No Miracles Required

This is part two of a five-week series on the raising of Lazarus. Read part one here, and subscribe to get the next installment in your inbox!

I once asked a (Christian) friend with back pain whether she was comforted by reading the story of Jesus healing the woman with a bent back in Luke 13. I suppose I should have expected her tongue-in-cheek reply: "Not that much, because I haven't been healed like she was."

Fair enough.

A similar problem confronts us with the raising of Lazarus. How do we derive comfort from this story when we lose loved ones? None of us can expect Jesus to raise our siblings from the dead before the last day, so how is this story supposed to comfort us?

It's easy to miss it, but this is exactly the problem that Martha confronts Jesus with when he arrives in Bethany to raise Lazarus:

So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house. Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?" She said to him, "Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world." (John 11:20–27, ESV)

Notice that Martha begins by telling Jesus that "whatever you ask from God, God will give you." Now, we as readers today know what's coming. We know that Jesus is about to raise Lazarus. But the next thing Martha says confirms that she isn't thinking about an immediate resurrection: "I know that [Lazarus] will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." Martha doesn't have in mind that Jesus might raise her brother from the dead today.

Instead, she looks forward to that final resurrection promised in Daniel 12. On that day, at the end of history, the dead will rise. The righteous rise to a life of everlasting blessedness, and the wicked to a life of everlasting shame. This is the hope that she connects with her faith that God will answer Jesus' prayers.

What do Jesus' prayers have to do with this final resurrection? As in last week's post, J. Ramsey Michaels is helpful here. Martha's hope is connected to the contemporary Jewish understanding that the prayers of the righteous are able to secure the dead a resurrection with the righteous – rather than with the wicked.

Of course, as we will see, Jesus is going to do far more than that for Lazarus. But, at the same time, Martha isn't wrong. Jesus has the ear of his Father, and the Father will grant everlasting life to all those for whom Jesus asks it. Martha knows this. And Martha knows that Jesus loves Lazarus. So, she is confident that Jesus' intercession will grant Lazarus resurrection life.

When Jesus then tells Martha that he is the resurrection and the life, he is stretching her mind (and faith) further. Jesus is not just any other righteous person who might be able to intercede for the dead. And Jesus doesn't just have the ear of the Father when he prays. No, as Jesus taught in John 5, the Father has given the Son authority to raise the dead directly. On the last day, it is not the Father but the Son who will raise the dead. The Son does not just intercede for the dead so that his Father will raise them. The Son raises the dead himself.

In response to this, Martha responds with one last resounding articulation of her faith: "I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world."

Martha believed that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, before she even witnessed Jesus raising her brother from the dead. In fact, when we come to verse 39, Jesus commands the bystanders to remove the stone from Lazarus's tomb – and Martha is the one who protests: "Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days." Even after her rousing declaration of faith, Martha still doesn't expect Jesus to raise her brother from the dead before the last day.

The raising of Lazarus displays Jesus' authority over life and death. And, we read that many people believed in Jesus because of it. John even says in 12:18 that the crowds met Jesus at his triumphal entry because of what happened at Lazarus's tomb. Even today, John gives us written testimony that Jesus raised Lazarus. And this testimony should cause us to believe as well.

But Martha didn't need a miracle to believe. She didn't even expect a miracle. She had already seen and heard enough about Jesus to know that he had the authority he claimed to have. As John's readers today, we have even more information than Martha did. After all, we know how the story ends: Jesus does raise Lazarus, that very day!

So, maybe we should take a cue from Martha. As painful as the sting of death is, we don't need to see Jesus raise our own loved ones from the dead before we can believe in him. And by believing, we too can share in Martha's hope: that our loved ones "will rise again in the resurrection on the last day."

This is part two of a five-week series on the raising of Lazarus. If you haven't already, you can read part one. Subscribe with your email, or follow on Bluesky or the Fediverse to receive the next installment!