If You Had Been Here…
This bible story has always raised some interesting questions. I had to decide where to start and stop – but there is additional essential information in the verses which come before and in those which come after.
I read the part where Martha says to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” In the verses which follow, Mary (the other sister) speaks the exact same words. Both these sisters – and by inference every sister - comes into Jesus’ presence with the acknowledgement that where he is there is no death. His “being here,” has the capacity to prevent any of God’s daughters from experiencing that which could so easily be heartbreaking and life-shattering.
“Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.”
I imagine each of you have heard of the day when our sister, Julia died. It was a day like so many other days. A day begun with her daughter – and by inference with each of her daughters. There had been nothing to suggest that anything was amiss or was likely to move in that direction. As it was told to me, Joe even spoke to her as he was preparing to leave the house. When he and Sylvia returned, they found that she had fallen and that her heart was no longer beating.
How many times will it be asked whether she would have died had someone been there? It is a natural question to ask, but a senseless one. And one for which we probably know the answer. Having had the honor of being with persons nearing death I can say with no ambiguity that among their greatest fears is the wound which their dying may bring to those whom they love. It is a comfort to us to speak of holding the hand of a dying mother; but mothers nearing death are already fully aware of how a life of living and loving is more precious and essential than how one spends a few final moments.
Let me make sure that my comments do not equate our being with a dying person with the effect of Jesus being with that person. There is no comparison. And hardly anything is the same. Mary and Martha and all of their sisters know that Jesus is able to do something which no one else is able to do. Jesus is able to stave off death more powerfully than any EMT, or cardiac specialist, or oncology expert. We are grateful for all those folks, and we will offer our prayers of gratitude to God for giving them those gifts. But none of them, and no one of us, is able to hold death at bay in the way that Jesus can. This is what we are called upon to remember and to repeat whenever we are confounded by those words uttered by Martha and by Mary. “Lord, if you had been here (our sister) would not have died.”
As noted, it is in the verses which come after our reading for today which allows us to hear Mary as well as Martha, utter these words.
In the verses which come before our selected passage, we realize that Jesus wasn’t there because he had remained two days longer in the place where he was. They come to Jesus to tell him that Lazarus is ill. Even with this news, he didn’t immediately set out for Bethany. In fact, he tarried and did other things.
Jesus will later say he did tarried precisely so that he could reveal something to his disciples. And he does. As does the writer of the Gospel of John. Jesus comes, and he shows us that where we are inclined to see death, life remains.
But this morning I am going to remain on the side of Mary and Martha a little longer. With them, and perhaps with Julia’s loved ones, I want to make sure that Jesus knows that regardless of the greater purpose he might have in mind, our pain is still very real and extremely raw. I will not take the side of God too soon. Nor will I abandon those who would remind him, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.”
There is another verse which comes after the ones which I read. It is actually a very popular verse, because it is the shortest of all verses. In John 11:35 we read: Jesus wept. You see, Jesus himself does not - too quickly -abandon the heartbreak and life-shattering realities which face Mary and Martha. He has a great and glorious message to share and to proclaim, but he too understands how that message needs to be held in tension with the ongoing realities of life on this side of the tomb.
We could say that Julia lived 90 glorious years. And we will remember the ways in which she cared for her children and how she blessed the lives of so many. Affirming these things does mean we ignore the sadness and the emptiness which her death has brought. And we have a Messiah who weeps with us when he sees how this is hurting us.
“I am the resurrection and the life.” Jesus says, “Those who (come to me) even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
Jesus has come. He is here. There is no death. And there is no reason to fear.
Amen.
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