There were two distinct parties of women, which severally had communion with the Lord Jesus, but who are never seen in communion with each other. The character of their relationship to Him differed very much-though they were entirely one in the common love of His person, and in the zeal that would serve Him earnestly.
I allude to the Galilean women, and the sisters at Bethany.
The Galilean women were with the Lord in the scenes of His ordinary activities. They had not much knowledge of Him, but they loved Him dearly. When we are first introduced to them, we see them serving and following Him. (Luke 8) And at the end we find them still with Him and serving Him, having followed Him from the distant north to Jerusalem, when He went there for the last time. And there we find them after His death and resurrection; and waiting also, as for His promise, after He had left them for the heavens. (Mark 16:1; Acts 1:14.)
The sisters at Bethany were not commonly with Him; but what they wanted in familiarity was more than made up to them in intimacy. With less intercourse, they had more knowledge. When we are first introduced to them, we see them learning as well as serving-and not following Him, but receiving Him into their house. (Luke 10) And in a further scene of their history, we see them still learning lessons on the secrets and glories that belonged to Him. (John 11, 12.)
Here are characteristic differences between these two families, as I may call them-though each of them precious to the Lord, and precious in the recollections of the saints. Those of Galilee were serving and following Him-those of Bethany were learning of Him, and receiving Him. He accepted services from the one, and with all confidence gave Himself to their company; but He was at home with the other.
But I would pause here for a little.
There is a great deal for faith to do in such a scene as this world, and in such circumstances as human life furnishes every day. It has to reach its own world through many veils, and to dwell there in spite of many hindrances. It is " the things not seen" and " the things hoped for" that faith deals with: and such things lie at a distance, or under cover; and faith has therefore to reach them through veils, and beyond intervals.
In John 11 we look on a scene of death. Every eye there, but one, saw nothing else. The disciples, Martha, and her friends, and even Mary, were full of thoughts of it. But Jesus, in the midst of all this, eyed life and talked of life. He moved onward through the scene, in the consciousness of it. He carried light through the darkness that was overspreading that hour.
The end, however, instructs them all. It lets the sisters at Bethany know that Jesus was "the life," and that under His hand there is resurrection from the dead. Lazarus their brother comes forth at the voice of the Son of God.
And then, having learned this lesson, this secret among the glories of Christ, they enjoy it. It was learned, as it ever is when learned from God, to be used and enjoyed-poorly indeed by some of us; but so we own it, that we are to use in living, practical virtue in our souls, that which we have received as a divine lesson. And thus, as a family in the light of resurrection, Lazarus and Martha and Mary are seen in the Lord's company, serving, sitting, worshipping. They either wait on Him, listen to Him, or make their offerings to Him. (John 12:1.)
And in all this, we see a very advanced character, as I may observe. Martha, though still serving, as in Luke 10 does not complain of her sister, as she did there. Mary, still at His feet, is there, not listening to some more elementary lessons, as we may say she was doing in Luke 10, but in worship-filling the house with the odor of the -ointment, greeting Him as with the honors that were to be His in His place of victory over death and the grave. And Lazarus, not seen before save in the grave, now taking an honored place at the table with his Lord, as one seated in heavenly places, a witness of resurrection from the dead.
Here, indeed, is Bethany. Light in the knowledge of the glory of Christ fills this dwelling there.
And this light separates them. They are not seen, after this, at the empty sepulcher, with the women from Galilee. Magdalene and her companions are there, to learn certain lessons about the glories of the common Lord, which these sisters had thus learned already.
Faith acts on the instruction it receives as well as enjoys it. If the sisters enjoyed at the supper-table in John 12 The lesson they had learned at their. brother's grave in John 11, they act on the instruction in John 20, by not being at the sepulcher of Jesus with Mary of Galilee. They could not go to seek the body of Jesus, since they had already received at the hand of Jesus the body, the raised body, of their lately dead brother. The grave, they knew, could not hold Him who had already bidden it to give up their brother. His own sepulcher must surely be empty, since He had Himself already emptied the sepulcher of a poor sinner whom He loved. They cannot, therefore, go to the garden, and look for the body of Jesus. Love would have had them there, but faith kept them away. Their thoughts had been regulated according to the light and mysteries of God; and they could not seek the living among the dead. This would have been surrendering the truth they had already learned; and well did they know from whom they had learned it. It would be worse than the disciples forgetting the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and how many baskets of fragments they had taken up. A brother had been restored to life-something more even than a multitude fed in a wilderness.
