29 July 2025 - Lord, if you had been here

Today's Readings
(Audio)

Martha said to Jesus,
“Lord, if you had been here,
my brother would not have died.

How do we respond when Jesus seems to ignore our prayers and apparently arrives too late? It seemed that Jesus did care about Lazarus, and that the request of the sisters for help ought to have been one that he found to be sympathetic. In our lives Jesus always has the ability to arrive in time, so when he seems not to do so we can only infer that it was intentional, as it in fact was in the case of Lazarus. What do we do when this happens? Do we assume that we had been wrong either about Jesus' power or his love for us? Martha was commendable in her own response. She expressed grief and confusion, but retained her confidence in Jesus:

But even now I know that whatever you ask of God,
God will give you.

She might have meant that she still believed that although he didn't grant this request he may yet grant others. Or she might have meant that although he didn't answer in the way she hoped there could yet be some unguessed way that he could answer. We suspect that she was expressing a trust in Jesus that was greater than her own understanding of what would be necessary to satisfy her desires. This was as though she said that although to her it was too late and therefore impossible to help she understood that all things were possible to God through Christ. From her point of view it seemed hopeless, but she knew that nothing could truly be hopeless were Jesus was present.

Jesus said to her,
“Your brother will rise.”
Martha said to him,
“I know he will rise,
in the resurrection on the last day.”

Martha did not find the resurrection on the last day to be a sufficient consolation to assuage her present sorrow. Lazarus was gone and she was grief-stricken. The fact that he would one day rise was something. But at that moment it did not seem to be enough. In order for her intuition about the hope present even in that difficult moment to be clarified she needed to come to a deeper understanding of Jesus. 

Jesus told her,
“I am the resurrection and the life;
whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,
and anyone who lives and believes in me will never die.

Jesus wasn't merely adjacent to the desired result, as though he were an observer or guide toward the resurrection. Rather he himself was the resurrection. And that meant that all who died in his grace were present with him, alive in him. That implied that even before Lazarus returned to physical life he was present in a mysterious way. His condition wasn't the tragedy Martha perceived it to be, or need not be, if she saw it through the eyes of this elevated faith in Jesus her Lord. Jesus didn't have to go and find the soul of Lazarus in some other world and reunite it to his body. He held that soul in his very hands, embracing it with his love. The fact that he did restore Lazarus to life was at least partially about expressing the deeper unseen reality that true life existed properly and perfectly in Jesus himself. But just as return to a physical life was an appropriate and implied sign of this truth for Lazarus, so too would all who died a physical death while united in friendship to Jesus rise again to life eternal.

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.

Martha chose to agree in faith with the word of Jesus about a reality that went beyond her human reason or ability to understand. He was the Christ who was to come. He was the messiah who would deliver his people, not from earthly enemies, but from sin, and from death itself.

Not according to our sins does he deal with us,
nor does he requite us according to our crimes.
For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so surpassing is his kindness toward those who fear him.

Matt Maher - Alive Again