Homilies on John, Homily 63

“Now Jesus had not yet come into the town, but was in the place where Martha met Him. Then the Jews who were with her,” and what follows. [1.] Philosophy is a great good; I mean the philosophy we practice. For what the pagans have is only words and fables, and these fables contain no true wisdom, since everything those men do is for the sake of their reputation. True wisdom, then, is a great good, and it rewards us even here. Anyone who despises wealth immediately benefits by being freed from unnecessary and unprofitable cares. Anyone who tramples on glory immediately receives his reward: he is no one’s slave, but free with true freedom. And anyone who desires heavenly things receives his reward from this, regarding present things as nothing and easily rising above every grief. Look, for example, at how this woman received her reward even here by practicing true wisdom. While everyone was sitting beside her as she mourned and lamented, she did not wait for the Master to come to her, insist on what might have seemed her due, or let her sorrow hold her back. (For in addition to their other misery, women in mourning suffer from this illness: they want special attention because of their situation.) But she was not affected this way at all; as soon as she heard, she quickly came to Him. “Jesus had not yet come into the town.” He moved somewhat slowly so that He might seem to be responding to their appeals, rather than rushing into the miracle Himself. At any rate, the Evangelist says that she “gets up quickly” either to suggest this or to show that she ran to meet Christ before He arrived. She did not come alone, but brought along the Jews who were in the house. Her sister very wisely called her secretly, so as not to disturb those who had gathered, and did not mention the reason either. Otherwise, many would certainly have gone back; but now they all followed her, thinking she was going to weep. These circumstances also prove that Lazarus was dead. Ver. 32. “And she fell at His feet.” She is more fervent than her sister. She paid no attention to the crowd or their suspicions about Him, for many of His enemies were there, saying, “Couldn’t this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have kept this man from dying too?” ( ver. 37 ); instead, she put aside all mortal concerns in her Master’s presence and devoted herself to one thing alone: honoring that Master. And what does she say? “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” What does Christ do? For the moment, He does not speak with her at all or say what He said to her sister. (A large crowd was there, and this was no suitable time for such words.) He simply acts with restraint and accommodates Himself to their weakness. To demonstrate His human nature, He weeps in silence and postpones the miracle for the moment. For this was a great miracle, one of a kind He seldom performed, and many would come to believe through it. If He performed it without their being present, it might become a stumbling block to the crowd, and they would gain nothing from its greatness. So, in order not to lose His quarry, He draws many witnesses to Himself by accommodating Himself to their weakness, and gives proof of His human nature. He weeps and is troubled, for grief naturally stirs the emotions. Then, checking those emotions (for “He groaned in spirit” means that He “restrained His distress”), He asked, Ver. 34. “Where have you laid him?” He did this so that His question would not be accompanied by lamentation. But why does He ask? Because He did not want to rush into (the miracle), but to learn everything from them and do everything at their invitation, so that the miracle would be free from all suspicion. “They say to Him, Come and see.” Ver. 35. “Jesus wept.” Do you see that He had not yet given any sign of raising him, and was going as though to weep, rather than to raise Lazarus? For the Jews show that they thought He was going to mourn for him, rather than raise him. At any rate, they said, Ver. 36, 37. “See how he loved him! And some of them said, Couldn’t this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have kept this man from dying too?” Even in the midst of calamity, they did not let up in their wickedness. Yet what He was about to do was far more wonderful, for driving death away after it has come and conquered is far greater than stopping it as it approaches. So they slander Him on the very grounds that should have made them marvel at His power. For the moment, they concede that He opened the eyes of the blind; yet when they should have admired Him for that miracle, they use this later case to cast doubt on it, as though it had never happened at all. And this is not the only evidence of their utter corruption: before He had even arrived or done anything, they rushed ahead with their accusations without waiting to see the outcome. Do you see how corrupt their judgment was? [2.] He then comes to the tomb and again checks His emotions. Why does the Evangelist carefully mention in several places that “He wept” and that “He groaned”? So that you may learn that He had truly put on our nature. For although this Evangelist stands out from the others for saying exalted things about Christ, here, in matters relating to the body, he also speaks in much humbler terms than they do. For example, in his account of His death, he says nothing of this kind. The other Evangelists say that He was deeply sorrowful and in agony; John, by contrast, says that He even threw the officers backward. So by mentioning His grief here, he supplies what he leaves out there. Speaking of His death, Christ says, “I have power to lay down My life” ( c. x. 18 ), and says nothing that expresses lowliness then. Therefore, at the Passion, they attribute much that is human to Him to show the reality of the Dispensation. Matthew demonstrates this through the Agony, the distress, the