“The Jews sought to stone you,” one of them pointed out. “Why go there again?”
“Are there not twelve hours in the day?” Jesus asked sternly. “If any man walk in the day he does not stumble because he sees the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbles because there is no light in him.”
Again He was reproving them for their lack of faith. Whatever waited for them in Judea was God’s will. If they walked as they should, in the light of their faith in Him and His Father, they could not stumble.
In a softer tone now, Jesus explained why they must go into Judea. “Our friend Lazarus sleeps,” He said. “But I go that I may wake him out of sleep.”
“Lord,” said one of the disciples a little testily, for he was weary from the forced journey to rejoin Jesus. “If he sleeps he does well.”
“Lazarus is dead,” Jesus then explained. “I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent that you may believe. Nevertheless let us go to him.”
“Let us also go that we may die with Him,” said Thomas, and the rest of them were ashamed now at their reluctance to accompany Jesus when He was going into danger. They all set out together and after two days’ journey came to Bethany.
When Jesus arrived, Lazarus had been dead and in the tomb for four days.
II
The room to which Mary went when she returned from the funeral had already been prepared as a chamber of mourning, a purpose it would serve for the next thirty days. As was the custom, the couches had been upturned and chairs tumbled over in token of sorrow. The women sought to comfort Mary but she went directly to a corner and knelt there, her eyes uplifted as she prayed to God. It was not for Lazarus that she prayed, but for herself, that she might have faith in what Jesus had taught of the truth of eternal life, faith to be certain that they would all be joined with Lazarus in heaven.
While Mary prayed, the lines of grief in her face were gradually relieved as the assurance she sought came flowing into her soul. Lazarus was gone; she would mourn him, for she loved him, but even in the depth of her sorrow, she was comforted by the knowledge that the separation from her brother would be only like the absence of a loved one who has gone on a long journey.
When Mary rose from her knees, her face was composed. The other women marveled at the deep and abiding faith that showed in her eyes and one of them spoke to Martha of it.
Martha still somewhat resented that Jesus had chosen this time to be absent from Bethany when He might have saved Lazarus, and it offended her that Mary seemed to have put away her grief so quickly.
“It is not seemly to give up mourning so soon,” she said. “You look almost happy and not even a week of sorrow has passed.” By custom a special week of sorrow began the mourning period. Traditionally the first three of the seven days, always excepting the Sabbath when all mourning was suspended, were the most intense.
“Have you forgotten the words of Jesus to Nicodemus?” Mary asked.
“What do you mean?”
“When Nicodemus first talked to Jesus, the Master told him God so loved the world He sent His Son so that whoever believes in Him shall not die but have everlasting life.”
Martha was taken aback. Concerned with the present and with material things, she had lacked the inner faith and the peace it could bring.
“Lazarus is dead only for a little while,” Mary said confidently. “He will rise again in heaven and we shall be with him.”
“But he was so young to be stricken down,” Martha protested, her eyes filling with tears again. “If Jesus had been here, Lazarus would not have died.”
“But he will live again and we shall be with him.” The promise was enough for Mary, but Martha could not yet find in her soul the fundamental faith she needed in order to be comforted.
The first days of deepest mourning were not yet finished when Jesus came to Bethany. As head of the household, Martha was busy with the needs of the friends, relatives, and retainers who had come to mourn with them. For her, physical action had always served to solve the emotional problems she was unable to cope with herself. She was in the kitchen directing the servants as they baked bread in the large ovens when word came that Jesus was approaching.
Leaving the house, she ran to meet Him and came upon Him and His party before they reached the yard surrounding the house. Dropping to her knees before Him, she said impetuously, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Jesus sensed the reproof in her tone and, knowing how she had loved Lazarus, understood. As soon as she spoke, however, Martha realized her presumption and, overcome now with shame, she added quickly, “But I know that even now whatever You ask of God, God will give it to You.”
Martha’s expression of faith had come belatedly, but Jesus was compassionate for the frailties of human character. As on that other occasion when she had protested that Mary sat at His feet while she labored with the household duties, He understood Martha’s good qualities as well as her weaknesses and was gentle with her. Taking her by the hand, He lifted her to her feet.
“Your brother shall rise again,” He told her.
Martha had not yet been able to find in her own heart Mary’s joyful confidence that they would be joined again with Lazarus in the resurrection. She thought mainly of the present and material, Mary of the spiritual and eternal, and it had been hard for her to find a meeting ground between the two.
“I know he shall rise again on the resurrection at the last day,” she said, but still somewhat doubtfully.
When Martha had run to meet Jesus, most of those gathered in the courtyard outside the house had followed her. Some were followers of Jesus while others were merely curious to see what the prophet of Nazareth would do for these people who were among His closest friends. They had stood a small distance away and the disciples, too, had held back while Jesus was talking to Martha, hesitating to intrude upon the meeting between Him and the bereaved sister. Jesus lifted His voice now so all could hear.
