Lazarus

By Elliot Ritzema

“Marley was dead: to begin with.” This is how Charles Dickens begins A Christmas Carol, and the story of Lazarus in John 11 began similarly. It could be read “Lazarus was sick: to begin with.” Like Scrooge’s business partner Marley, Lazarus’s sickness and death take place out of view of the reader, so that by the time Jesus arrived at his tomb, there is no doubt that Lazarus was dead. And as Dickens would continue, “This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.”

While Marley and Lazarus were both dead, the similarity ends there. Marley’s ghost had lines in the opening chapter of A Christmas Carol; Lazarus does not speak in the Gospel of John. Lazarus’s personality is not given to the reader. We don’t get a chance to reflect on his actions and consider whether there is something we might learn from them. We can only relate to him in two ways.

The first is that, even if we are confident we are loved by Jesus, we can still suffer. Lazarus’s sisters sent a message to Jesus that calls Lazarus “the one you love.” The most important thing about him is that he is among those that Jesus loves. Mary and Martha expected that Jesus’s love for Lazarus would prompt Him to come and heal Lazarus, as He had done for so many others. But this did not happen. Scripture doesn’t say if He sent a message in return. His response was, as far as we know, silence.

What must it have been like for Lazarus to know that Jesus loved him and yet allowed him to die? Did Mary and Martha have moments of doubt during the delay? If Jesus really loved Lazarus, why didn’t He come? Like them, Jesus can sometimes seem to be absent from the crisis moments of our lives. They are crises in part because of this absence we feel.

And yet, when Jesus did arrive, Mary and Martha learned that Jesus never stopped loving Lazarus, even when he was in the tomb. He had allowed Lazarus to suffer death, but His love prompted Him to reverse all that Lazarus had suffered. The tears shed at Lazarus’s death, including Jesus’s own, were wiped away.

The second way we can relate to Lazarus is that we also are in need of resurrection. We “were dead in…trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). This story is an assurance of God’s love and power to rescue us from death. And it is also a call to faith—Jesus is not just the one who raises others from the dead. He is the resurrection from the dead. In Him, we, too, are made alive.

Are you lying in the grave today, waiting for the enlivening word of the One who loves you? Remember that you exist because you are loved into being and sustained by the love of Jesus, and His “love is as strong as death” (Song of Songs 8:6).