Blaming and Claiming

Martha then said to Jesus, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. Even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." (John 11:21-23)

I have been waiting with mounting anticipation to explore these words between Martha and Jesus that are so full of hope and encouragement. Martha meets Jesus outside of town full of sorrow, confusion and possibly some tinges of bitterness for Jesus not showing up in time to relieve her of the cause of her deep anguish. But she is not afraid to speak her heart openly to Him and Jesus honors her for that.

What is behind the words of Martha here? Is she angry with Jesus for not coming in time? That certainly might be a part of it. Is she stating a fact of reality, that if Jesus had been present the sickness could never have claimed the life of her brother? That is certainly a truth and might be what was on her mind. Likely it was a mixture of feelings that were swirling around inside her soul that gave voice to what she expressed to Jesus that day. But most important of all she did not try to suppress her feelings but at the same time she remained intentionally respectful and aware of who Jesus really was and the potential for Him to do things for her beyond her ability to imagine in the moment.

Even though Martha could only express faith in Jesus getting whatever He might ask for from His Father rather than her asking anything for herself, I believe Martha was stretching her faith as far as she could to give Jesus a chance to take it even further. And that I believe is a most important lesson to be discerned in this story. Like any of us under extreme pressures of discouragement or suffering emotional distress, it is difficult for us to exercise faith or experience peace when everything seems to indicate that God has abandoned us or is ignoring our cries for help. Yet I see in this interchange between Jesus and Martha some gems of truth that I need to store away in my own heart to remember in similar situations.

Even in her pain Martha chooses to give Jesus the benefit of the doubt while being honest about her frustration with Him. And in being both honest about her feelings while still trusting in His love for her, Martha opens the way for Him to build on her faith and move quickly above it to transform her circumstances beyond her wildest hopes. And Jesus is ready and eager to do similar things for any one of us who are willing to follow her example.

Was Martha blaming Jesus for the death of her brother? Possibly. It seems that most of us have a penchant for wanting to blame someone when things go badly in our lives. I've noticed how pervasive this habit is for so many of us including myself. When relationships malfunction, when accidents happen, when prayers go seemingly unanswered, when pain invades our lives, the first thing we seem to want to do is to point the finger of blame at someone instead of looking to see how we might be responsible for at least part of what is going on.

This is one of the primary symptoms of sin. It was one of the very first symptoms to appear minutes after Adam and Eve ate of the fruit they had been warned against eating. When gently asked by God about their choices to disobey they both immediately began to blame others while implicitly denying personal responsibility. Adam blamed Eve for tempting him and Eve blamed the serpent. But interestingly both of them explicitly blamed God for setting them up to fall by creating the source that they were using to blame for their disobedience.

This is what fear and deception by sin does to our heart. When we live with distorted views of God and entertain false ideas about how He feels towards us, we will always react to His presence by seeking to shift responsibility and blame to someone or something else. But since God created everything then ultimately we are doing no more than throwing the blame back onto Him while denying personal accountability. Living in fear of God from the false belief that He wants to hurt us and punish us produces an attitude of self-defense and a desire to shift blame away from ourselves. This will always result in embracing a falsehood to some degree, for all sin involves deception and false ideas about God.

But God does not react in kind and seek to blame us or contradict our faulty logic. Rather He is intent on restoring our relationship with Him to the trusting, loving, loyal relationship that He created us to have with Him originally. He is not interested in playing our silly blame games, rather He is intent on restoring to us the joy of intimate fellowship with Him that sin has destroyed in our lives.

Martha actually expressed a truth when she stated that if Jesus had been there Lazarus would not have died. So where is the deception in the potential blame she was expressing? It was not so much the technical truthfulness of her statement that involved deception but the spirit that sin brings to the way we view our circumstances. Martha was feeling deep anguish from the loss of her brother and because her natural fallen nature clamored to indulge in the blame game like all fallen beings do, she reminded Jesus that really it was His fault that her brother had died.