trembling, and the sweat; John does so through His sorrow. For if He had not shared our nature, He would not have been overcome by grief again and again. What did Jesus do? He offered no defense against their accusations. Why should He silence with words those who would soon be silenced by deeds? Deeds were a less irritating and more effective way to put them to shame. Ver. 39. “He says, Take away the stone.” Why didn’t He summon Lazarus from a distance and place him before their eyes? Or rather, why didn’t He make him rise while the stone still lay over the grave? For He who could move a corpse with His voice and show it alive again could much more easily have moved a stone with that same voice. He who, by His voice, enabled someone bound and entangled in burial cloths to walk could much more easily have moved a stone. Why, then, did He not do so? To make them witnesses of the miracle, so they could not say, as they did about the blind man, “It is he,” “It is not he.” For their hands and their coming to the tomb testified that it really was he. If they had not come, they might have thought they were seeing a vision, or one man in place of another. But now they came to the place, lifted the stone, and received the command to free the dead man, bound in burial cloths, from his bindings. The friends who brought him out of the tomb recognized him by his burial cloths; his sisters had not stayed behind; and one of them said, “He stinks by now, for he has been dead four days.” All these things, I say, were enough to silence the hostile, since they had been made witnesses of the miracle. This is why He tells them to take the stone away from the tomb: to show that He is raising the man. This is also why He asks, “Where have you laid him?” Those who said, “Come and see,” and led Him there would then be unable to say that He had raised someone else. Their voices and hands would bear witness (their voices by saying, “Come and see,” and their hands by lifting the stone and loosening the burial cloths), as would their eyes and ears (their ears by hearing His voice, and their eyes by seeing Lazarus come out), and even their sense of smell by detecting the foul odor. For Martha said, “He stinks by now, for he has been dead four days.” So I had good reason to say that the woman did not understand Christ’s words at all: “Even though he is dead, he will still live.” Notice that she speaks as though it were impossible because of the time that had passed. Indeed, raising a corpse that had been dead for four days and was decaying was an extraordinary thing. To the disciples Jesus said, “That the Son of Man may be glorified,” referring to Himself; but to the woman He said, “You will see the glory of God,” speaking of the Father. Do you see that His words differ because of His listeners’ weakness? So He reminds her of what He had told her, almost rebuking her for forgetting. Yet He did not want to disconcert the spectators at this point, so He says, Ver. 40. “Didn’t I tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” [3.] Faith truly is a great blessing, great indeed, and it makes those who hold it rightly great when they combine it with (good) living. Through it people (are enabled) to do the things of God in His name. Christ rightly said, “If you have faith, you will say to this mountain, Move, and it will move” ( Matt. xvii. 20 ); and again, “Anyone who believes in Me will also do the works that I do, and will do greater works than these.” ( c. xiv. 12.) What does He mean by “greater”? The works the disciples are seen doing afterward. For even Peter’s shadow raised a dead man, and so Christ’s power was proclaimed all the more. It was less wonderful for Him to perform miracles while alive than for others, after His death, to be enabled to perform greater miracles in His name than He Himself had performed. This was indisputable proof of the Resurrection; even if everyone had seen (that Resurrection), it would not have inspired the same belief. For people might have said it was an apparition. But anyone who saw greater miracles performed through His name alone than when He lived among people could not disbelieve unless he was utterly senseless. Faith, then, is a great blessing when it springs from ardent feelings, great love, and a fervent soul. It makes us truly wise, conceals our human lowliness, and, leaving human reasoning below, pursues wisdom about heavenly things. Or rather, it fully grasps and succeeds in what human wisdom cannot discover. Let us cling to it, then, and not entrust our own affairs to human reasoning. For tell me, why have the Greeks been unable to discover anything? Didn’t they know all the wisdom of the pagans? Why, then, could they not prevail against fishermen, tentmakers, and uneducated people? Wasn’t it because the Greeks entrusted everything to argument, and the fishermen, tentmakers, and uneducated people to faith? And so these believers triumphed over Plato and Pythagoras—in fact, over everyone who had gone astray. They surpass those who had spent their lives studying astrology and geometry, mathematics and arithmetic, and had been thoroughly trained in every kind of learning. They were as far above them as true and genuine philosophers are above those who are naturally foolish and out of their minds. For notice: these men declared that the soul was immortal—or rather, they did more than declare it; they persuaded others of it. The Greeks, by contrast, did not at first know what sort of thing the soul was. When they had discovered this and distinguished it from the body, they were back in the same predicament: one said it was incorporeal, while another said it was corporeal and dissolved along with the body. Again, concerning heaven, one said that it was alive and was a god, but the fishermen both taught and persuaded others that it was God’s work and design. Now it is no surprise that the Greeks rely on human