This the first time in the Gospel of John that we hear the names of Mary and Martha. Yet, John does not bother to say anything about them, or even give the reader information about who they are or why they suddenly appear in the narrative. He must have known people would know who they were. Luke 10 is the only other mention of this family, although only Mary and Martha are mentioned in that story,
The only information given, other than their names and that of the city in which they lived, is the fact that Lazarus, who we assume is the brother of the two women mentioned, is sick. Considering the hundreds, if not thousands, of people who were sick in Palestine at the time of Jesus, and the countless blind, lame, injured, deaf, and even dead people Jesus had touched and restored, we do not know why John introduces a completely new story line. A sick man and two sisters. Simple and stark.
Sometimes the greatest stories begin blanketed in the common and mundane. It is not just common people God uses to accomplish uncommon feats, sometimes it is in these most unremarkable moments of normalcy that God breaks in and works an amazing anomaly in the natural flow of life. Sadly, life is a litany of moments of illness, brokenness, tragedy, separation, and even death. These events happen so often we read of them with detachment, and even feast our eyes on them with morbid interest and perhaps a twinge of compassion, only to return to the bliss of our personal and detached world, which we forget is equally subject to the randomness of life. Then the day comes when we are the news…and life ceases to be normal anymore.
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