“I am the resurrection and the life,” He said. “He that believes in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whoever lives and believes in Me will never die.”
Turning to Martha again, He asked in a lower tone, “Do you believe this?”
Martha could not yet understand what Jesus was promising her. She believed that He could have kept Lazarus from death if He had been at Bethany when her brother became ill. But Lazarus was dead now; four days ago she had seen his body washed and anointed and placed in the tomb. Her practical mind recoiled from a death that was not death.
“Lord, I believe You are the Christ,” she said humbly. The Son of God, which should come into the world.”
Belatedly Martha remembered that Mary sat with the mourners in the upstairs chamber and she went to tell her sister of Jesus’ arrival. Mary left the mourning chamber and ran immediately to kneel before the Master.
“Lord,” she said, “if You had been here my brother would not have died.”
The words were those Martha had used, but there was an infinity of difference in the meaning. Where Martha had reproached Jesus for being absent and letting Lazarus die, Mary was stating a truth she had instinctively realized deep in her soul through that warm communion of spirit which existed between her and Jesus, the truth that those who stood beside Him could never die, even though they went through the tomb itself.
Tears filled Jesus’ eyes and ran down His cheeks. For whom did He weep?
Certainly He wept for the “lost sheep of Israel” whose faith did not even equal that of Martha and could never equal that of Mary. And for that lack of faith, they must die, not like Lazarus, with the certainty of resurrection to life eternal, but condemned eternally for their refusal to see the light.
Once again Mary had “chosen that good part,” the sublime conviction of faith in God and H
is Son “which shall not be taken away from her.”
Jesus’ travail lasted only a moment. The time left Him was growing short.
“Where have you laid him?” He asked.
Mary and Martha answered together. “Lord, come and see.”
As Jesus and Mary and Martha now moved through the garden toward the tomb, one of the men watching said wonderingly, “Behold, how He loved him!”
But another, of the same practical turn of mind as Martha, said, “Could not this Man who opened the eyes of the blind have kept Lazarus from dying?”
At the end of the garden the three stopped before the tomb, with the golel, the great stone, guarding it.
“Take away the stone,” Jesus directed.
Again Martha’s sense of the practical overrode her faith.
“Lord, by this time he stinks!” she cried, horrified at the thought of exposing a rotting body, the ultimate of defilement under Jewish ritual beliefs. “He has been dead four days.”
“Did I not say to you, if you believe, you would see the glory of God?” Jesus asked.
Ashamed, Martha made no more objections and some of the disciples joined the men who had come to mourn in pushing away the stone.
Standing before the cave, Jesus raised His eyes to heaven in prayer. ‘Father, I thank You that You have heard Me,” He said. “And I know that You hear Me always. But because of the people who stand by I spoke it, that they may believe You have sent Me.”
Then He lowered His eyes and said in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!”
Something stirred in the gloomy depths of the tomb, and then a white-robed figure slowly arose from the niche where the body of Lazarus had been placed. Stumbling a little, for the napkin was still bound across his face, Lazarus walked from the tomb.
“Loose him,” Jesus directed, “and let him go.”
In the garden and the courtyard outside the house, people were falling to their knees to worship Jesus and beg Him to teach them to believe. But a few slipped away to Jerusalem, eager to be the first to bring Caiaphas and Elam the news that the prophet of Nazareth had accomplished, almost on the doorstep of the temple, the ultimate miracle, that of raising a man dead four days and wrapped in his grave clothes.
In raising Lazarus, Jesus had now cast down the gage. The final phase of the conflict between Him and the authorities at Jerusalem had begun and its climax was inevitable.
III
News that Jesus had returned to Bethany and raised Lazarus from the dead struck Caiaphas with amazement. Previously Jesus had visited Jerusalem only at the time of the religious festivals, and Caiaphas had already begun to make plans which he expected to put into effect when the forthcoming Passover season began. Now Jesus was in Judea well before the Passover and, if the excited reports from Bethany were to be believed, making a startling impression upon the people who had seen Him raise Lazarus from the dead or heard the reports of it that were being circulated.
It was true that Jesus had seemed to overcome death on other occasions, notably when He had apparently restored the daughter of Jairus to life in Capernaum, but those happenings had been far from Jerusalem and there was reason to doubt that they were miracles at all. In the case of Jairus’s daughter, Jesus Himself had said she was not dead but asleep.
Concerning Lazarus, however, no one could doubt. He had been pronounced dead by a physician; his body had been prepared for burial by people who could swear that he was indeed dead; and afterward he had lain in the tomb for four days. To Caiaphas, these facts could not be explained unless Jesus healed by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of devils, which the high priest devoutly believed to be the case.
