Dare We Tarry There?

by the Rev. Dr. Joy Blaylock

As we move through Holy Week, we remember the story of Lazarus in the Gospel of John. As I mulled over this reading recently I came back to an early transitional moment in the story, one that can get eclipsed by the grand finale. It is the moment when the gospel tells us that Jesus "stayed" on for an extra couple of days even after hearing of Lazarus' illness.

Over at workingpreacher.org I found an interesting article from David Lose about the verbs in the story of Lazarus in John 11. I specifically focused on the first verb he covered: to tarry. It is a word that we don't use often if ever. I was reminded of the pleasant hymn from my youth that features this verb to tarry:

And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known

Verbs really are fascinating when you think about them as describing the actions and implied subjects in our lives. I like what Lose has to say about Jesus’ tarrying in John 11:6:

"Tarried" – While most versions translate this as "stayed" or "remained," I think "tarried" better captures the intentionality inherent in the Greek meno (abide). Jesus wasn't just held up, he intentionally waited, delayed, dragged his feet, tarried. Why? Because he saw in Lazarus' death the in-breaking of God's glory and he wanted to make sure no one missed it. And so he tarried two more days so that by the time he arrived Lazarus would have been in the tomb four days, meaning his spirit – which according to Jewish tradition of the time stayed close to the body for three days – would most certainly be gone.



I couldn't help but to think of how Jesus' tarrying irritated and even disappointed Mary and Martha. I was then reminded of my father's recent frustration in engaging my son and nephew in a mutually cooperative activity; my father repeatedly said, "come on now, don't dawdle." While to "tarry" carries with it a pleasant connotation of waiting or lingering with expectation to "dawdle" signifies some waste or frivolous expenditure of time.

It is obvious in the reaction of Mary and Martha that they were not pleased with Jesus' tarrying or dawdling. They even question Jesus in an accusing way: "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." I think we can all relate to this feeling of being confused, hurt, and even betrayed in our darkest times: "God, where are you?" "God, couldn't you have done something to prevent this?" "God, why did this happen?"

As we make our way to the Cross on Good Friday, will it seem again that God is tarrying in that dark moment? The ache of God's absence can be deep and seemingly overwhelm the poignant, fragile hope of redemption. Do we dare sit faithfully in the silence while our Lord suffers and even cries out "why have you forsaken me?" As the hymn surely beckons, all of us must in some way answer, "were you there when they crucified my Lord?"

I do confess that I feel myself dawdling often in my attempt to avoid the way of the Cross. Until recently, I avoided theologies of the cross because of the implied darkness there. The theology of Douglas John Hall has helped me to better understand the silence and potentiality of Good Friday: "The cross reveals the compassionate determination of God to bring the human creature to the full realization of its potentiality for authenticity." (The Cross in Context)
How can it be that in the Cross we find our potentiality for authenticity? Instead of focusing solely on what happens for us at the Cross, Hall challenges us to think of the Cross as a statement about God. He writes, "The theology of the cross...is nevertheless first of all a statement about God, and what it says about God is not that God thinks humankind so wretched that it deserves death and hell, but that God thinks humankind and the whole creation so good, so beautiful, so precious in its intention and its potentiality, that its actualization, its fulfillment, its redemption is worth dying for."

It is in the silence of the Cross that Jesus shows the depths of God's love for us, a silence that destroys all false voices and reveals the voice of the one living God. The public life of Jesus and even the story of Lazarus as recorded in the Gospels is a prelude to this silence. French philosopher Max Picard says that silence is appropriately the central place of faith, where we give the Word back to the God from whom we first received it. Surrendering the Word, surrendering our need for answers, our need to hurry from place to place, we surrender the medium of our creation. We “unsay” ourselves and tarry in our being: in this vulnerable place, we trust that God will ‘say’ us again, and like Lazarus, we will be called forth anew.

That is my hope for all of us this Easter, my hope beyond the Cross. Dare we tarry there this Lenten season with our Lord? I pray we be bold enough to say "yes, Lord, we will follow."