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Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost
September 13, 2024
The Invitatory
The earth is the Lord’s for he made it: O come, let us adore him.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.
Reading: John 11:30-44
Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’
Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upwards and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’
Meditation by Jeremy O’Neill
Why did he let Lazarus die in the first place?
A cynical answer might be “because he could use Lazarus’s death to show how powerful he is.” A boring answer might be “he was already dead and then Jesus happened upon him.” An unhelpful answer would be “Lazarus deserved to die and had to die to be born again into new life.” None of these are theologies I personally subscribe to, but all point to some of the potential problems with this passage.
One of the questions I get asked often is “if God is all powerful, why would God allow “x” to happen?” I would be lying if I claimed that this thought never bothered me, but do find it to be an oversimplification of who God is. We sing of Christ as “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” and I believe that that statement tells us a lot about who we want Christ to be. We want Christ, and God the Father, and the Holy Spirit, all to function according to our worldly powers and structures. I have heard a number of people describe God as someone who is just above the President in terms of “power” and also has the ability to wave a magic wand and fix things.
All of this is an exercise of putting God in a box, which is to say it is an exercise that is both futile and heretical. If the Genesis 1 creation story tells us anything, it is that God is one who converses and responds and discerns. God speaks, God creates, and God assesses. God looks upon creation and sees that it is good.
I also believe that God responds to creation. Lazarus being raised from the dead shows God responding to the creature. It is not God’s character to give us everything we want. But it is often God’s character to have mercy. Lazarus being raised is act of mercy just as much as it is an act of healing.
To be completely honest, I wish I knew when God’s mercy was going to show up in tangible ways. And I wish I had an answer to why God’s mercy takes the forms it does and seems to be painfully absent in other moments. What I will say is that our human desire to quantity and to predict does not match up with God’s character, and part of our journey is accepting that the more we think we know about God, the less we usually understand about God’s mercy.
Prayer for the Feast of Cyprian of Carthage, Bishop and Martyr, 238
Almighty God, who gave to your servant Cyprian boldness to confess the Name of our Savior Jesus Christ before the rulers of this world and courage to die for this faith: Grant that we may always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in us and to suffer gladly for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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