus must die some
time; that the beloved could be saved, at best, only for a little while.
Jesus seems to have heard the remark, for he again groaned in himself.
"Meantime they were drawing near the place where he was buried. It was a
hollow in the face of a rock, with a stone laid against it. I suppose the
bodies were laid on something like shelves inside the rock, as they are in
many sepulchres. They were not put into coffins, but wound round and round
with linen.
"When they came before the door of death, Jesus said to them, 'Take away
the stone.' The nature of Martha's reply--the realism of it, as they would
say now-a-days--would seem to indicate that her dawning faith had sunk
again below the horizon, that in the presence of the insignia of death, her
faith yielded, even as the faith of Peter failed him when he saw around him
the grandeur of the high-priest, and his Master bound and helpless. Jesus
answered--O, what an answer!--To meet the corruption and the stink which
filled her poor human fancy, 'the glory of God' came from his lips: human
fear; horror speaking from the lips of a woman in the very jaws of the
devouring death; and the 'said I not unto thee?' from the mouth of him who
was so soon to pass worn and bloodless through such a door! 'He stinketh,'
said Martha. 'The glory of God,' said Jesus. 'Said I not unto thee, that,
if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?'
"Before the open throat of the sepulchre Jesus began to speak to his Father
aloud. He had prayed to him in his heart before, most likely while he
groaned in his spirit. Now he thanked him that he had comforted him, and
given him Lazarus as a first-fruit from the dead. But he will be true to
the listening people as well as to his ever-hearing Father; therefore he
tells why he said the word of thanks aloud--a thing not usual with him, for
his Father was always hearing, him. Having spoken it for the people, he
would say that it was for the people.
"The end of it all was that they might believe that God had sent him--a far
grander gift than having the dearest brought back from the grave; for he is
the life of men.
"'Lazarus, come forth!"
"And Lazarus came forth, creeping helplessly with inch-long steps of his
linen-bound limbs. 'Ha, ha! brother, sister!' cries the human heart. The
Lord of Life hath taken the prey from the spoiler; he hath emptied the
grave. Here comes the dead man, welcome as never was child from the
womb--new-born, and in him all the human race new-born from the grave!
'Loose him and let him go,' and the work is done. The sorrow is over, and
the joy is come. Home, home, Martha, Mary, with your Lazarus! He too will
go with you, the Lord of the Living. Home and get the feast ready, Martha!
Prepare the food for him who comes hungry from the grave, for him who has
called him thence. Home, Mary, to help Martha! What a household will yours
be! What wondrous speech will pass between the dead come to life and the
living come to die!
"But what pang is this that makes Lazarus draw hurried breath, and turns
Martha's cheek so pale? Ah, at the little window of the heart the pale eyes
of the defeated Horror look in. What! is he there still! Ah, yes, he will
come for Martha, come for Mary, come yet again for Lazarus--yea, come for
the Lord of Life himself, and carry all away. But look at the Lord: he
knows all about it, and he smiles. Does Martha think of the words he spoke,
'He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die'? Perhaps she does,
and, like the moon before the sun, her face returns the smile of her Lord.
"This, my friends, is a fancy in form, but it embodies a dear truth. What
is it to you and me that he raised Lazarus? We are not called upon to
believe that he will raise from the tomb that joy of our hearts which lies
buried there beyond our sight. Stop! Are we not? We are called upon to
believe this; else the whole story were for us a poor mockery. What is it
to us that the Lord raised Lazarus?--Is it nothing to know that our Brother
is Lord over the grave? Will the harvest be behind the first-fruits? If he
tells us he cannot, for good reasons, raise up our vanished love to-day, or
to-morrow, or for all the years of our life to come, shall we not mingle
the smile of faithful thanks with the sorrow of present loss, and walk
diligently waiting? That he called forth Lazarus showed that he was in his
keeping, that he is Lord of the living, and that all live to him, that he
has a hold of them, and can draw them forth when he will. If this is not
true, then the raising of Lazarus is false; I do not mean merely false in
fact, but false in meaning. If we believe in him, then in his name, both
for ourselves and for our friends, we must deny death and believe in life.
Lord Christ, fill our hearts with thy Life!"