The Unique Feature of the Case of Lazarus

I have now come to that scene in the great gallery which, as I have said, has given a unique expression to the face of Jesus at sun set. Remember, I have no record of the scene but that of the gallery. I am here to study what is painted. I have no right to paint a new Christ; I have no right even to re-touch the Portrait; my position is that of an observer and a recorder. What, then, is the unique feature of this coming scene? It will best appear by telling the story.

On the secluded coast of Judea-beyond-Jordan, Jesus, as we have seen, has been singing one refrain, ‘Earth not sufficient without heaven, He has been teaching His disciples that immortality is necessary to vindicate the

glory of God. Let us bear that in mind before going a step further; it will make the further step clearer. Suddenly there comes to Him a message from the outside — from a spot very near the place of danger. It is from Bethany — from the home of Martha and Mary. How ever secluded Jesus may have been, He was not secluded from them; He had left them His address; they knew where to find Him. The present message of the sisters is a very sad one, ‘Lord, he whom Thou lovest is sick.’ The reference is to their brother Lazarus. They offer no prayer; they make no request; they simply bring a fact before the eye of Jesus, and leave it there.

What does Jesus do under these circumstances? Does He hasten to the bedside of him whom He called His friend? ‘No, says the Picture, ‘He continues two days more in the place of His seclusion.” Why?’ asks the spectator. In soliloquy, Jesus Himself answers the question, ‘This sickness is for the glory of God.’ I interpret the answer thus: * I have been teaching my disciples that the glory of 148 THE UNIQUE FEATURE OF

God can only be vindicated on the supposition that there is a life beyond this life. I have been teaching in parable how the beggar Lazarus needs a world beyond to compensate for his wants on earth. But here my Father has sent me a real Lazarus to make the subject of my parable. They ask me to go and heal him; I can do more good by remaining. What my Father needs for His glory is the revelation of immortality to man. Hitherto I have only taught that death does not end all; might I not prove it? If Lazarus be left to nature he will die; I see this as I saw Nathanael under the fig-tree. Why should I arrest the course of nature? Should I not gain more for my Father by letting nature have her course? To vanquish sickness would not prove immortality; to vanquish death, would. Has not the Father sent this event as the sequel of my teaching here? Is He not calling me to vindicate His glory by a protest in love’s own sphere against the arrest of love — by a proof that further life lies behind death? ’

This is the reading I derive from the gallery.

You will observe the point of contrast between this picture and the similar picture of Jairus’s daughter. In both there is a delay of the expected help; but in the case of Jairus the delay comes from the intervention of another suppliant, in the case of Lazarus it proceeds from the foresight that a better occasion for help will arise. In the case of Jairus the interruption to the march of mercy, though it had its plan with the Father, was not planned by Jesus; He was simply assailed by a new form of pity. But in the case of Lazarus pity was suspended in the interest of reason. Jesus said, ‘I can save these sisters a great deal of pain, but the world will lose thereby a great deal of revelation.’ It was an instance of mental vivisection. For the sake of a larger good two human souls are subjected to a pain which might have been spared them. And the larger good was the vindication of God’s glory by the vision of a larger life. But for that, the delay was a waste of time. Martha and Mary would as soon have got their brother back from the sick-bed as from the grave. But the very essence of the picture lies in the fact that the proposed miracle is proposed not for the good of any individual but for the glorifying of God Himself. It is designed as a vindication of Divine justice, of Divine mercy, of Divine love, through a revelation of the truth that to fill up what is imperfect here there is space and time beyond the grave.

