image: LumoProject.com

Spurred on her grief, Martha lets rip honestly and emotionally:

I know it was the grief and anxiety and all that, but I have to say I’m quite shocked and ashamed of some of the things I have thought about Jesus recently.  To be honest, I was bloody angry with him!  I mean, where was he when we needed him?  No where to be found!

I am sure he must have got our message. So, why didn’t he come?  What, was so important that he couldn’t drop it when we called?   I’m convinced that, if he had been here, my brother would not have died. But he wasn’t here, was he?  He let us down!    And, yes, I know about the threats on his life and all that, but he’s never let it bother him before!  And now of all times was not the moment for him to turn ‘chicken’!  I don’t care how ‘hot’ things were getting for him: he should have been here!

That’s exactly what I told him when, eventually, he turned up.  I stormed out to meet him, giving him a piece of my mind.  “Where’ve you been?  Why didn’t you come?  You’re too late now, so you might as well just turn around and leave! If you had been here Lazarus – your friend – would not have died!”

At least that’s what I wanted to say: I’m not quite sure my words were so polite!   I can tell you, that if I knew then what I know now –  that Jesus had deliberately lingered and let Lazarus die –  then I don’t  think Jesus would have survived our meeting!  I was livid – in a grief-fuelled rage!     Mary, I know, felt Just the same.  She couldn’t even bring herself to come out and greet him – hiding in doors to avoid him instead.  So, it was me, as usual, who went out with all guns blazing.  I couldn’t hide my feelings. I would tell him exactly what I thought!

Of course, Jesus was having nothing of it.  He wasn’t going to cave in at my berating him.  I shrugged off his hand as he reached out to touch me, saying in his own firm but gentle way “But Mary, don’t you believe?”

Well, what could I say to that?  Of course, I believed!  Or I had done, till now!  I’d believed in him completely.  With every fibre of my being, I knew that he would heal Lazarus, had he been here.   But he wasn’t here, was he?  That’s why I felt so hurt and disappointed!    He didn’t come.  

All I’d got now was loss and grief.   Unexpectedly, all I’d got was to cling on to the faith that the dead would rise again on the last day.  A distant and forlorn hope that fell far short of what I’d hoped for.  In truth, I didn’t want to see Lazarus again on the last day; I wanted him here and now.   But that had been cruelly denied me and nobody but Jesus was to blame.  He was the cause of all my ‘if-onlys’.  He was the target of my anger and pain.

Then, he really started to confuse me.  Can you believe it, at a time like this, he started to make huge claims for himself?    Things that my mind just could not take in, let alone understand.    I simply could not comprehend that, at a time like this, he was making it all about himself. But that’s exactly what he was doing.  “No, Martha, I’m not just talking about the end of the age. I’m talking here and now too!  I am the resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in me will live, even though they die. And those who live and believe in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

How he had the gall to ask that of me right then and there, I don’t know!  I glared at him with a venom I never knew I had in me.    “You know that I believe!”  I hissed at him, coldly.    “But what good has that done me?”  I wanted to follow up with, but didn’t.

I wanted to scream as I turned and stormed off back into the house. Right then, my head was reeling.  It felt like the ground was falling all around me.  I felt anger, panic, despair – a whole host of emotions swirling within me.  My heart was hurting so much.  I just had to walk away. Finding Mary hiding just behind the door, I told her in exasperation: “The teacher is here: you go and deal with him!”

So, Mary, at last, went to him.   And with the same accusation from her lips, she broke down and fell weeping before him.

At last, Jesus seemed to catch up with the reality of what was going on here.   It took Mary’s tears, not my anger, to break through (what I could only see then as) his denial.   He, too, began to sob. 

“Where is he?” he asked “Where have they buried him?” 

Not able to leave that to Mary, I rushed over and helped her to her feet. Holding each other, we went together to show him the way.

As we walked, I heard mixed reactions from the crowd – some following, others silently and respectfully lining the route.  A few were moved by his weeping, saying softly “see how much he loved Lazarus!”.  Others where less gracious, whispering the same accusation; “He saved others, why could he not have saved his friend?”     My heart echoed both the pity and the resentment as we trudged the way to the grave. 

At this point things got really horrifying!  Not content to see the grave, Jesus demanded that we open it up for him!

How dare he?!  After failing to turn up and help on time, now he trampled all over our feelings and showed no respect at all for the dead!    I stood aghast – staring at him in disbelief.  Was this really Jesus – our Jesus?  What had happened to him?  Where had he gone?!

I was stunned and silenced.   All I could manage to let out of my mouth in objection were some fumbling words about the body four days in the grave and likely smelling terrible.    It wouldn’t be nice.  It wouldn’t be healthy.  It would not be right and respectful!   In my head, I pleaded “Come on, Jesus, stop all this nonsense now!  Let’s go inside and face our grief together!”

But no.  He just ignored me and told them to take the stone away.  Brazenly he turned to us all and demanded “Didn’t I tell you that you would see the glory of God if you believed?” 

We were mortified!   Had he truly lost his senses? Why was he doing this to us?  

I dropped to my knees and joined Mary in sobs of tears as he went on to pray, in what sounded to me like delusional overconfidence, that God would hear him and help us poor souls to believe in him too.  Involuntarily, I gasped as he called “Lazarus, Come out!”  All I could do was stare in rage and disbelief at this person I no longer recognised.  What had come over him?  What had possessed him to do something like that?

All around, I heard a ripple of gasps from the crowd too.  But it took me a quite a while to recognise that their gasps had an increasingly different tone – a growing element of surprise mixing with the horror.  I looked up and followed their wide-eyed stares to the grave.  A chill of horror shivered my spine as I caught a movement.  Then I stifled a scream as a death-wrapped body came stumbling out of the grave.

Jesus laughed at our stunned impotence and shouted: “Quick! Somebody! Get him out of those bandages before he falls over and hurts himself!”

Soon we were all laughing with him, tears still streaming down our cheeks. 

Free of the grave and the cloths that bound him, Lazarus walked over and hugged me.  (He didn’t smell bad at all!) Then he hugged Mary.  Then he and Jesus joined in a hearty, back-slapping, brotherly embrace.

I looked on in awe, my heart healed and soaring.  Here was resurrection.  Here was life.   Here was Jesus!

So, yes, I feel shocked and ashamed to remember some of the things I thought and said earlier: but who could blame me?   Jesus certainly didn’t!   Holding Lazarus firmly by the shoulder, her reached out to pull me into their joyous embrace.  “See,” he whispered, “didn’t I say that you would see the Glory of God, if you only believed?!”