reasoning. But it is right to grieve that those who seem to be believers—that “they”—should turn out to be carnal. This is why they have gone astray. Some say they know God as He knows Himself, something none of those Greeks even dared to claim. Others say that God cannot beget without passion, refusing to grant Him any superiority over human beings at all. Still others say that a righteous life and strict conduct accomplish nothing. But this is not the time to refute these things. [4.] Yet both Christ and Paul declare that right faith accomplishes nothing if one’s life is corrupt, and they have taken greater care over this latter point. Christ teaches, “Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven” ( Matt. vii. 21 ); and again, “Many will say to Me on that day, Lord, haven’t we prophesied in Your Name? And I will declare to them, I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice wickedness” ( Matt. vii. 22–23 ). (For those who do not watch themselves easily slip into wickedness, even if they have right faith.) And Paul speaks this way in his letter to the Hebrews, urging them, “Pursue peace with everyone, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.” ( Heb. xii. 14.) By “holiness” he means chastity: each man must be content with his own wife and have sexual relations with no other woman. For a man who is not content with her cannot be saved; he will certainly perish, even if he has done ten thousand good deeds, since it is impossible to enter the kingdom of heaven while practicing sexual immorality. More precisely, this is adultery rather than sex between unmarried people. Just as a woman who is bound to a man commits adultery if she has sex with another man, so a man who is bound to a woman commits adultery if he has another woman. Such a man will not inherit the kingdom of heaven, but will fall into the pit. Hear what Christ says about these people: “Their worm will not die, and the fire will not be quenched.” ( Mark ix. 44.) For a man can have no pardon if, after (possessing) a wife and the comfort of a wife, he then behaves shamelessly with another woman; at that point it is sheer lustfulness. And if many abstain even from their wives during a time of fasting or prayer, how great a fire does a man heap up for himself when he is not even content with his wife, but has sex with another woman? And if a man who has divorced and cast out his own wife is not permitted to have sex with another woman (for this is adultery), how great an evil does he commit if he brings in another woman while his wife is still in his house? Let no one, then, allow this disease to live in his soul; let him tear it out by the root. He wrongs himself more than he wrongs his wife. For this offense is so serious and unforgivable that if a woman separates from a husband who is an idolater without his consent, God punishes her; but if she separates from a sexually immoral husband, He does not. Do you see how great an evil this is? “If,” It says, “any believing woman has an unbelieving husband, and he is willing to live with her, she must not leave him.” ( 1 Cor. vii. 13.) It does not say the same about a prostitute. What does It say instead? “If any man divorces his wife, except on grounds of sexual immorality, he causes her to commit adultery.” ( Matt. v. 32.) For if sexual union makes one body, a man who has sex with a prostitute necessarily becomes one body with her. How, then, can a chaste woman, who is a member of Christ, receive such a man? How can she join a member of a prostitute to herself? And notice how much worse the one (fornication) is than the other (idolatry). A woman who lives with an unbeliever is not impure (“for,” It says, “the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife”— 1 Cor. vii. 14 ); but this is not the case with a prostitute. What does It say instead? “Should I then make the members of Christ the members of a prostitute?” ( 1 Cor. vi. 15.) In the one case, sanctification remains and is not removed even though the unbeliever lives with his wife; in the other, it departs. Sexual immorality is dreadful, dreadful, and brings everlasting punishment; even in this world it brings ten thousand miseries with it. The guilty man is forced to live a life of anxiety and toil. He is no better off than those undergoing punishment, creeping into another man’s house in fear and great trembling, suspicious of everyone alike, slave and free. So I urge you to free yourselves from this disease. If you will not obey, do not step across the sacred threshold. Sheep covered with scabs and full of disease must not mingle with healthy sheep; we must drive them out of the fold until they are rid of the disease. We have been made members of Christ; I beg you, let us not become members of a prostitute. This place is a church, not a brothel. If, then, you have the members of a prostitute, do not stand in the church, or you will insult the place. Even if there were no hell and no punishment, after those contracts, those marriage torches, the lawful bed, the bearing of children, and your sexual union, how could you bear to join yourself to another woman? How can you feel no shame and not blush? Don’t you know that many people criticize men who bring another wife into their house after their own wife’s death? Yet no penalty is attached to that act. But you bring in another woman while your wife is still alive. What lustfulness this is! Learn what has been said about such men: “Their worm,” It says, “will not die, and the fire will not be quenched.” ( Mark ix. 44.) Shudder at the threat; fear the vengeance. The pleasure here is not as great as the punishment there. But may none (here) become liable to that punishment; instead, may they practice holiness, see Christ, and obtain the promised good things. May we all enjoy them through the grace and loving kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be glory forever and ever. Amen.