The disciples insinuate it, but Martha is the first to say it (according to John 11): "Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died." Her grief-stricken sister repeats the same words to Jesus through her tears. And finally, the crowd takes up the theme: "Surely a man who can heal someone born blind could have prevented Lazarus from dying."
From our perspective...standing 2000 years from death and resurrection...it might be tempting to sneer at our ancient brothers and sisters for just not getting who Jesus really is. How dense...how faithless were those folks, anyhow?
No more dense or faithless than us. The truth is that time hasn't necessarily improved our vision or understanding. A lot of our prayers and pleadings sound remarkably like theirs: "O God, if you'll just..." You complete the sentence: take away my cancer, stop all war, keep me from getting older and fatter, etc. The bottom line is that what we'd really like is a prophylactic messiah...someone who will shield us from the nastiness and grittiness of life and death...rather than someone who will show us the path to eternal life that goes right through death itself.
"I am the resurrection and the life," Jesus promises. "Yea, yea, yea," we respond...glad to hear it but not always ready to believe it. And then he does something amazing like raise Lazarus from the dead, even at the cost of his own life. Maybe that's enough to get our attention, and to see that this Christ is more than a genie granting our wishes. He is busy bringing new life...busy raising us from the dead, too.
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