Now, this is the unique feature of the miracle of Bethany as seen in the gallery at sunset. It is the only recorded miracle of Jesus which is wrought exclusively for the glory of God. In all others a human element co-operates. In all others the impulse of pity for man plays a primary part in the scene. Even the revivals from death are gifts restored to humanity. The widow’s son is raised for the sake of his mother; the daughter of Jairus is given back for the sake of her father. But Lazarus is to be raised for something higher than any family consideration. His resurrection is to be an offering to God Almighty — I say with reverence, for the benefit of God Almighty. He is to be raised to vindicate

God’s glory. In the view of Jesus, this glory is dimmed by the failure of man to realise immortality. The disbelief, or the unbelief, in a future state is, to His mind, injustice to the Father. It is the Father who mainly suffers by such a scepticism. He is bidden to write His Book of Life upon a few leaves of parchment. Omnipotence could not do that — just because it is Omnipotence. The Book is infinite, and therefore it cannot be written on the parchment. To justify God in this world, man must believe in another. I fail to see God because I fail to see the risen Lazarus. The risen Lazarus is not simply the gift to one bereaved family; he is a gift to universal Man for the sake of the Everlasting Father. Not merely to dry the tears of the weeping sisters is the presence of this man to be restored; they must be content to share the common joy. His presence is to be restored in order that, through the open door which lets him back, Man may get a glimpse of a garden over the wall and postpone his judgment of the ways of God.

Let us resume the analysis of the picture. While Jesus lingers in Bethania Lazarus dies at Bethany. The message of the sisters has seemingly been a useless one; the prayer implied in it has apparently proved inefficient It has, in truth, been simply premature. Jesus might have answered on the spot the cry of Martha and Mary; but He wanted at the same time to answer the cry of the united world. Had He intervened in the sickness He would only have responded to the lesser call. When He hears of the death, or rather, when He learns it by His Divine clairvoyance, He makes a curious remark to His disciples, ‘I am glad for your sakes that I was not there.’ What does He mean? Speaking from the stand point of the Portrait, His being there or not there had nothing to do with His actual power to cure; He could have healed the sickness of Lazarus at a distance as easily as in the sick-chamber; the clairvoyance is only introduced to prove that. Why, then, does He say, ‘I am glad for your sakes that I was not there’? To my mind there is only one explanation, but it is a very beautiful one. I understand Jesus to mean that, had He been there, He might have been constrained by human pity to grant a lesser good. The very sense that His presence was visible in the sick-room and that yet He was doing nothing might have been too strong for Him. It might have overcome Him, surprised His human nature into an act of compassion which would have forestalled and prevented a wider sweep of mercy. ‘I am glad for your sakes.’ The men at His side were trembling with the fear of death. They were not trembling with the fear of sickness; physicians might heal the sick. But was there any physician for death! was there any prescription that could arrest the horrors of the grave! Any man who had a prescription for death would be wasting time to write one for disease. Jesus had one, and He was glad that He had not wasted His time. He was glad that, since He had a power to extinguish the night, He had not spent the hours in sweeping away the clouds of the afternoon. What was this prescription of Jesus for destroying the horrors of death? Do not imagine it was something miraculous. He meant to embody it in a miracle, just as one may wrap up a prescription in a parcel. But the parcel is not the prescription; I may lose the one and keep the other. In point of fact, I have in this case lost the parcel; I cannot reproduce the resurrection of Lazarus. But the principle which Jesus meant to teach by the resurrection of Lazarus is still in my hands; and that is the vital thing. It was not the resurrection of Lazarus that robbed death of its ancient horror; it was the new thought which it suggested. The horror of death was the horror of an idea; to remove the horror of death you must change the idea. What was the idea which made death so horrible to the old world — which drove Christ’s disciples out of Jerusalem, which impelled the sisters of Bethany to ring their alarm-bell? Let us look at the narrative, and we shall see.

When sickness has ended in death, Jesus breaks His silence. He comes to Bethany — to the house of the two sisters. He finds it crowded with visitors of condolence — men from Jerusalem, men of the party opposed to Him. The sisters are both grieving, but differently; in their fast as in their feast they keep their respective characters. Mary’s grief takes the form of stillness; she sits indoors. But Martha is again in bustle — on the alert for what is outside. She discerns Jesus afar off; she comes out to meet Him; and there follows a dialogue which has become historical. If I were writing a ‘Life ‘I should describe that dialogue; as I am only tracing a development, I shall limit myself to one feature. But it is the crucial feature. The meeting of Martha and Jesus is the meeting of two ideas, I might say, of two worlds — the old and the new. There they stand in the great gallery side by side — the age that was past and the age that was coming! The dialogue between Martha and Jesus is the dialogue between the old and the new view of death. It is a transition moment — the striking of a clock to mark that one hour is ended, that another is begun. You and I will stand and listen.

