Scripture Daily

Context No. 513 of 4322 · John

Context · Reflection

John 11:1-7: in context

1Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus from Bethany, of the village of Mary and her sister, Martha. 2It was that Mary who had anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. 3The sisters therefore sent to him, saying, “Lord, behold, he for whom you have great affection is sick.” 4But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This sickness is not to death, but for the glory of God, that God’s Son may be glorified by it.” 5Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. 6When therefore he heard that he was sick, he stayed two days in the place where he was. 7Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let’s go into Judea again.”

Word comes to Jesus that his friend Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, is seriously ill. The sisters' message is simple and full of trust: Lord, the one you love is sick. They know Jesus loves Lazarus, and the unspoken assumption is obvious. He loves him, so of course he will come at once. And John, telling the story, makes a point of confirming the love: now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. He states it plainly so we cannot miss it. And then comes one of the most jarring sentences in the Gospels. So, when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

Read that little word so again, because it is doing something we would never expect. We would understand if it said, Jesus loved them, but he stayed two days longer, love overcome by some other priority. Instead John writes that because he loved them, he stayed. The delay is not in spite of his love; it flows out of it. Jesus loved them, and so he waited, and while he waited, Lazarus died. His love did not mean rushing to prevent the pain, because he was moving toward a greater glory they could not yet see, the raising of a dead man, which would show them more of who he was than a bedside healing ever could. Love and delay are not opposites here. The delay is love, working toward something larger than the immediate relief they were begging for.

That confronts the conclusion I leap to whenever God is slow. When I cry out and he delays, and the situation gets worse instead of better, my Lazarus dies while I am still waiting, I take the delay itself as proof that he does not love me or is not listening. This passage says the delay can be the very thing love is doing, aimed at a good I cannot yet see from inside the waiting. When God is slow to answer and things worsen while I wait, can I hold open the possibility that his delay, like the delay outside Bethany, is not the absence of his love but love at work toward something greater?

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