Bringing the Book Alive:

Five minutes in Bethany

by Bryony Wood

‘Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair. So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”

When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.’

John 11:1-6

‘Four long days I had cried. Four days of gut-wrenching sobs turning my very being inside out with grief. Mary, my sister, and I were wrung out, angry and without any shred of hope. We’d watched our beloved brother Lazarus die.  We’d been desperate for Jesus to come to him, but he was some distance away. The one time we really needed him ...

We’d sent word of course, but he was too late. Now Lazarus lay cold in his tomb, his body decaying.
Then I heard Jesus was returning, I ran out to meet him. “Lord,” I cried, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  I’d been telling Mary over and over; Jesus could have healed our brother.  We’d seen evidence before as others had been healed.

I fell at his feet, too weary to plead any longer. He knelt down in the dust with me, his tears mingling with mine, sharing my pain and grief. I didn’t need to explain how desperate we’d been; he knew with every cell of his being.

Then he seemed to regain his composure and stood up, instructing the men around us, “Take away the stone to the tomb.”

“But, Lord,” I said, “by this time there is a bad odour, he has been dead for four days.”

Ignoring my horror, Jesus looked up to heaven and asked for the glory of God to be revealed. When he had prayed, he turned towards the tomb and called, “Lazarus, come out!”

And right before our eyes, my brother, my once-dead brother walked out, still wrapped in his grave clothes! The power of God raising him back to life. Not a walking corpse, but truly restored, living flesh and blood.

In five minutes our sobbing had turned to laughing. In that five minutes I suddenly understood who had just commanded the life back into my brother.

Our friend was not just a man asking God for help; he carried in him the very power of life itself. Although he had wept with us as a man, it was fired with divine compassion. This wasn’t just the one who spoke the word of God, who asked God for help, he was the Word of God himself.

Now it made sense; “I am the resurrection and the life,” he’d said just five minutes before. “He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.”
He who believes in ‘me’... ‘I Am’ he had said, I Am the One...

As I unwrapped the cloths from Lazarus and saw his bemused smile, I knew there would be many who would find our story hard to believe. But I, Martha, saw it with my own eyes, the power and presence of the Christ, the Son of God and giver of Life himself.’

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