On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed home.
“Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
A few years ago I came across a website entitled, “Deathclock.com.” It’s a rather morbid website that uses actuarial tables to calculate the users projected life-span, and delivers that information in terms of your “personal day of death.” Like I said – it’s a little morbid – but it’s hard not to be curious! So I entered all my information: date of birth, height and weight, basic outlook on life (optimistic), etc., took a deep breath and hit the button. Within a few seconds the site displayed my projected “personal day of death” – along with a running clock that indicated how many seconds I had left to live! I looked at the date – and at the theoretical time I had left – and decided to change some of my data and try again! Even though I know that death is inevitable; and even though I knew the website was just a gimmick – I still wanted to try to push that date back as far as possible!
Notice the statement that Lazarus sisters, Mary and Martha, both make to Jesus. “Lord, if you had been here, our brother would not have died.” This statement, when you stop to think about it, is both true and untrue. It is true in the sense that Jesus surely could have done something to prevent Lazarus’ death. He could have healed him from whatever disease or sickness took his life. On the other hand, the statement is untrue because, even if Jesus healed his friend in the short run, Lazarus was going to die eventually anyway. The truth is, even though Jesus raised him from the dead later in the story – Lazarus eventually died for a second time.
It’s easy for us to mis-identify the center of this story. Upon first reading, most of us would say that the story is about the raising of Lazarus from the dead (notice that I did not include this portion of the story in the reading for this week). After all, it’s not everyday that a dead man walks out of his tomb! But upon closer reading I think we see that the center of the story is Jesus – who he is and what he came to do – and that the raising of Lazarus was simply to prove the point.
We tend to miss this because, like most human beings, we see physical, earthly life as the most important thing there is. We want to extend life, protect it at all cost, and we seek to avoid death. This is understandable and good – for God created life as a precious gift. But this story reminds us that there is something more important than earthly life!
I believe Jesus waited to go to Bethany until after Lazarus had died because he wanted to reveal who he was – and is. Jesus wanted to teach Mary, Martha, all those watching – as well as you and me – two critical truths. First, he wanted to demonstrate that he has authority even over death itself, and second, that this earthly life is not all there is.
Yes, earthly, physical life is precious. We are to appreciate it, love it, protect it, enjoy it, and do whatever we can to enrich and extend it for ourselves and others – for life is a gift from our creator. But, this life is not all there is. This life will end for every one of us, sooner or later. This story tells us that we can pretend that is not so – or we can worry so much about losing our lives that we fail to prepare for the life to come.
Thank God for the beauty and preciousness of life – but ask him to anchor your hope and your heart in the life to come!
Pastor Brian Coffey
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