Monday, December 14

¹Now a certain man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village where Mary and her sister Martha lived. ²(Now it was Mary who anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and wiped his feet dry with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.) ³So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, look, the one you love is sick.” ⁴When Jesus heard this, he said, “This sickness will not lead to death, but to God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” ⁵(Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.)

⁶So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he remained in the place where he was for two more days. ⁷Then after this, he said to his disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” ⁸The disciples replied, “Rabbi, the Jewish leaders were just now trying to stone you to death! Are you going there again?” ⁹Jesus replied, “Are there not 12 hours in a day? If anyone walks around in the daytime, he does not stumble because he sees the light of this world. ¹⁰But if anyone walks around at night, he stumbles because the light is not in him.”

¹¹After he said this, he added, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep. But I am going there to awaken him.” ¹²Then the disciples replied, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” ¹³(Now Jesus had been talking about his death, but they thought he had been talking about real sleep.)

¹⁴Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus has died, ¹⁵and I am glad for your sake that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” ¹⁶So Thomas (called Didymus) said to his fellow disciples, “Let us go too, so that we may die with him.”

¹⁷When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had been in the tomb four days already. ¹⁸(Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, ¹⁹so many of the Jewish people of the region had come to Martha and Mary to console them over the loss of their brother.) ²⁰So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary was sitting in the house. ²¹Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. ²²But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will grant you.”

²³Jesus replied, “Your brother will come back to life again.” ²⁴Martha said, “I know that he will come back to life again in the resurrection at the last day.” ²⁵Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live even if he dies, ²⁶and the one who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” ²⁷She replied, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who comes into the world.”

²⁸And when she had said this, Martha went and called her sister Mary, saying privately, “The Teacher is here and is asking for you.” ²⁹So when Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. ³⁰(Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still in the place where Martha had come out to meet him.) ³¹Then the people who were with Mary in the house consoling her saw her get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought she was going to the tomb to weep there.

³²Now when Mary came to the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” ³³When Jesus saw her weeping, and the people who had come with her weeping, he was intensely moved in spirit and greatly distressed. ³⁴He asked, “Where have you laid him?” They replied, “Lord, come and see.” ³⁵Jesus wept. ³⁶Thus the people who had come to mourn said, “Look how much he loved him!” ³⁷But some of them said, “This is the man who caused the blind man to see! Couldn’t he have done something to keep Lazarus from dying?”