The Hardest Two Days--March 26, 2020

The Hardest Two Days--March 26, 2020

"Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.  Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, 'Lord, he whom you love is ill.' But when Jesus heard it, he said, 'This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God's glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.' Accordingly, though Jesus loved Marth and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer at the place where he was." [John 11:1-6]

I am convinced--and I won't be surprised to hear Jesus say so when get to glory--that those two days waiting, apart from his dear friends in Bethany, were harder to get through than the two days Jesus spent in the grave himself. It is always harder to know that someone you love is in pain and to know you need to be apart from them in the suffering, than to go through physical pain yourself.  It is harder not to be able to fix things for them, and harder still not to be able to be with them as they hurt.

Every parent wishes they could trade places with their hurting kid at whatever age: when they are up in the night as little ones throwing up, when they get their hearts broken after their first crush ends badly in junior high school, or when they are stressing out in young adulthood about jobs and life decisions and everything... and mom and dad have no magic wands to make it all better.  Every grown child, for that matter, wishes they could absorb the suffering of their parents, too, whether it is from a cancer diagnosis, or beginning the long goodbye of dementia, or watching them age and slow down.  Every friend wishes they could take away the tears of their friend.  Honestly, we would all rather have some way to take away the pain of those we love.  And it is quite often the hardest thing we have to do to know that sometimes we have to stay back.

Jesus knows how this story is going to turn out--he knows both that Lazarus really will die after all, and he also knows that he is going to raise Lazarus from the dead, too.  And yet, Jesus also knows that he isn't at the end of the story, yet.  He knows that what is necessary at this moment is the distance... the time... the separation.  But please, let's not pretend that it was easy for Jesus, or that Mary, Marth, and Lazarus were not important to him.  Twice in just six verses here, John the narrator has underscored that Jesus loved these people; they were dear friends to him.  And it had to cut him to the quick to stay where he was, knowing both that it would mean arriving "too late" to save Lazarus, and that he would be opening himself up to accusations that he didn't care, or wasn't a help, or that he had let everybody else down.  

It is easy to be the one who always shows up on time and has a silver bullet to stop every problem.  It is hard to be the savior who (like with Jairus' daughter, too) gets detained and isn't there when people expected him to be there.  It is hard to bear the looks of disappointment, and then to keep on bringing people to life again.

I don't think we usually give Jesus enough credit for what he suffers in this story.  I mean, the actual miracle isn't hard work for Jesus--by the time he raises his dead friend, all Jesus will have to do is call to him, "Lazarus, come out!"  But we forget how much Jesus was willing to endure in the in-between time.  We forget that there needed to be two days in limbo waiting, and that there would be angry tears and bitter disappointments from Mary and Martha, and that there would be the unsteadiness of having his own knees give out when Jesus got to Lazarus' grave and finally fell down to the ground in shock and sadness himself when he saw it.  We forget, I think, that sometimes the path to bringing life requires an unheroic-looking distance.

These days, a lot of people are learning that same pain.  We would all love to get to be "heroes" who drop in and "fix" things for friends, for neighbors, for loved ones who are afraid about getting sickness, or whose businesses are in jeopardy, or who are just so afraid of losing the "old normal" forever.  We would love it, I suspect, if we could just drop in say the "one right thing" that will cheer hearts, lift the markets, and inspire the scientists to cure the sickness that is overturning so much of daily life.  Teachers want to get back to be face to face with their students, where they can see the difference they make.  Shop owners and restaurant owners want to be able to bring their regular customers their "usual," and to help keep their employees getting paid.  Folks want to check on their friends and loved ones in nursing homes or in the hospital.  And right now, the necessary thing for so many of those situations is... distance.  It is a terrible thing, that distance.  It feels so helpless.  We feel so guilty for not being where the hurt is.  We want to be useful, helpful... you know, "Christ-like." And instead, we find in so many different ways that we have no choice but to keep our distance, to stay away, or to delay those reunions.

And yet, as this scene reminds us, sometimes the most Jesus-like thing you can do is to hold off... to keep distance... to delay. Not because you don't care about someone.  Not because they are unimportant.  And not because something or someone else is a higher priority.  But because sometimes it is actually in the interests of the people you love that you cannot be there to take away their pain for them.  And we--like Jesus--have to be prepared to bear the feelings of guilt, of disappointment, and of doubt about whether it is the right choice in those times.  But mark my words: Jesus knows what it is like to be there.

You know, I suspect, that before the story of Lazarus is done, Jesus will have broken down weeping, and he will have to bear the accusations of the dead man's sisters, demanding to know why he wasn't there to prevent Lazarus from dying. He will take their angry words, knowing all the while what he is going to do for the, and he bears them all. He doesn't dodge or deflect. He doesn't insist that everything is fine when it isn't.  He doesn't pass the buck or deny his choices.  He takes every last word, and every hysterical punch Mary and Martha can throw at him, and he bears them.  All the while, knowing he has come to raise Lazarus from the dead.

Jesus knows that in the end, he needs Martha, Mary, and even Lazarus to know that he will be with them all the way through death and out the other side into resurrection life.  He wants them to know they can trust him to the end of the earth--and so he goes with them to the very brink... and beyond.  If Jesus dropped in as the hero on the white horse in the nick of time to save the day, it sure would have made for a great story, but there would have always been an unspoken fear of death hovering around everyone.  There would have been relief that Lazarus hadn't died... but it would have come at the expense of all of them still being afraid that one day Lazarus could get sick again, and Jesus might not be able to make it in time.  So Jesus has to show them, by arriving too late on the scene, that there is no such thing as "too late" for him.  But it sure must have hurt to wait those two extra days away from his friends.

We may have to see things in a similar light these days.  Nobody wants their friend, their neighbor, or their relative to be left alone as they go through difficult times. We all want to be helpers and heroes.  But sometimes, if helping is really about what is best for someone else's well-being rather than about an ego-trip for ourselves, we have to be ok with being helpful by staying where we are, keeping our distance, and delaying when we can be face to face with someone.  

There will come times when we can help in person... when we can help best by washing feet or showing up.  But Lazarus' story reminds us that sometimes the way to most helpfully preserve and restore life means keeping distance for a while--not for our own sake, but for the sake of others from whom we need to be distant.  In those times, we rely on the Gospel's promise that ultimately we are indeed bringing people to life.  And for the waiting time when we need to be separate, we discover we are not alone in that waiting time, either--Jesus is there in the waiting, too.

Lord Jesus, give us courageous and loving patience like you.