Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’ Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
Then after this he said to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?’ Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.’ After saying this, he told them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.’ Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.’ Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow-disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’
When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, ‘The Teacher is here and is calling for you.’ And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’
Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upwards and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’
Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.
John 11:1-45
“Well – what a pickle!” as one elderly lady I spoke to on the phone yesterday said. “All we can do is pray I suppose.”
Prayer is, I’m sure, a constant part of our lives but at this point, each sitting in our own little safe bubble, we may be forgiven along with many others for wanting to scream out to God in fear, “Why aren’t you here? If you were really here this would not have happened!”
And it is perfectly understandable that many in the secular world may also ask, “If your God is so loving why do fires devastate Australia? Why is COVID 19 killing the old and infirm, depriving people of their income, making lonely people lonelier? Why do bad things happen to good and innocent people? Why isn’t he here? If he was really here these things would not have happened!”
So it is with all this in mind that I actually find today’s reading helpful. If nothing else it shows us that ‘it was ever thus.’ Along with Martha and Mary trying to understand Jesus’ actions the world still cries, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.”
There is no easy answer to the problem of undeserved suffering. Perhaps that is why Jesus wept. In his divinity he knew that out of even this tragedy good would come, but in his humanity perhaps he also understood the total lack of comprehension felt by Lazarus’ family. We too can know from his earthly experience that he can understand the incomprehension felt by us today, as to why a God, who is supposed to love us, allows such things to occur even if good is the outcome.
After all as day follows day we are seeing so much good – half a million people offering to help the NHS by volunteering, neighbours looking out for each other, if at a distance, and most heartening of all the kindness of strangers, but still, couldn’t God in all his power find a way to bring about that good without appearing to abandon his own to their pain and fear, distress and loss?
There are no easy answers but, strangely, I am beginning to hear stories of people of faith, to whom the worst is happening, sticking with God, trusting him, indeed depending on him. Despite all that has happened to them and its apparent unfairness they would still claim that God is bringing good out of, in one recent case, their multiple tragedies. And significantly their understanding, such as it is, is NOT that God has caused their particular catalogue of disaster but that, in a broken and fallen world where such events do happen, God’s power is sufficient to carry them through and to take and use even the worst things for some eventual good.
Perhaps then, in this part of the Gospel story, Jesus, as ever, is living out the way God is. God is NOT always understandable, he does NOT always respond to our prayers, to our situations, in the way we think he should. In fact, sometimes, it even feels as though he is absent, delays his appearance. Yet we know he understands our life, we know he has been like us, suffered like us and somehow, despite everything, he is able to use every situation, offered to him in faith, to continue his work of salvation in the world.
It may however be that, though we have a deep desire to believe this, sometimes when things are at their worst our faith wavers. I am filled with hope though that later on, with hindsight, we will glimpse the fact that God’s loving purposes were being worked out, his kingdom is still being built, even in this imperfect and often tragic world.
From a personal point of view, though less dramatically, in this season of Lent as we face our own lack of perfection we can still give thanks that, despite the tragedy of our sin, the sadness of our inability to live out the lives we know we should, even from this, beyond our understanding, we have a God who IS capable of bringing good things from bad situations and good things for and from us, his imperfect people. And this, whilst not giving us any pat answers to our lack of understanding, should give us hope.