Podcast 2.07 The Microcosm in Mary’s Backyard

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Transcript

Episode 2.07
The Microcosm in Mary’s Backyard

(Musical intro)

Intro: Welcome to the Encounter Jesus podcast, also known as the ‘feel like Jesus is hugging you today’ podcast. I’m Elizabeth Ellynshaw, and we’ve been visiting the three stories of Mary of Bethany who is always found at Jesus’ feet. In her first story, she took the courageous risk to listen to Jesus’ voice and sit at His feet, even though her sister wasn’t happy and her culture didn’t approve. Her story invited us to meet Jesus in a consistent place like a child on on His lap or a worshiper at His feet, it invited us to dare to listen to His voice, it invited us to celebrate the way Jesus welcomed women and restored all that they lost through the sin of Eve, and it invited us to be content with Jesus being pleased with us even when other humans are not pleased with us, to stay with Him and let His pleasure be enough. All of these were lessons on ways to do the thing Mary did that pleased Jesus so much, to choose the best portion that would never be taken from her.

But now Mary’s story seems to have taken a dark and unexpected turn (John 11). She sent Jesus a message full of hope and confidence and trust in His love, telling Him that her brother was sick and expecting Him to rush to her and heal him. And Jesus did nothing, and let Lazarus die. So now Mary has the choice of how to meet a Jesus who has disappointed her. And for one brief moment in the story, we see Mary not in her place. We see Mary not at the feet of Jesus, but hiding in the house when Jesus comes. Even though in the first story Jesus praised Mary and gently corrected Martha, in this story Martha comes out to meet Jesus and Mary doesn’t. I don’t know why that is for sure, but I see that Mary needed Martha’s help in order to be able to encounter Jesus in her pain. And I can identify with that. There have been moments in my life where I felt like I was wearing this story like a glove and every finger fit. And I was hiding from Jesus because I was angry with Him and I didn’t want to be angry with Him, I loved Him and I wanted to protect Him from my anger in my pain. I didn’t want to lash out at Him. I didn’t want to tell Him I felt like He abandoned me and that all the right answers and promises He’d made hadn’t really been true.

And in those moments, it was only when God sent me a sister, a sister like Martha to come and say, “Jesus misses you. Jesus is looking for you. Jesus is asking for you. Jesus wants you,” that I snapped as fast as Mary snapped and I ran as fast as Mary ran to go let the real me meet the real Jesus, no matter how messy and angry and wet with ugly crying that process needed to be.

And one thing I love about this story is that if there was ever a moment in Mary’s life that she was NOT thinking about sharing her faith, or telling her friends and neighbors about Jesus, or persuading others to follow Jesus, it was this moment, when she burst into tears and ran out of the house as fast as she could run. And that is the moment God used to lead all her friends and neighbors to Jesus. Because they thought, ‘poor Mary must be going to cry in the cemetery, let’s go follow her,’ and they followed her there and met Jesus. The Jesus who wept with Mary until they said, ‘Wow, look how He loved him!’ and the Jesus who raised Lazarus from the dead and convinced them He was the Messiah from God. Mary was just crying her eyes out, but God used her suffering and what Jesus did with it to save people. You just can’t stop God!

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Prayer: Jesus who weeps with us, Jesus who raises the dead, thank You that You are here to meet with each of us in our story. Lord, if there is anyone here who needs a sister to say, “Jesus is here and He is asking for you,” I pray that my voice right now would be the voice of that sister saying, “I just met Jesus and He was looking for you.” And I ask Lord that no matter how messy it is to sob out our pain and confusion and disappointment at Your feet, that the real us would encounter the real You in a way that saves the world. In Jesus’ name, amen.

(Musical transition)

Content: When I was in seventh grade, my mom got me a purple vocabulary book to start increasing my vocabulary for the SAT. I was excited to learn new words and find ways to use them in my real life. I opened the book and looked with interest to see what was the first new word I was going to learn. It was the word, ‘microcosm.’ The book explained that this word came from ‘micro’ meaning small and ‘cosmos’ meaning ‘order’ or ‘the universe,’  and so it was like a miniature universe. It meant a small system that included all the elements of a larger system, so you could see it up close. And I remember being disappointed and frustrated thinking, ‘I have to memorize a word I will never ever get to use in real life! How often in my real life do I see and want to talk about a smaller system that contains all the elements of a larger system?”

But when I was an adult reading and meditating on the story of Mary and Martha and Lazarus, I suddenly remembered my purple 7th grade vocabulary book and my frustration with that first word and I thought, here’s where I can use it. this story is a microcosm. It’s a microcosm of the problem of evil. All the elements are there. God in heaven is represented by Jesus on earth, so we can see Him up close, and see how He responds to our pain and suffering. Just like God in heaven throughout all of history is supposed to be full of both love and power, we see in Jesus on earth in this story someone full of both love and power, enough power to heal everyone He meets and enough love to do it. And then just like the problem of evil, we see this loving powerful Jesus letting a bad thing happen to good people who love and trust Him. And there is it is, the whole big logical problem that the philosophers have debated for millennia and the bereaved have cried about for millennia, “how can a both loving and powerful God let bad things happen to good people?” all playing out in microcosm in Mary and Martha’s back yard, a miniature version of the whole story so that we can see God response to it up close.

