As I move toward what I refer to as the Lean into Lent, I am trying to meditate on the Passion of Christ. I am reflecting on the many ways the Passion was expressed in His last days on earth. In my last post, I examined that passion and gratitude that Mary of Bethany had for Jesus and the beautiful way she expressed it through her worship with perfume. But greater than this, is the passion in which Jesus defended her actions to those who looked on it with disdain and spoke out against it. This event will not be the only encounter Christ will have with Mary, her sister Martha, and their brother Lazarus.
Jesus was away in another town ministering to the masses when He received a personal word from the two sisters that Lazarus was very ill. At least a full day’s journey away(about 20 miles) lay ahead for Jesus to reach the family that were among His closest friends. But… Jesus waited 2 more days before He set out to return to Bethany. This decision to wait was based on Christ’s passion for the Father’s glory, but the bible acknowledges even in this circumstance that Jesus loved both Mary and Martha. This is a good time to be reassured that though I may feel distanced from God and His presence, though it may appear that God has more important priorities than a heartbreaking crisis I find myself in. He still loves me and is aware of my needs. And at the right time, Christ will intervene and reveal the truth that He has been working on my behalf the whole time. Finally, it says that Jesus said to the disciples “let’s go back to Judea. The word finally is not written for the benefit of God but for us. Haven’t you ever had a Finally moment? It confirms God knows we are waiting!
Though the disciples try to discourage Jesus from returning, He relays that He has something to do. Jesus says, “our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep and now I will go and wake him up.” The next verse does the compare and contrast of my thinking to the mind of Christ. My perspective (later confirmed by scripture) is Lazarus is dead. Funeral dead. Tomb dead. Grief stricken family dead. Clinically dead. But Jesus’ perspective, although He knows this, is that Lazarus is sleeping and He must be awakened. Joining in thought, the disciples concur as well that Lazarus is asleep. As soon as they make this assumption, The Lord tells them bluntly “Lazarus is dead!”Jesus introduces the idea here that something big is about to happen and it is for the benefit of their belief. Once again, I stop and can’t help but to be reminded, Christ’ perspective of life and death are so much higher and deeper and far more accurate than my vantage point. I see the temporal but Christ sees the Eternal. I see loss and grief but Jesus sees restoration and reunion. I see the despair of death, but Christ sees the hope His resurrection power brings. I fall into the human mindset of the finality of death, and Jesus brings His “even though he is dead, yet shall He live” perspective that takes my breath away and brings a joyous morning to my long dark night of sorrow. We see this as Jesus arrives on day 4 (uh oh) and assures Martha that Lazarus will arise. Martha agrees with Jesus that indeed Lazarus will rise someday, the last day. Little does she know that someday is Today.
I struggle with this in my walk of faith. I know God can do anything, but I struggle with the disbelief of “will He actually?” By the time my Finally moment arrives, it is marred and overshadowed by so much doubt that my passion for what Christ can do can be alot like Martha’s, perfunctory. Mary, on the other hand, tells Jesus she knows if He had been present, this would not have happened. I struggle with this thinking as well. I dismiss the value of suffering and loss and often convey in prayer to God that it is totally unnecessary and miracles would be better off without it. After all, what’s wrong with shortcuts, right? Mary’s words and tone is both confirming in her belief that Jesus had the power but accusatory in nature. It does have a ring of why and how come to it. Both of which I often relate and resort to.
We see the passion of Christ revealed here as He wept at His friend’s tomb.Grieving for Mary and Martha but I also I believe with all my heart that this display of grief goes all the way back to the garden, the day of the fall where man invited death into his life, along with all the sorrow and anguish it would bring. I believe that Jesus wept over the heartbreak of coming betrayal, the cost on the cross, but mostly He wept for the many who would not believe that Jesus could right the wrong between a Holy God and hopeless man. I believe Jesus cried for all those who would choose eternal separation. A moment later, Jesus calls Lazarus by name and indeed the dead man came out of his tomb and what had been a funeral became a joyous celebration. My dad always told me that Jesus called Lazarus by name, for if He had not, all the dead in the tomb would have come out. The power of Christ as Paul states in Romans 4 is that “He, Jesus, is the Lord of both the living and the dead.” I believe this. Remember Jesus said “Blessed are those who have not seen but yet believed.”
Now I have not attended a funeral where the person being memorialized returns but I have myself buried those I love with the assurance I will see them again. I have seen folks spared time and time again from tragedy and the ravage of illness. I have witnessed restoration of relationships and marriages where we all wrote it off and not only didn’t think “someday”. But concluded “No way.” God has reminded me He is the author of the dreams in my heart and the resurrector of those of which I have destroyed and viewed as dead, and yes, mourned. But God truthfully displays that any cemetery I hang out in, whether actual or virtual, He is there calling me to faith and reminding me as He did Martha, not on a someday but on THAT day, “I am the Resurrection and the Life, anyone who believes in me will live after dying.”
“Lord, ignite the passion for new life in all the areas where I respond like death has moved in and taken over. Call my name Lord, Wake me up…”
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