Says Jesus, ‘Thy brother will rise again ‘; says Martha, ‘I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day, ‘No, replies Jesus, ’ / am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me shall live in the hour of death, shall live in the act of death, shall never, on one side of his nature, be partaker of death at all.’

In that dialogue appear at once the horror and the glory. To Martha death was a suspension of life; and to her that was its horror. No doubt she believed her brother would be recreated; but meantime he was dead — a thing like the clod of the valley. That was the awful thought. For, if Lazarus were now dead, the old life could never be compensated. A resurrection at the last day would be no compensation; that would be simply a new Lazarus with an old memory. What men have wanted in all ages is a completion of the old life. They have sighed for a proof that this defective structure can be repaired here after in the point of its deficiency. You may build a new house on the former site, and connect it with the former scenes; but the architect of the first house has not thereby been vindicated. Jesus felt this. Standing beside Martha and the Jewish idea of death, He perceived that the time had come for the planting of His own. He plants it here — almost in the face of Bethany’s graveyard! ‘Martha,’ He says, ’ you have a wrong thought of death; I bring you a higher and a holier one. You call death the suspension of life. No, it is the transition of life. I am come to tell you, to show you, that the soul need not wait for the last day — that it can rise from the very bed of death, from the very couch of physical decay, from the very first touch of the hand of corruption. I am come to replace your thought of resurrection by my thought of immortality?

And this impregnation with a new thought explains — what otherwise would to me seem very strange — those words of His to Martha, ‘If you believe, you will see the glory of God.’ One would have thought that what Martha wanted to see was her brother. And doubtless that was her desire. But to Jesus that was not the main thing. The main thing was not the resurrection of Lazarus, but what the resurrection of Lazarus proved. Not the fact, but the thought, was to be the permanent possession of humanity. The fact would pass away; it has passed away. There no longer stands in the midst of us a man who even claims to reveal the presence of the dead in the land of the living; Lazarus himself has not appeared after his second death. But the thought abides — fresh, pregnant, powerful. The Jewish belief has exploded; the Christian has taken its place. Immortality, as distinguished from resurrection, is in the air. There is more hope for the reconstruction of the dilapidated human life; we believe more in the possibilities of the glory of God. Therefore, also, we have more hope in Man. Chanty is born of the faith in Immortality. Our schools for the ignorant, our reformatories for the erring, have been built upon the empty tomb of Lazarus, for there we first found the prospect of a larger life for Man.

ON of Man, I understand Thy tears in the graveyard of Bethany. Men have asked the reason of Thy weeping — weeping for one Thou wert about to raise! But it was not for Lazarus, nor yet, methinks, for death. It was for the false view men had formed of death. It was because the world could think so meanly of Thy Father as to believe that He could extinguish in an hour a life to which He had given the powers of eternity. It is written of Thee that Thou didst enter the graveyard of Bethany ’ breathing indignation, Often it seemed to me a strange sentiment for a cemetery. But I understand it now. I understand both the indignation and the weeping, for these two were one. Men were impeaching the honour of Thy Father. They were charging Him with having given Man a soul, and then laid him in the dust. Thou wert jealous for Thy Father’s glory; I appreciate the swellings of Thy heart, I appreciate the moisture of Thine eye. In my hour of sorrow I often reproach those who robbed me of my first faith. Thy reproaches also fell on them; Thy tears fell on me. Thy tears were the showers of Thy compassion for my dead hope, for my dim sight, for my buried faith, for my forgetfulness of the glory of the Father. And the shower of sorrow was a shower of blessing; it was the tears of the protesting rainbow in the evening sky. In the hour of my life’s despair, ever let such drops descend on me