Finding Grace in Disappointment (Lessons from Lazarus)Sample

 Honest to God

When Jesus finally arrives in Bethany, Lazarus has already been dead and in the tomb for four days! Lazarus’ sister Martha, despite having had Jesus in her home as a friend, left the house and went out to meet him. He didn’t even make it inside the city gates, let alone her house.

Maybe it’s just me, and the personality I see in Martha, but I hear anger and disappointment mixed in with her deep anguish as she greets him. But Jesus hears and holds that, and then speaks life. He did not respond with a rebuke, but rather a revelation.

How beautiful it is when in the midst of our messiest, most ‘unholy-like’ emotions or circumstances, we can go and meet Jesus. Martha knew Jesus. Knew him as a friend. Knew him as a powerful Saviour. Knew that he could have come and saved their beloved brother, Jesus’ friend. And yet, Jesus did not come and Lazarus died. Jesus did not show up as she had desperately hoped He would. Instead of hiding herself behind a mask of false theology, she does not even wait for him to arrive at her house—she goes out to meet Him, and is not afraid to be honest with Him. ‘If only you had come sooner, my brother would not have died.’

Do you hear the anguish and disappointment? Martha tells it as it is, but she also softens in the presence of Love.

This passage teaches us two things about honesty with Jesus:

1. It allows Jesus to meet us in the reality of where we truly are, not a superficial place of pretending. By being honest and vulnerable, we invite His grace into those places where He can begin to work His healing and restorative ways. If we hide our hurt and our true state behind a misguided mask of theological expectation (eg I shouldn’t be feeling/struggling with this), how can Jesus partner with us to work His way in those places? If we allow and invite Him into those places of deepest hurt, of deepest disappointment—even disappointment in Him—the real work of grace can occur. And the rebuilding of ruins, the restoring of shattered hope, the rebirthing of broken dreams, the healing salve for a battered soul...these are all things that wait for us in the meeting place of honesty.
2. It allows us to have a deeper revelation of who Jesus is. Martha’s honesty was not met with a rebuke. It was met with a revelation. In her sadness, in her grief, she WENT to Him, and He responded by revealing to her—not Mary, to whom earlier He said chose the ONE thing that was required—one of only 7 ‘I AM’ statements Jesus used to describe Himself to confirm His deity. It was not something she did that qualified her, it was the stunning grace of God meeting her in her deepest place of need.

“I AM the Resurrection and the Life eternal.”

What a gift. We all know people who are alive and yet not living.

Life is a gift. Resurrection for eternity with Jesus is an even more miraculous gift. Jesus points to a way of living that is both for now here on earth and after we die. We have access to a way of living that is beyond this earthly realm, beyond what we see, feel, see, touch, smell, taste. There is living through those senses, and there is living from the source of Life itself. There is a living that flows from a wellspring from the very throne room of heaven, bringing life even now to those things that seem dead.

Jesus could have come sooner and saved Lazarus before he died. And yet by revealing Himself as Life right in the middle of the most dead kind of dead that we as humans can relate to, it means every other kind of thing we think is dead is not always dead in Jesus’ economy of life and death! That seems pretty pertinent right now in the midst of this pandemic. There are a lot of things that seemed full of life only weeks ago, and now to our earthly eyesight seem dead: Goals, dreams, business, job, finances, health.

Our Jesus can walk into any space of death and speak life. Maybe He wants to walk into those things you’ve given up on as dead and breathe life again. It may not be in your timing. It may well be long after your well-put-together religious mask has fallen out of place. 

And maybe that’s just what He is longing for.

The honest-to-God you.

Go now and meet your Jesus. As the honest-to-God you.