My name is Anna Burch, Minister to Children at First Baptist Church in Greenwood and co-representative for BWIM SC.
Our passage today- Jesus raising Lazarus- is such a rich one. We see humanity and the Divine mingle. We see in it two women’s journeys and how their faith has evolved. We are reminded of the hope of the resurrection, and we see how God brings life. This passage also offers another place where we see it is women who bear witness to resurrection and newness of life.
In this passage, Jesus meets these sisters- Mary and Martha- once more. Jesus meets Martha first and to her proclaims one of his “I am’ statements- “I am the resurrection and the life”. Jesus is revealing a bit more of himself and of his purpose on Earth to a woman. Martha responds with a strong faithfulness that she believes Jesus to be “the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” Martha offers us such a strong theological statement with her words. She affirms that Jesus is God’s Son, the one who came near to us, in order to fulfill his purpose. Through her confession, we are able to see the evolution of her faith journey. When we first meet Martha earlier in the gospels, she is focused on the practical, on what needs to get done. She chastises her sister for not helping with the work instead choosing to sit at the feet of Jesus. Jesus reminds her and us that life is relational and is about time spent together. That God wants us to slow down, to spent time in prayer, worship, and in Christian community and that time spent that way is never time wasted. Here we see how Martha has grown and evolved in her faith. She learned to wonder, she has learned to trust, and she has learned to follow Jesus. She has learned that there is a time and place for the doing, but that there is a time and a place for wonder, awe, and simply being. It is Martha who calls for the stone to be rolled away after Jesus asks where Lazarus is laid. And while she reminds him that they can in fact smell the stench of death- for she hasn’t totally shaken the practical all the way-, she allows for what Jesus asks to be done. Here she chooses to follows Jesus. She is ready to trust him- as farfetched as what he is asking sounds like. She knows him to be the Messiah and she is ready to see the Divine. In being willing, she witnesses resurrection and life. She witnesses hope.
Meanwhile, with Mary, we also see the evolution and journey of a person. When we find her before, it is Mary who affirms that Jesus is the special one. One worthy of spending time with, of worshipping. However, after her brother’s death, we see her grief and we see how it colors her faith. When she first sees Jesus after Lazarus’s death, we see her grief fall onto Jesus. If he had been here, he would have saved her brother and he would surely be alive now. Mary offers us a human perspective. She shows us what it is like to be human. We grieve, we get angry, we are frustrated, we don’t understand. And we bring that to God. In our story, Jesus offers us a reminder of how God responds to our humanity as it comes before God- Jesus is deeply moved by Mary’s tears and Jesus weeps also. This passage reminds us that God travels our journeys with us- allowing us to be angry, allowing us to cry, allowing us to be frustrated, but all the while feeling and crying with us.
This passage gets at the heart of the hope of the resurrection and life Jesus offers. Heaven is our next step. But while we are here on Earth, God is a god who is with us, who allows us to bring our humanity and who accepts it, who weeps with us, and who does not leave us where we are, but moves us forward in hope and in life.
This passage also gets at the heart of what it is to be human. We believe, we struggle, we question, we feel so many emotions. But despite that- or sometime perhaps in light of that- if we are willing to watch the stone be rolled, we are able to see pieces of the Divine even when it is hard, even when we are not expecting it, even when we may think it not possible. And that is a hope-filled thing.