Godly Timing
Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. This Mary, whose brother now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair. So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.” When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s son may be glorified through it.” Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days. Then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” “But rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews tried to stone you, and yet you are going back there” John 11:1-8
Jesus had withdrawn from Jerusalem (10:40) prior to His final Passover return. But His preparation for this supremely demanding event is interrupted by an urgent request for help. This comes from a family especially close to Him, living in Bethany. This gospel’s author, John, assumes his readers are familiar with Martha and Mary, probably from the already widely circulated, earlier synoptic gospels.
When Jesus got the urgent message ‘he stayed where he was two more days.’ Why? Didn’t He understand how serious the situation was? I think He did. He would have spent much of the two days praying, wrestling with the Father’s will. The disciples were right. The Jews had been wanting to stone Him. Bethany was just a small town only a few kilometres away from Jerusalem, on the eastern slopes of the Mount of Olives. Once there you’re in easy reach of the great city.
So what was Jesus praying for over those two days? He would have been praying for Lazarus but also for wisdom and guidance about His own plans and movements. Somehow the two were bound up together. Lazarus’ resurrection would be the final straw in the religious leaders’ holding back their determination to have Jesus killed. But what Jesus was about to do for Lazarus would be the most powerful sign yet in John’s sequence of seven signs before Jesus’ crucifixion.
The word ‘Bethany’ means house of the poor. There is some evidence it was just that, a place where poor, sick and needy people could be cared for, a kind of hospice. When Mary poured expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet, there was strong reaction. Extravagance doesn’t go down well in a poor-house.
What does this story teach us about delays? First, that they are inevitable. Only God knows everything about everything. He knows every circumstance surrounding every event in our lives. By contrast, our minds are only part way to be fully renewed -our knowledge is limited; our motives are not always correct and our impatience leaves us unprepared for the patient ripening of God’s plans.
The second point about God’s delays is that they are not final. God follows His time line and not ours. What we think is “later than expected” He sees as “right on time.” God keeps His appointments even when that means being late for ours.
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