Consider This - Research

Those who are looking at my reading list at the moment or the books I have read or want to read will notice there are quite a few that involve Mary, Martha and Lazarus from the Bible.

I have always wondered about this family from Bethany whom Jesus loved from the moment a friend of mine challenged me to wonder why "Jesus wept".

Let me take a step backwards. I was the Sunday School child from hell. I didn't enjoy it and was very argumentative with my Sunday School teachers (which was unusual for me because I was the perfect student at school). On reflection, I can see that I was just trying to work out how faith worked and how the simple stuff we were being told at Sunday School and Scripture converted to a faith in the Creator.

Anyway, in Year 6 I had this Sunday School teacher who made us just LEARN and read the Bible. We weren't allowed to craft (like we had in Year 5) and we weren't allowed to play games. And every week we had to learn a memory verse of our choice from the Bible. The teacher never said it had to be a DIFFERENT verse so every week I "learnt" the same verse - the shortest verse in the Bible - John 11:35 "Jesus wept." (It wasn't until this year that I really knew and could recall the exact chapter and verse without looking it up.)

SO, a friend in my Sunday School class used to get upset with me and then challenged me one day: "But why did Jesus weep?"

And that has been on my mind ever since (37 years). Some years ago I resolved to tell the story of Mary, Martha and Lazarus and explore WHY Jesus wept. The more I looked into the task, the harder it appeared. The research required. What was life like in Jesus time for Jews, women, Jesus' followers, generally? What about the other passages that include this family? What about popular and historical thought on these passages and these people?

And so I am reading books by others about this - lots of them. The Bible is the primary source but there is so much more in that text that is not obvious on a first reading. And the more I read about the text, the more I see the meaning behind parts of the text.

One day, I hope to come up with the story that will be my imagining of their story that reflects and combines various thoughts on these people. Watch this space.