If there are RCIA candidates being prepared to be received at the Easter Vigil in your parish, you will have heard the alternative Gospel reading for the 5th Sunday of Lent – the Raising of Lazarus. Living with this rich story and allowing it to unfold in us, may help us to prepare to celebrate Holy Week.
We get the sense that the home of Lazarus and the two sisters is a place of refuge for Jesus. It is a place where Jesus can escape the demands of his ministry of preaching and healing to just relax and be among friends. A place where he felt “at home.” It seems that each of those who lived there - Lazarus, Mary and Martha - have their own particular relationship with Jesus.
We already know about one meal at their home – where Martha was frustrated at being left to do all the food preparation while Mary had quality time sitting learning from Jesus. It is likely that there were many times that they gathered together for meals in which memories, conversations, and laughter were shared. We don’t know when or how they met, but
there is a sense of love between friends.
When the sisters send a message to Jesus, who is away travelling, they don’t just say “Lazarus is ill” – they say, “the man you love is ill.” Martha and Mary know how much Lazarus matters to Jesus and the depth of the love there is between them. They have an expectation that Jesus will come immediately. They need Jesus, their close friend, at this critical moment when they fear that they will lose
their brother. And yet, Jesus does not return immediately.
All the way through this story, we see Jesus' humanity and divinity. As he receives the message that Lazarus is ill, he must desire to go back and to be with his three close friends. And yet, on another level, he knows God is asking him to wait – so that God’s power can be more clearly shown.
I wonder what it was like for Jesus in the two days that he waited and during the days of travel back. Anyone who has received the message that a loved one is dying and that they should come immediately, knows the terrible urgency of trying to get home as soon as possible to be with that person before they die.
It must have been agony for Jesus to deliberately delay, knowing that Lazarus will likely die before he gets there; knowing that Mary and Martha are grieving. I think it is too simplistic to think that Jesus did not suffer merely because he knew he could perform a miracle and that all would be well. That seems like cruelty to the two sisters whom he also cared for. There is another dynamic going on here of an even greater friendship and union with the Father. This is about an obedience of
absolute trust of doing what the Father asks and placing the outcome in his hands.
Who are the special people in your life – the ones you love most?
Where and with whom do you feel most at home?
How does it impact you when it feels as if God delays in response to your prayer?
Spend some time talking with Jesus about what it was like for him to receive this message from his friends, and to know that he was being asked to wait.
