(Audio)
“Our friend Lazarus is asleep,
but I am going to awaken him.”
For Jesus, it is just as easy to wake someone from death as it is for us to wake up someone who is sleeping. In spite of this power Jesus doesn't always act immediately.
So when he heard that he was ill,
he remained for two days in the place where he was.
Jesus does not delay because he doesn't care. It is precisely because he does care that he forces himself to wait. It is because he loves Lazarus that he allows himself and his friends to endure real and profound sadness so that greater good may come.
And Jesus wept.
So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.”
The one who opened the eyes of the blind man could indeed have averted the death of Lazarus. But he had a greater plan, a plan that didn't exempt him and his friends from suffering, but a plan that brought about a greater result of faith in their hearts.
“Did I not tell you that if you believe
you will see the glory of God?”
Martha already believed that God had the power to raise the dead, and that he would do so on the last day. She had come to a profound faith in Jesus as well. But she and Mary and all who witnessed these events were to realize that Jesus himself was the resurrection and the life.
I am the resurrection and the life;
whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
The resurrection was no longer an abstraction. It was the manifestation of the superabundant life of Jesus himself. It was a connection to the life of the one whom death could not hold.
O my people, I will open your graves
and have you rise from them,
and bring you back to the land of Israel.
Then you shall know that I am the LORD,
when I open your graves and have you rise from them,
O my people!
Martha was able to take her faith in Jesus to the next level.
She said to him, “Yes, Lord.
I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God,
the one who is coming into the world.”
She now know that the voice that commanded the dead to live was the voice of Jesus himself. She began to understand more deeply what it meant to call him Lord.
What of us? We see suffering and death in the world. Do we despair or do we receive it as an invitation to greater faith? Do we believe that death has the last word or do we believe that after death has done its worst we will hear Jesus commanding us to rise? We are already united with him. We can already experience connection to the life that can never die, the life we hope to one day experience in fullness.
If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,
the one who raised Christ from the dead
will give life to your mortal bodies also,
through his Spirit dwelling in you.
The Spirit within us produces fruit in a way that disproves the lies of death. He empowers us to hope even when things seem hopeless and to have peace amidst the storms of life. He gives of the faith to take hold even now of our life hidden with Christ in God (see Colossians 3:3). Even when life gives us such little strength to respond, the Spirit enables us to love with supernatural power.
I trust in the LORD;
my soul trusts in his word.
More than sentinels wait for the dawn,
let Israel wait for the LORD.
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