Interestingly Jesus did not deny her subtle accusation just as He did not do with Adam and Eve. Rather He seized on the positive in what she had said and sought to draw her out to an even deeper trust in His plans for her. He sought to turn her attention away from the blame game that never brings satisfaction or resolution to focusing on the truth about God. Rather than waste time trying to explain who's fault was involved in her pain, Jesus zeroed in on her statement of faith, her offer of a blank check to Him and then immediately made a counter-offer to her.

When Martha expressed her confidence that Jesus could get anything He wanted from His Father, it was the same as giving Jesus a blank check for Him to fill in with whatever He want to do. Jesus gets very excited when His children give Him blank checks like this. The most important thing about our relationship with God is a restoration of our confidence in who He really is, to belief in His consistent goodness, to have a settled assurance of His good intentions in our lives and an implicit trust in His heart for us. This is the ultimate goal of the whole plan of salvation and whenever we choose to offer God an opportunity to advance His value in our hearts and before others by expressing faith in Him He will reward our offer many times multiplied.

In this case I see Jesus instantly filling in the blank check given Him by Martha with the words, your brother will rise again. I sense that possibly Martha may have had a startled shock of hope for a moment until her logical mind kicked in and reasoned through that statement to fit her religious belief system based on what she had been taught from Scriptures. Again, Jesus did not seek to immediately challenge her beliefs but instead reaffirmed her confidence in the Word of God. He did not seek to discredit her hope in the resurrection in the last day when all the righteous will be brought up from the grave to be reunited with their loved ones and meet Jesus in the clouds of glory. He wanted her to keep her roots firmly attached in the Scriptures but He wanted to build even more on that foundation.

Jesus took hold of this opportunity offered Him in the expression of faith by Martha to unveil a greater truth about Himself that had to this point remained shrouded in mystery. Jesus reaffirmed her confidence in the future resurrection but wanted her to connect that promised event more directly with Himself. Jesus wanted her to begin to realize more distinctly how central He Himself was to every aspect of the plan of salvation and how it was through Him alone that all the promises of God can be fulfilled.

But all of this started and was made possible by Martha handing Jesus a blank check of faith so that He could return it to her filled in with something far greater than she would have dared to write on it. And even though Jesus used her limited view of truth to reinforce the promises of the Bible, He also used her tentative faith to expand her thinking and challenge her limited vision of what God might want to do for her. When she said God would give Jesus anything He asked of His Father, Jesus immediately took that statement and filled in the blank by saying He intended to ask His Father for the restored life of Lazarus.

What could Martha have felt at that moment? I believe she experienced a momentary shock of surprise and a thrill of hope before her logical thinking blocked it out again. I believe her heart must have leaped up to grasp the words of Jesus before her mind began creating its own explanation based on logic. In truth her first response was completely right for in reality the life returned to Lazarus by Jesus later in this story was only his mortal existence that again would come to an end later on. It would only be at the glorious resurrection at Jesus' second coming that Lazarus would receive the kind of life that will last forever which is the one God is most interested in.

But Jesus wanted to make a case in this circumstance that would prove that He had the power and authority to accomplish that future event by demonstrating it in a limited fashion before the world in the case of Lazarus. And while He did not give Lazarus immortal life when He brought him out of the tomb later in this story, Jesus proved that He was far more powerful than the religious leaders were willing to acknowledge. It was this miracle that so overwhelmed their attempts to discredit Him that entrenched their resistance to Him and caused them to finalize their plans to kill Him to stop His witness for God.

I want to give God blank checks like Martha did and let Him give them back to me filled in with stunning offers for my life. I want to become free of fear and to be willing to express my real feelings to Him while still maintaining confidence in His heart toward me like Martha did. I want to give God more chances to use my life to demonstrate His power and attract others to want to enter into a saving relationship of trust in Him. I want to know God intimately as it is my privilege to know Him and grow up in my trust and to rest in His plans for me.