The Gift Hidden in Disappointment (John 11:1-45)

What questions did you ask when the Lazarus of your life died? What questions are you asking today? I notice that the deeper I go into life, the less I live by answers and the more I live inside questions. The answers I once trusted don’t hold the same weight anymore. They feel smaller now, as if life has outgrown them. And many of those questions are born out of disappointment. There is a particular kind of disappointment that comes when life does not unfold the way we believed it should. An expectation about how love works, how God should act, how things should turn out. Like Mary and Martha, we find ourselves saying, “If only…” If only things had been different. If only God had come sooner. We don’t always say it out loud, but we feel it.

 

What strikes me is that Jesus does not argue with that disappointment. He does not correct it or explain it away. He stands in it. He allows it. He receives it. Because there is something honest in it.  But then the story takes a turn that feels almost uncomfortable. Jesus says, “Take away the stone. “And I realize how much I resist that. Because the stone is there for a reason. It seals what is dead. It protects me from what I don’t want to face, the finality, the smell, the reality that something is over. To remove it is to come too close, to risk seeing what I would rather leave hidden. And here is what stays with me: Lazarus does not move the stone himself. He cannot. He is inside, bound, unable. Someone else has to do it.

 

There are moments in life when parts of us feel exactly like that sealed off, without strength, without clarity, without even the will to come out. And in those moments, We need someone willing to stand at the edge of our closed places and help roll the stone away. And often, that help does not come in the way we expect. Sometimes it comes through people we would not have chosen. People who are imperfect, complicated, even broken in their own ways. It makes me wonder how often God works like through ordinary, unexpected people. Through voices, gestures, moments of presence that we might easily overlook because they do not fit our idea of what help should look like. Then comes the call: “Come out. “But even that is not the end. Lazarus comes out, but he is still bound. Alive, yet not free. And again, he cannot unbind himself. Others must do it. “Unbind him, and let him go. “There is something deeply human in that. We do not come fully alive on our own. We need each other not just to survive, but to be freed. To be seen, named, gently released from what still holds us.

 

And perhaps that is part of the invitation hidden in this story. Not just to wait for God to act, but to notice where we are being asked to participate. To be the ones who help move a stone. To be the ones who stay long enough to unbind. Even when we don’t feel ready. Even when we are unsure. Even when we ourselves are still carrying our own questions and disappointments. Because life does not wait for us to be perfect before it invites us to take part in it.

 

-       - Lilly pushpam PBVM