Of Time and a Season Part 7

[HKHaugan]

Of Time and a Season Part 7

“a time to weep and a time to laugh”

 “Jesus wept (Jn.11:35).” It was His physical sight at the death site of His friend Lazarus where His perfect humanity openly grieved. When we talk about time and seasons, John 11 opens up a series of understandable attitudinal events in a pre-crucifixion season. Personal and cultural expectations, critical religious leadership, spiritual ignorance, personal doubt and despair, grief, hopelessness dominate the atmosphere into which Jesus arrives. “Many Jews had come (ethnic separation)” to comfort Mary and Martha. It was not that everyone who came was non-relational. It was the lack of spiritual awareness that revealed the need for a spiritual deliverer. People were half alive; emotionally aware but spiritually vacant. Religion was all they had to fall back on. Death was the final valley. Its shadow never moving.

 Take Mary and Martha, close sisters but personality opposites. Martha was more emotionally closed and detail oriented while Mary was more emotionally open. Mary was the one who had anointed Jesus with her perfume and washed His feet with her hair (vs.2). However, both had a common attitude in that they were religiously conditioned. When someone dies, you drop everything and go to their surviving family. It was both a cultural and religious expectation; a governing attitude if you will. True to cultural form, both sisters questioned His timing. And it follows that Martha went out to greet Him, but Mary stayed home. She felt more hurt. It seems everyone there had something to learn, even those closest to Jesus. It’s Jesus reaction.

Jesus was spiritually centered on His Father’s will. He was spiritually relational. As He declared early on, His time had not yet come. The sisters had notified Jesus that Lazarus was sick. But still far away, His response was within, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it (vs.4).” John makes it clear in vs.5 that He loved Lazarus and his sisters but He stayed two more days where He was.

 Then He prepares His disciples who try to dissuade Him for fear that He might be attacked. He tells them, “Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light.  It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light (vs.9-10).”  After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.” He is speaking to them spiritually and they respond secularly to which He responds, ““Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him (vs.14-15).”

When He and the disciples arrive in Bethany they are engulfed in an atmosphere of grief, despair, criticism, unbelief, religious judgmentalism, sadness, resentment, disillusionment and death. This is the world’s atmosphere without God. Jesus was looking at the world of lost people spiritually lost. Was He also not aware that in front of Him lay His own coming death needed to eradicate this atmosphere? John 3:16 shows us God loved His world of people so much that He gave His only Son to face it and destroy the power of sin in everyone’s heart.>

It’s always a time to weep when sin prevails, when pain, disease and death seem to rule the moment. It’s a time to weep when people bludgeon the dignity of others. We are all images of God and when others hurt, we hurt with them. We weep when they weep. It’s a spiritual thing, a Jesus thing.

There is the polar opposite to weeping and that is laughter. There is a time to laugh. It’s the emotional response to some humorous situation. Spiritually, it has a deeper significance. It begins when the Lord produces some unexpected event that brings joy. Laughter is the physical response to joy. When the Bible uses the word ‘rejoice,’ it is to take part in a joyful experience, an insight, a blessing. Think of the prodigal who comes home, and the father plans a great celebration for his return (Lk.15:23), the angels rejoicing when a sinner repents (Lk.15:10). Joy in the Lord is the beginning of being free to laugh and at the right time. We weep at sin and we laugh for joy. “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones (Prov.27:22). “…in your presence there is fullness of joy…(Ps.26:11).” Again, his joy is the measure of how laughter is a spiritual response to the freedom we have in Christ whenever it occurs.  A time in a season.