But further. Having learned this lesson, Bethany was the place which the Lord sought, when Israel had fully, finally, and formally rejected Him. See Matt. 21:17; Mark 11:11.
In this way, or at such a moment, Bethany was a kind of heaven to Him. He retired to it, when the earth, represented by the Jew or in the Jew, had refused Him.
They were, as I may say, a kind of Kenite family in the midst of the Israel of the Evangelists, the disciples of the Lord Jesus in the day of His sojourn here. They were separated; not however from any unsocial or self-righteous temper, but from a peculiar order of Nazaritism or sanctification arising from the light which they had in the knowledge of the glory of Christ.
But I must add this, that though these two companies of women are thus distinguished, and actually kept asunder all through their Christian walk, yet are they essentially, eternally- one. And sweet indeed it is to know their real, intrinsic, personal oneness, in the very face of this temporary, present, and necessary separation.
There was nothing of a moral character in this separation. It arose, as we have now seen, from different measures of knowledge, from a different character of relationship to the Lord, or of communion with Him. It does not cause any uneasiness or pain, when we think of it. Other separations among the saints of God, which we see in Scripture, arose from something moral, and it is humbling and painful to look at them. But this is not of that class.
The separation between Abraham and Lot, unlike this of the Galilean women, and the women of Bethany, was moral. It was the love of the world that did that mischief. Lot eyed with desire the well-watered plains of Sodom; and there he dwelt in the midst of a people that were sinners before the Lord continually, while Abraham was sojourning where best he might find a place to pitch his tent in. And the breach was never healed in this world. He who looked towards Sodom sinks at last behind the still more distant mountains of Moab ingloriously, leaving another pillar of salt to warn us all of what may be the sad issue of learning not to be content with such things as we have.
It was much the same in the case of Elijah and Obadiah. The stranger who had denounced and left the kingdom of Ahab, could scarcely admit of companionship with him who was still a chief officer there. But these two did meet on a very solemn, striking occasion; and Obadiah, Ahab's officer, sought, all he could, to reconcile Elijah, and to share the privilege of communion with that man who walked as a stranger to the corruptions around him. But it would not do. Elijah could not admit this. The world had already separated these men of God, and nothing but the victory that overcometh the world could put them together again. The efforts of an uneasy mind are not allowed to succeed. (See 1 Kings 18:1-16.)
In apostolic days there was another separation: I mean between Barnabas' and Paul. The cause of it was moral but not of so sad and humbling a kind. It was not the well-watered plains of Sodom, nor the palace of King Ahab that threw up the partition-wall in this case. It was not the world, but natural affection, the strength or claim of human relationship unduly admitted in the midst of the service of Christ. Barnabas would fain take his sister's son to the work; Paul judged his fitness to be in it not by nature or relationship, but by Christ; and they walked no more together. (Acts 15)
In the case of these two companies of christian women, which I am now considering, we see not this painful, humbling, moral secret. It was neither the love of the world, nor the undue force of natural partialities, that are called to account for the distance between them, and for the fact that they are never seen together. It was different measures of light in the knowledge of the Lord, and a different character of relationship to Him, as I may say, accordingly.
They did not combine, and yet I will answer for it, they loved each other. But Galilee was not Bethany; Mary Magdalene was not a sister of Lazarus. And though Martha and Mary would have delighted personally to company with her, they could not go with her to the sepulcher.
But, I must ask this, Did Bethany take no interest in Galilee? When it was told the house of Lazarus what had passed between the risen Lord and the Galilean women, was that household unmoved by the tidings? Did Mary and her sister grudge Magdalene, because she had been the more active one, and had the joy and service committed to her of bearing the good tidings of the resurrection back to the city, to Peter, to John, and to others? Let our common christian sympathies and charities answer these questions. One thing I know and am assured of, we ought to be able to answer them. And it is this ability we all of us want more abundantly-ability in the Spirit to rise above the jealousies and self-seekings which nature inspires. I believe the family at Bethany had it, and I believe we all need to cultivate it.
I would, however, add this, that the ignorance about the resurrection which the Galilean women betrayed was not an unguilty ignorance. The Lord had often rebuked His disciples in earlier days, while He was yet with them, for their not knowing the Scriptures. And now the angel says to them," Why seek ye the living among the dead?" It was therefore a rebukable condition of heart, which brought them to the sepulcher, and thus separated them from their sisters of Bethany, though, as we said before, the secret of this separation was not of that moral character which kept Abraham and Lot, or Elijah and Obadiah, apart.
O the various lessons which the soul may gather from God's most perfect Word!