And Mary and Martha bring in microcosm the way that all humans in pain cry out to God ‘why?’ Both Mary and Martha believe in both Jesus’ love and power, and so they both are really confused and in pain. And when He shows up, they both have only one thing to say to Him, the exact same sentence, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” And even though both sisters say the exact same words, they get a completely different reaction from Jesus, what each of them needs. And both of Jesus’ responses to the two sisters are a revelation about God that is a gift to all the rest of us.

Both Mary and Martha were bringing Jesus the whole problem of evil in the microcosm of their own story. They both said, ‘I know you had the power to stop this, I know you love us, we asked you for help, why didn’t you come? What am I supposed to do with this?’ But the difference is that Martha said it standing up, looking Jesus in the face, asking Him for answers, wanting to understand, while Mary said it to His feet, sobbing on the ground, crying too hard for conversation, just needing to know that He cared. And we can be glad that Martha was there responding like a Thinker and representing the thinking side of all of us, so that we can hear in microcosm, from Jesus, how God responds to the honest questions of our minds. And we can be equally thankful that Mary was there responding like a feeler and representing the emotional side of all of us so that we can see in Jesus how God responds to the scream of our hearts, too.

Because when Jesus answered Martha, He really answered her. He told her explicity what He was up to and said, “Your brother will rise again.” She reached out in wondering faith, did He mean right now or at the end of the world? Then Jesus made one of His most famous “I AM” statements. “I AM the resurrection and the life.” Jesus makes seven “I AM statements” in the gospel of John, but the context of this one was in a personal conversation to Martha alone. One of these seven treasures about the identity of Jesus was made to all of us by being made to her, in this, the moment of greatest crisis in her life. Then Jesus explains to Martha the difference that He is going to make in the human experience of life and death, “The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” Martha responds with one of the clearest expressions of faith in Jesus that anybody in the New Testament has: “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.” Jesus and Martha have an amazing conversation when she brings Him the question of her pain. The whole world learns who Jesus is from how He responds to her.

And then Martha calls Mary and Mary comes quickly, and when she sees Jesus, she falls into her place at His feet weeping and sobs out on His feet the exact same words Martha just said to His face. And Jesus doesn’t answer her with any words at all. He doesn’t tell her what He just told Martha, that her brother will rise from the dead. He doesn’t tell her He’s the resurrection and the life. He doesn’t invalidate or contradict her feelings by telling her, ‘you shouldn’t feel this upset because I’m about to fix it.’ He knows with the wisdom of His Father that Martha needed answers, and Mary just needs Him to be with her in the pain. And so He lets His heart break at the sight of her heartbreak, and He bursts into tears with her. They cry together, the Rabbi who arrived too late and the woman sobbing at His feet. He gives Mary a safe place at His feet to cry. He validates her tears forever by weeping with her. He reveals to us a God who weeps, a God who cares, a God who feels our pain and is with us in our suffering, a God who fully enters in and walks through the grief and loss and hardship with us even though He knows it is all temporary.

And the thing that makes this story most like a microcosm is how it compresses time, how it shows us all of human history play out in one afternoon. Jesus allows the pain, shows up in the pain, reveals Himself in the pain to both the questions of the mind and the cry of the heart, and then reverses the pain, all in a day. In one afternoon Jesus reveals that the ultimate plan of God is to allow death and suffering sometimes, weep with us and be there with us in it, and then completely reverse it all and make things truly well with resurrection, working them all for a good we will never regret. We don’t usually get to fast forward to the end of the story like this, we have to exercise our faith to believe that He really will make a happy ending of true justice and restoration and resurrection and eternal life. But Jesus pulled the future into the present that day and gave a sneak preview of the happy ending that is coming for all who believe in Him, the final happy ending of real, full, bodily, complete resurrection.

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Question: So what does your heart need from Jesus? Do you need answers like Martha did, about who He is and what He is doing? Or do you need, like Mary did, to feel His arms close around you and feel the tears running down His face mingling with yours? Do you need to bring Him your questions or bring Him your need to cry? Or maybe, like I often have, you need a healthy dose of both. Whichever it is, whatever kind of “why?” Your faith needs to bring Him as it’s being stretched, He is standing here ready to meet with you. What questions do you want to bring to Jesus’ face and what cries of sorrow do you want to bring to Jesus’ feet? Unlimited access to Jesus in both ways is all yours.

(Musical Outro)