Dear Parish Family,
John’s Gospel: Jesus’ public life begins with a wedding and closes with a funeral. There are four primary characters in this story: Jesus, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. Martha, Mary and Lazarus, siblings, were good friends of Jesus. John tells us that he “loved” them.
The sisters of Lazarus, Martha and Mary, send word to Jesus telling him that “the man you love” is gravely ill. Curiously though, Jesus does not immediately rush off to see Lazarus. Instead he stays where he is for two more days, until Lazarus is dead, and then sets off to see him. When he arrives near the house, he is met by Martha who says to him: “If you had been here, my brother would not have died!” Basically her question is: “Where were you? Why didn’t you come and heal him?” Jesus does not answer her question but instead assures her that Lazarus will live in some deeper way.
Martha then goes and calls her sister, Mary. When Mary arrives she repeats the identical words to Jesus that Martha had spoken: “If you had been here my brother would not have died!” However, coming out of Mary’s mouth, these words mean something else, something deeper.
Mary is asking the universal, timeless question about suffering and God’s seeming absence. Her query (“Where were you when my brother died?”) asks that question for everyone: Where is God when innocent people suffer? Where was God during the holocaust? Where is God when anyone’s brother dies? Where is God during this time of ‘death all over the world’ and we are helpless against an unseen enemy?
On his arrival, Jesus pacified Martha with one of the most treasured of his teachings, which brings great consolation at funeral service, “I am the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” Jesus offers “eternal life,” which begins with Faith now and lasts forever in its fullness. John’s story offers a challenging response and offers us all those words that bring such consolation at funeral services: “I am the Resurrection and the Life; whoever believes in me even if he [or she] dies will live, and everyone who believes in me will never die.”
The lesson in this death and raising may be put this way: the God we believe in doesn’t necessarily intervene and rescue us from suffering and death (although we are invited to pray for that). Instead he redeems our suffering afterwards. But sometimes the only answer to the question of suffering and evil is the one Jesus gave to Mary and Martha—shared helplessness, shared distress, and shared tears, with no attempt to try to explain God’s seeming absence, but rather a trusting that, because God is all-loving and all-powerful, in the end all shall be well and our pain will someday be redeemed in God’s embrace.
While the miracle of raising Lazarus from grave shows Jesus’ Divine power over death itself it also shows him as a wonderfully sensitive human being. His love for Lazarus and his sisters is palpable. Martha’s and Mary’s complaint that Jesus’ presence would have averted Lazarus’ death shows us how real their friendship was. So do Jesus’ tears. The story also represents the best of that special human quality in Jesus of openly expressing real feelings. This interpretive description of Jesus’ greatest miracle is also John’s reflection on the significance of the Resurrection.
Fr. Tom Kunnel C.O.