When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. (Jn. 11:17)
The first time we are introduced to the character Martha in the Gospels, Scripture paints a rather ugly portrait of a woman disgruntled by her sister Mary’s failure to help in the kitchen, seemingly envious of the attention Mary receives from their treasure dinner guest, the Lord Jesus Christ. But the next time we encounter Martha, we are shown a quite different side to her. In this next scene, her brother Lazarus has died.
What’s more, Lazarus is not just dead, but dead-dead. That is to say, his body had not been frozen in ice for thirty minutes, thus preserving his vital organs, making recovery unlikely, but not impossible. Nor was Lazarus simply unconscious—in a state of deep sleep, but not actually deceased. No, this was a man who had been wrapped in burial cloths and laid in a tomb for four days. Jesus had intentionally stayed away upon hearing that His dear friend was ill, leaving no room for doubt in anyone’s mind that the man was gone.
So when Jesus finally does show up four days later, instructing Martha to have the tombstone removed, she hesitates to comply for fear of the stench. It does not occur to her that Jesus intends on raising Lazarus. That thought would not have even crossed her mind as a possibility.
Can we imagine the anguish and internal horror Lazarus’ two sisters must have felt at that moment, faced with the prospect of being made to view their beloved brother’s decaying body? For what purpose would Jesus have obligated them to endure this added trauma? Simply so that He could say His final farewell to His friend?
Pondering what Martha and her sister must have been thinking and feeling in this moment makes what Martha does next utterly astonishing: Martha consents. We might read this passage from John and think that Martha acquiesces to Jesus’ instructions because, in her newly professed faith that Jesus is the Messiah, she now anticipates that He will perform a great miracle for her brother.
But nothing could be further from her mind. After all, when Jesus told Martha that her brother would rise, her response was, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day” (Jn. 11:24). She would not have been thinking that “last day” was now. She would have been convinced that her brother was staying dead, as any of us would be if our own loved one had died. But for Martha, the conviction would have been even more profound, because whereas from our vantage point in salvation history we know that Jesus can raise a person from the dead, from Martha’s perspective, she would not yet have possessed the knowledge that allowed for this possibility.
As Martha steps back while the stone of her brother’s tomb is being rolled away, she would not have been preparing herself to receive an exciting miracle. She would have been preparing herself to witness something traumatic, something that would further break her already broken heart. So why does she not persist in her objections? Because Martha trusts her Messiah, even in the most painful of circumstances—circumstances which she does not understand.
[But] even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you. (Jn. 11:22)
So Martha sorrowfully but obediently submits to Jesus’ instruction…and to her utter astonishment, Jesus raises her brother from the dead—right before her very eyes. By way of Martha’s unfathomable trust and unshakeable love, Jesus has performed the very miracle that He would later perform on Himself, the one that would prove His divinity to the world.
Martha is transformed in grace from one who has focused on her own self-seeking need for approval and affirmation to one who places her focus entirely on the Lord. In this scene in which we see Martha again, she declares to Jesus, “I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world” (Jn. 11:27). Not even her sister Mary, the one who remained attentively listening at the feet of the Lord, has made this proclamation!
But how could this be, when at their last encounter, Jesus had praised Mary for “[choosing] the better part” (Lk. 10:42)? Because since the time of the rebuke, something has changed in Martha. The humiliation she received from the Lord has transformed her in humility. And nothing, nothing, nothing is more dear to Our Lord’s heart than a humble soul who knows how to take correction well.
If we, like Martha, recognize a humiliating, ugly weakness in ourselves, let us acknowledge it in humility before the Lord and do our best to overcome it. Let us turn our thoughts away from what is ugly and onto “whatever is true…whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious” (Phil. 4:8). Let us thank God each day, not just for our gifts and blessings, but also for the very weaknesses with which we struggle, for paradoxically, they give us the opportunity to find our way to our heavenly home.
Will we ever overcome our frustrating, awful weaknesses? Not by our own efforts; of this, we can be certain. But let us trust in the mercy of Christ that transforms our hearts. By the grace of God, we too will one day become saints, and declare with Martha:
Even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you. (Jn. 11:22)
“Many souls would like to be humble, but few desire humiliation; many ask God to make them humble and fervently pray for this, but very few want to be humiliated. Yet it is impossible to gain humility without humiliations; for just as studying is the way to acquire knowledge, so it is by the way of humiliation that we attain to humility.” – Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, Divine Intimacy
Author’s Note: This article was adapted from a chapter in 26 Steps with the Saints: Examining the Lives of the Holy Ones, available from Amazon.
Image from Wikimedia Commons
