In that most pathetic story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead which is related in the Fourth Gospel, Martha has a prominent place. Her sorrow is great, but in that she does not notably differ from her sister. What is peculiar to Martha is the test that is made of her faith.
It is Martha who receives the great words from Jesus about the resurrection. She takes with dreary acquiescence His promise that Lazarus shall rise again, supposing it to be a conventional consolation referring to the orthodox Jewish doctrine of a general resurrection at the end of the world. There is little comfort for her in that. It is true enough. She knows it already. Has she not been taught it from her childhood? But that mysterious event is very remote. If only Jesus had been in time she would have had her brother restored to her in this life, a very different thing. Then Jesus proceeds to His own profound teaching about the resurrection.
“If Thou hadst come, our brother had not died.”
Thus one who loved, to One who came so late;
Yet not too late, had she but known the fate
Which soon should fill the mourners' hearts with tide
Of holy joy. Now she would almost chide
Her awful Guest, as though His brief delay
Had quenched her love and driven faith away.
“If Thou hadst come,” oh could we only hide
Our heart's impatience and with meekness stay
To hear the Voice of Wisdom ere we speak.
We mourn the past, the tomb, the buried dead,
And think of many a bitter thing to say,
While all the time True Love stands by so meek,
Waiting to lift anew the drooping head.1 [Note: George Matheson.]
Martha's faith had broken down before that awful sepulchre. Up to the time when her brother died she had believed, as most religious Jews believed, the traditional theory about the dead and their resurrection. She had believed they would sleep in the dust with no conscious existence at all until some far-off last day, and then “the just, at least, would be raised from the dust and begin life again.” She had believed it, as we all believe the things that we have been told, because she never had cause to doubt it. But then the testing came. The grim fact of death confronted her. For the first time in her life, perhaps, she saw it in its naked terrible reality. It had seized and laid low and turned to corruption the one being whom she probably loved best on earth. And when she saw the body carried to the grave and hidden out of sight there, her heart sank like a lump of lead, her hope of resurrection faded out like a torchlight quickly quenched. And when the Lord said, “Thy brother shall rise again,” she answered in words that were purely mechanical, words repeated from memory, with no faith in them: “I know that he shall rise again at the last day.” There was no comfort at all in that. He was dead to her for ever. And then Jesus, knowing the blank cold faithlessness which had crept over her, repeated the gracious promise and assurance of immortality: “He that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die,” and finished with the question, “Believest thou this?” And this word and Martha's answer suggest certain thoughts.
The words of Jesus are too great and wonderful to be fully taken in at once, and it may not be easy to accept on its own account what is perceived in them. But Martha has full faith in Christ, and on that ground she does not hesitate to assent to what He says. She believes that Jesus is no other than the Christ, the Son of God, the Great One expected by her people. Such a clear confession as this, uttered in circumstances of the greatest depression, at once places the speaker in the very front rank of the disciples of Jesus. It may be set side by side with St. Peter's historic confession at Cæsarea Philippi. The wonder of it is that this glorious outburst of faith was possible at the very time when the inexplicable conduct of Jesus was the occasion of the keenest disappointment. That is what marks Martha's faith as sublime. It would not have been at all surprising if a faith which under ordinary circumstances was serene and settled should have been disturbed and overclouded at such a moment as this. Had it been so we could have pardoned the distressed sister, setting down to her love for her brother and the intense grief at a loss which she thought Jesus might have prevented, some temporary lack of confidence in the Master who had tried her so severely. There is nothing of the kind. The earthly scene is gloomy as the grave; but not a shadow passes over her heavens. Faith rises triumphant, and in spite of an amazing disappointment perceives with clear vision and declares with unfaltering voice the supreme truth that He who was the very occasion of the disappointment was the Christ of God.
Nowhere is the majesty of our Lord more impressively expressed than in His dealings with death. Mythology records how Hercules successfully wrestled with Death, and brought back to the upper world the body of Alcestis. But how pale is the classic fable by the side of the resurrections of the New Testament! Here a mightier Hercules smote the King of Terrors. “He brought to naught him that hath the power of death.” Let this fact comfort me in the prospect of death, in the article of death. Christ is everything to me to-day, and He will not be less on my last day. No; then He will be specially precious.1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson, The Gates of Dawn, 233.]
In course of a letter to a lady sympathizing with her on the death of her father, Maurice wrote, “The Apostle said that ‘if the Spirit of Christ dwells in us he shall also quicken our mortal bodies.' Why not believe that those words are spoken simply and sincerely; that they represent facts which have been accomplished, which are accomplishing themselves every hour? You are weary of words which you have heard from me and others about some final deliverance of the human spirit from its sin and woe. You cannot be too weary of them if they interfere in the least degree with the message, ‘I am the resurrection and the life,' which was spoken once to a woman sorrowing for her brother, which is spoken now by the same voice to every woman sorrowing for brother, father, husband, child; an ever-present warrant for all hope of a future resurrection, of a future life. Not a future but an eternal life, the life of God, the life of love, is what Christ tells us of.”2 [Note: The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, ii. 623.]
Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress-trees!
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play!
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown,
That Life is ever lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own!3 [Note: J. G. Whittier, Snow-Bound.]
