Those Whom Jesus Loved

Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.’ — John xi. 5.

ty HEN He loved three souls of very different temperaments. To love all three is to love natures which are greatly contrasted in their constitution. That is the characteristic of true love. It is comprehensive and inclusive. There is a species of love which makes a fastidious choice of its objects. It picks out a few of a particular mental colour, or of a certain moral temperament, and with rigid exclusiveness it confines its communion to these. But here is the love of the Master lavishing itself upon these very different souls, and in each of these finding joy and satisfaction. Jesus does not want all His loved ones to be of one mould and colour. He does not seek uniformity — He loves us for our own individuality. He will not remove our indi-

viduality. He only seeks to glorify it. He loves ‘Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus/

1 Jesus loved Martha, Martha is our Biblical example of a practical woman. ‘Martha served, In that phrase is enshrined her character. Martha was ever eager for practical deeds, and her interpretation of ‘practical’ was a ready ministering to the needs of the flesh. If she had been a worker among our modern slums, she would have persistently advocated the giving of suppers and teas. Martha was no expert in abstract discussions. But she was great when anybody was sick and in want of immediate help, great at lifting an invalid without increasing the pain, great at sitting up through a long night without ever looking tired, great at shedding her blood for another, without letting the spent treasure be named! Martha is typical of a vast multitude of women whom we describe as ‘handy women, women who are at home in a crisis, who are calm in some terrible emergency, who are strong and self-controlled at a death bed. It is to Martha’s gentle, practical hands that we must all come at last, and I am glad that she stands enrolled among the loved ones, as the chosen companions of the Lord. ‘Jesus loved Martha/

* And her sister, Mary was contemplative,

spending long hours in deep communion with the unseen. Her mind was roomy, full of visions. Her heart was equally capacious, full of feeling. Sometimes her feeling was aroused into high ecstasies, and then it found expression in some costly gift. But more usually Mary was quiet, reserved, unobtrusive, full of thought. The practical person is apt to be impatient with Mary. ‘Bid her that she help.’ That impatience arises from a narrow and impoverished conception of service. We do not think that all land is wasted that has not built upon it a shop or an eatinghouse. Land which is used as a garden, on which the green grass grows and the flowers bloom, is never regarded as waste. We want the park as well as the kitchen, the green grass as well as the warehouse. It is the sanw in human life. We do not want life to become a huge kitchen, full of severely practical ministry. We need the Marys as well as the Marthas, the deep contemplative souls whose spirits shed a fragrant restfulness over the hard and busy streets. The severely practical Peter could never quite understand the dreamy John. ‘Lord, what wilt Thou have this man to do? ‘He wanted him to be doing, doing; and yet it was from the dreamy John that there came the sweet and comforting

revelations of the city where there is ’ no more pain, and where the light shines unceasingly. We need the souls who sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to His word, and then interpret the sweet gospels to a tired and weary world. Upon these also the Lord has set the seal of His benediction, and has claimed them as His own companions. ‘Jesus loved Martha, and her sister.’

1 And Lazarus.’ What do we know about him? Nothing. Most birds have one striking characteristic. The eagle is famous for its powers of flight, the nightingale for its song, the robin for its beautiful breast, but what fame has the sparrow of the common street? And how many sparrows there are in the human race! Such Lazarus appears to have ’ been, undistinguished and commonplace. Yet Jesus loved him. What a huge multitude come under the category of ’ nobodies ‘! Their names are on the register of births, and on the register of deaths, and the space between is a great obscurity. There are crowds of people who are massed together under some such description as Paul gives in one of his Epistles, — ‘Other my fellow-labourers whose names are written in the book of life.’ Thank God for the commonplace people! They turn our houses into homes, and make life

restful and sweet. We could spare the roses rather than the blades of grass. We can do without genius better than we can do without homeliness. Jesus loves the commonplace. Here then is a great, comforting truth. We are all loved, the brilliant and the commonplace, the dreamy and the practical. * Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.’