This Sunday, Five Lines You May Have Missed Reveal the Meaning of Lazarus

The text of Scripture is inspired, and that means that its words can reveal more to you even if you have read them before. When you notice and receive an insight into a line from a Gospel passage that you never noticed before, you can thank the Holy Spirit’s gift of “understanding.”

Here are four lines and insights that can go unnoticed in the Gospel reading about the raising of Lazarus, on the Fifth Sunday of Lent Year A, with takeaways drawn from Sunday Readings columns at this site and the Extraordinary Story podcast.

First: Jesus reveals himself when he says, “I am glad … that I was not there.”

The Gospel reading about the raising of Lazarus is a perfect example of a lesson Father Jay Kythe at St. Benedict’s Abbey in Atchison, Kansas, teaches. In the Gospels, when Jesus heals, he doesn’t do so just for the sake of the one healed — he heals for the sake of others.

Sunday’s Gospel begins with Jesus’ close friends Mary and Martha sending word to Jesus about their brother’s illness: “Master, the one you love is ill.” Jesus’ response immediately identifies the true importance of Lazarus’ condition: “This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God.” Then, instead of rushing to his close friend’s side, he stays where he is for two days while Lazarus dies. When he tells his apostles about Lazarus, his words are odd but revealing: “Lazarus has died. And I am glad for you that I was not there, that you may believe.”

As the Gospel will show, Jesus is anything but “glad” about Lazarus’s death. So what is he glad about? He is glad about all the benefits the raising of Lazarus from the dead will provide — for us.

The Lazarus miracle teaches us the total power Jesus has over his creation. He raises a man who has been in the tomb for four days, such that onlookers expect “a stench” from the corpse.

No wonder “many of the Jews … began to believe in him.” This miracle-for-the-sake-of-others was a huge success.

Second: The Gospel reveals Mary when it says, “Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and dried his feet with her hair.”

Many people hear the story about anointing Jesus’s feet with costly perfume, included in Matthew, Mark and John, without associating it with Martha, Mary and Lazarus. But this Sunday’s Gospel makes clear that this story involves the same dinner companions of Jesus we know well.

We know that Jesus criticized Martha for being “anxious and worried about many things” at a dinner in the Gospel of Luke, and that he praised her sister Mary for sitting at his feet, because she “chose the better part, and it will not be taken from her.”

At the anointing at Bethany, Jesus heaps even more praise on Mary. In the Gospel of Matthew, he says:

“In pouring this perfumed oil upon my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. Amen, I say to you, wherever this Gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be spoken of, in memory of her.”

This is high praise, and it reveals the depths of Mary’s faith. She knows that Jesus will die and accepts it. Peter, famously, says to Jesus that he must not die and gets rebuked for being an obstacle — Mary, on the contrary, prepares him for burial.

Clearly, Mary has learned a great deal by sitting at Jesus’ feet. She has learned the corollary of the rule that Jesus heals for the sake of others: He allows suffering for the sake of others too. Mary knows that Christians are meant to follow Jesus on the road to Calvary, not to avoid it. In other words, she has learned what Lent is meant to teach us.

Third: We learn how prominent Lazarus and his sisters were when the Gospel says Martha “went and called her sister Mary secretly.”

For years I missed just how popular Mary, Martha and Lazarus are — and why it matters.

It is clear that Jesus loves this family. Jesus becomes “perturbed” when he sees Mary weeping, and when he weeps for Lazarus people say, “Look how he loved him.” But Jesus wasn’t the only one. Apparently Martha, Mary and Lazarus were loved by many, because we learn that “Many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them.”

We expect more mourners in the New Testament world than in ours — for instance, a large crowd follows the Widow of Nain an carry the corpse of her son. But it is noteworthy that “many” remain with Mary and Martha even after the burial.

They were so popular, it seems like they had to make an effort to dodge the crowds, like a celebrity avoiding paparazzi, by Martha’s “secret” message to Mary. It didn’t work. “When the Jews who were with her in the house, comforting her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out, they followed her.”

This gives us some sense of why the raising of Lazarus was such a disaster for the foes of Jesus. This miracle happened to well connected people whose friends followed their lead, literally. No wonder that “many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what he had done began to believe in him.”

Fourth: The Gospel reveals Martha’s virtue, saying, “When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him; but Mary sat at home.”

As we saw, the Gospels highly praise Mary; but now it gives some vindication for Martha. If we thought of her as “that busybody who didn’t choose the better part,” here, we see how the active life pays off, too, when Martha hears Jesus is coming and rushes off to meet him right away, while Mary sits at home and has to be sent for later.

Martha needs no invitation. Knowing that Jesus is near is enough. She rushes to him and meets him even before he gets to town. Then, we hear two great professions of faith from her.

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.”

and

“Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”

Martha is a great model for the final stretch of Lent. Not only does she acknowledge Christ with her words, but with her actions as well. For us, also, Jesus is near, and there is no need to wait for an invitation: Seek him out in words and actions — and let him do as he will.

Fifth: Don’t miss the important phrases from the rest of the readings.

It is impressive how much Jesus loves Mary and Martha and Lazarus. But the readings this Sunday make it clear that, in fact, he loves each of us that way. In the First Reading, from Ezekiel, the Lord says: “O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them” — just like Lazarus.

Those are the words of a heartsick friend, not a harsh judge, and he loves each of us like he loved Lazarus.

St. Paul sees Ezekiel’s words coming true in Christ, when he says, “If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead  will give life to your mortal bodies also.”

Whatever our Lent has been like, each of us is the same position of Mary, Martha and Lazarus this Sunday at Mass. Like Mary, we are at table with our Eucharistic Lord, and he wants us each to pour out our love on him and touch him like he did. Like Martha, we have heard that the Lord is near and so we rise to meet him in communion. And like Lazarus, we know that sin and the world’s distractions have left us dead inside, but that he has wept for each of us, and wants to help us each “come forth!” to life in him.

By coming to us in the Eucharist, he is saying in actions what he said in the Gospel: “I am the Resurrection and the Life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live.”

By Tom Hoopes