Waiting for God

A man named Lazarus was ill… Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days… John 11:1-6

Hang on a minute! Isn’t there something wrong with that bit of scripture? Hasn’t somebody made a mess of the translation? Surely that word “So” should be “But” or “Yet”?

Yes, indeed! If “so” is right, we would expect John to finish the sentence  something like this: “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he immediately sent a message: ‘Tell them I’m on my way…!’ and started on the journey”.

But no: Jesus “stayed where he was two more days”! How very strange.

The translation is correct. True, some Bible versions do have “but” or “yet”, but the best experts are all agreed that they are mistaken: John wrote “So” because… he meant “So”. Which means that he leaves us to figure out for ourselves why Jesus should act in such a peculiar way. If he really loved Mary and Martha, why would he subject them to such a cruel wait?

We can only speculate. It can’t have been because of any doubt or uncertainty on his part about what would happen – he had, after all, raised people from death before, sometimes even from a distance.

Was he testing their faith? Hardly; they had already demonstrated their faith by calling for him in the first place, so what more might he expect?

He knew, of course, that his own death was now very close, so perhaps he wanted the miracle of Lazarus’ rising to be a preparation for the even greater thing that was to come: a message to people that “Yes, this man Jesus really does have power over death itself!”.

Certainly, the lengthy interval between Lazarus’ death and his re-emergence from the tomb (four days, according to verse 17) would thwart any danger of people suggesting that he was never really dead at all. No: what happened with Lazarus was no hoax or trick but sheer, unadulterated miracle. But Martha and Mary were asked to pay a heavy price in terms of grief and wretchedness – “Why, oh why, doesn’t he come!”

Perhaps there isn’t a lot more we can say.

But there is a truth here which Christians have proved again and again down the centuries: God does often seem to keep his people waiting. And if that is so, it isn’t out of indifference or cruelty, but for some good reason.

The more we stop and think about it, the more we realise that waiting is in fact a very important part of Christian faith: as one writer puts it, Christians are by nature “people-in-waiting”. Paul often stresses this: to give just one example, in 1 Corinthians 1:7 he says that we “eagerly await for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed”. It’s part of the essence of Christianity.

I said that I didn’t think Jesus was simply testing the faith of Martha and Mary. But sometimes, for us, testing may be one of the reasons why waiting is called for: do we have sufficient faith to trust in Jesus through gritted teeth, or are we just “fair weather Christians”? And, of course, in a period of waiting we often learn important lessons that otherwise we might miss. Just ask any mature Christian of many years’ standing! Perhaps just look back over your own experience!

The trouble with waiting, of course, is simple: it can be so hard, so agonisingly hard. Mary isn’t afraid to reproach Jesus for his delay: “Lord… if you had been here my brother would not have died” (verse 21). And at other times – waiting for news of a loved one, waiting for the birth of a baby, waiting for the result of a job interview, even just sitting in a traffic jam or waiting for a delivery to come – we can feel driven to distraction.

But whether we think of such personal circumstances or the big picture Paul is talking about, the Lazarus story assures us that the wait is for a reason, and one day we will see it as worthwhile.

I’ve quoted Paul. But he isn’t alone in the New Testament to have this very forward-looking, future-oriented attitude. Here is John (I John 3:2) “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is”.

And here is a beautiful line from a hymn by William Cowper (1731-1800): “The bud may have a bitter taste,/ But sweet will be the flower”.

Or, as an American president once assured the world: now that he was in charge, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet”.

A sentiment there that I think Martha and Mary would have identified with… So, Christian, hang on in there – truly, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

Father God, I confess that there are times I am simply unable to understand the mystery of your timing, and especially why you seem to keep us waiting. But help me to keep trusting and believing, and so bring me to that place, like Martha and Mary, of breath-taking amazement and joy. Amen.