My name is Martha

March 21, 2010

The Raising of Lazarus from the Dead

"Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."

Lord, if you were still here, we wouldn't be in this mess. Lord, if you had stopped him, he never would have hurt my friend. Lord, if you had listened to our prayers, my father would never have died. Lord, if you had been there, Hitler would never have been born.

Are they valid complaints?

Martha is my confirmation saint. I picked her because of the other story, the story of the woman who worked tirelessly in the kitchen and ended up getting told off for being annoyed with her sister for sitting at His feet. Because Mary is the example we're supposed to follow in that story, but I have more trouble with the Martha part. I'm very good at sitting at His feet, I have trouble working to serve His table and His people. I have trouble getting off my perch to help others. I'm busy and lazy.

I don't think Martha is saying all the questions I have listed in the first paragraph, not the woman who works so hard to solve her own and others' problems on her own. I think she was a woman who controlled her household utterly, who worked hard and did good in her community and loved so many people with the work of her hands and the sweat of her brow coming to the Lord because there are things she could not fix. She sent for Jesus, because she thought she knew how to make the world right again. But He stayed away, and her brother died, and she knew that she could not save the world.

At that moment, she had faith. Faith that there was someone else who could. What a beautiful thing, a strange moment to believe to our eyes, but I think it might make perfect sense. When I have friends in crisis, I jump into "fixer" mode, and it kills me when I can't help. When I can't raise the dead or take away the pain or slap that boy who broke their heart so silly that it makes it all better.

In those moments, I hope that Martha will help me turn to the Lord. If You had been here, this would not have happened. Turning to Someone else to fix the world when you know you can't. "But I know even now He will give you whatever you ask." But what might sound like an accusation was meant to make way for the next part: "I know [my brother] will rise again in the resurrection on the last day."

Faith in something Beyond. That even if He is no longer here with us, if He cannot be in Bethany to save us all our lives, He will catch us when we fall. In death, He will be there. Someday we will rise, with all of our sins fallen away and all of our wounds healed.

Twice Martha professed this faith. And she was rewarded, sooner than she expected. Because Martha was always settling too early.

But it was Martha who told them to roll away the stone, at His orders, was willing to let all the terrible stench and reality of death, willing to risk the horror of death to touch her, to see what a wreck her brother had been reduced to, because Jesus told her to. To risk laying open the dark, terrible things we keep repressed and covered because we believe that God can transform them in us into new light. Terrifying and all the more brave because she had a less simple and pure and spiritual faith than her sister Mary.

Martha is a model of how we should turn to God in grief, not pretending that He couldn't have stopped this, couldn't have reached down from the sky and stopped our pain from ever occurring, but full of faith and joy that He chose instead to take our pain upon Himself. One day He will call our name, stand up now, walk and live, and we will rise to new life free of these burdens. He will hold us and cry with us now, because on our world there are rules and there is free will and this is what we chose to take the snake with the apple, and someday He will roll away the stone that we put up to keep all of our pain hidden and locked away so that we can function - so that the scent of death and decay does not overtake us - all the sooner if we let Him, and He will heal everything that causes us pain.

That's quite a promise to make to a fixer.

"Lazarus come out!"