For still another reason, Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin were particularly concerned by the reappearance of Jesus now in the suburbs of Jerusalem. Not long before, a brief outburst of violence had flared in the sanctuary area itself when a group of Galilean Zealots, headed by a bandit named Barabbas, had tried to stir up a rebellion, apparently more in the hope of committing a spectacular robbery during the following confusion, than with any expectation of overthrowing the temple hierarchy. Watchful for just such occurrences, the troops of Pilate had swarmed into the temple without stopping to consult the high priest and had cut down the Galileans, taking only their leader prisoner. In the words of the horrified priests, Pilate had “mingled the blood of the Galileans with their sacrifices,” a reminder of another occasion when heathens had desecrated the great altar of the temple on the order of Antiochus IV.
A wave of indignation had swept Jerusalem at this new indignity by the Romans, and since he often cooperated with Pilate, Caiaphas had been heavily blamed by the Sanhedrin. He was determined to prevent another such incident, for the Sanhedrin could depose him if they wished and name another high priest in his stead, as could the procurator as well. Caiaphas knew, too, that Pilate was not pleased with him for having let the abortive attack occur at all.
The members of the Great Sanhedrin were equally concerned when they met on the morning after word came that Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead. Following the recent disturbances when the Galileans had been executed in the temple, any commotion due to Jesus’ presence in the area might be interpreted by Pontius Pilate as the beginning of another uprising. In such a case the procurator would move swiftly and this time considerably more people might be involved. Roman justice was thorough but sometimes, especially in the hands of an impulsive man like Pontius Pilate, completely ruthless. To the members of the Sanhedrin, the crisis posed by Jesus’ presence could profoundly influence the future of Israel as a nation.
Nearly three hundred years before Jesus was born, Jews who sought to combat the Greek influences and maintain the traditions of a nation founded under God with a code of laws in the Torah had organized themselves in what came to be called the Great Synagogue. Even before the revolt led by Judas Maccabaeus, a senate or gerousia, also called the Sanhedrin, had existed in Jerusalem for the purpose of administering the affairs of state for the Jews as a whole. Religious in nature, it was also political, for the Law had come from God through Moses and the two were considered inseparable.
As the Pharisees, with their strict observance of the Torah and their antagonism to the liberal beliefs of the Sadducees, dominated the life of the people under Roman rule, they came to be more and more influential in the Sanhedrin. Under the Hasmoneans, the Sadducees gained power but when Herod the Great murdered forty-five members of the Council, the balance swung again to the Pharisees.
Under Herod, the Sanhedrin had become weak, only to regain its authority when Archelaus was deposed and Judea was made into a province of Rome under a procurator. It became the final supreme court for all cases involving breaches of Mosaic Law. In Galilee, where Herod Antipas ruled, the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem exercised little power except in strictly religious matters. But in Judea and Jerusalem the high court could order arrests and condemn criminals to any punishment short of death. Only capital offenses required the procurator’s approval.
The high court met twice weekly in its own building on the west side of the temple elevation. Although composed of seventy-one members, twenty-three constituted the traditional quorum and the entire membership was rarely present. As a result, the small Priestly Council, largely dominated by Caiaphas, carried on most of the business of the court.
Generally Caiaphas did not convoke the larger group. On the present occasion he summoned it. The question to be discussed was a grave one.
The court sat in a great arc extending from one side of the meeting chamber to the other, a line of men of all ages and of diverse appearance. The priests were richly dressed, the wealthier Pharisees equally so. But there were also artisans and men of little wealth here, many of them teachers whose influence was great.
Annas, the former high priest, spoke first by custom. “We are gathered to decide what must be done with the Nazarene Je
sus,” he said in his quavering voice. “This man does many miracles and if we let Him alone, all men will believe Him. Then the Romans will come and take away both our city and nation.”
The recent trouble with the Galileans was uppermost in the minds of all. Had that uprising spread into the city where hatred of the Romans was strong, the punitive actions of Pilate would not have mingled the blood of merely the offending Galileans with their sacrifices. Many of those present had witnessed the cruelties of Herod; some of this very group had been imprisoned by him in the Hippodrome and saved only by the king’s death. They were determined now that trouble be kept from Jerusalem at all costs.
“There is no reason to connect Jesus of Nazareth with the revolt of the Galileans,” Nicodemus said. “If He raises men from the dead, surely He must be the Messiah.”
This was too much for Elam. “The Nazarene performs miracles through the power of Beelzebub!” he shouted angrily. “Would you turn over the temple of Israel to the devil himself?”
“Jesus refuted that argument,” Nicodemus protested.
Elam only shrugged. “Would Satan admit his identity? Demons always answer with a lie.”
A chorus of assent arose from the members.
“This man does good work,” Joseph of Arimathea protested. “Who can accuse Him of any evil?”
“Is it not evil to teach people to break the Law?” a rabbi demanded hotly. “He ignores the Sabbath and uses it as if it were any other day.”
“And He teaches people to eat without washing,” another cried.
“Besides,” Elam added, “there are known revolutionaries among His disciples.”
“He eats with publicans and sinners,” Joachai argued, “encouraging the evil to do more evil.”
“But if He is the Messiah,” Nicodemus managed to interpose, “He could do all those things and it would not be wrong.”
The Crown and the Cross: The Life of Christ Page 26