Rising in Time

John 11:1-16

Jesus is shown as one who has personal friends, pals. There are people he feels personal connection with, has affection for. He doesn’t just love them; he likes them. There are people he just likes to hang out with. So it’s strange when he stayed where he was two more days, after being told Lazarus, evidently a special friend, was sick. What he says shows it’s not that he didn’t understand how serious it was, and given who he is we can’t really think he wouldn’t know. Is what he says insensitive? Like, letting it go a while will make what he does all the more impressive?

I’ll set that aside for now and look on to where he says, OK let’s go. The disciples do a double take at this because it means going back to Judea, where they wanted to stone him. Jesus answers with a saying about light in the day (which was divided into 12 equal parts, or “hours,” regardless of the time of year). The saying probably means that the disciples can be assured they will be OK because they will be with Jesus, the light.

Jesus goes on to tell the disciples that Lazarus has fallen asleep, but Jesus is going to wake him. In a kind of “That’s good/that’s bad” routine the disciples say, great, the rest will help him get better. Jesus then tells them that Lazarus has died, and that he is glad he wasn’t there so that they disciples may believe.

It would be interesting to know the tone of voice Thomas used when he said. “Let’s go so we can die with him.” Was it brave resolve, or was it like, “Oh sure, we might as well all go get ourselves killed.”?

Back to the question about why the delay. Jesus was no outfielder taking his time to make his flying-leap catch all the more spectacular. I think the delay is related to something we’ve seen before. Jesus does things – to our perplexity maybe – in his time, and not according to human agendas. We saw it with his mom in John 2:3-4; we saw it with his brothers at John 7:3. Maybe it’s also tied in somehow with people not being able to kill Jesus until the divinely appointed time for that. It’s a very difficult lesson for us in real life, so maybe in some way it is fitting that stories that convey it are difficult to deal with: God’s timing is not our timing, but it works out better for us than any way we would have planned.

There’s more to come on the raising of Lazarus, which takes up most of chapter 11.

Prayer:
Lord, there are things I want to see happen right now. But if the things I want are according to your purpose it will take you to do them. Forbid that I or any of us would delay when there is a need we can meet. Forbid that your doing of things means I sit around and wait for them to happen. But doing all I can with all my strength and with all the resources you provide, especially working with others and in prayer, give me patience for the result. You can and do raise and lift up, and your light brings life, in our personal circumstances and in our life together. Amen.