Courage In the Understood You

I had a dad who made sure that "Stranger Danger" was a well-ingrained concept. If a stranger stops the van next to you on the street and tells you to get in, RUN. If someone asks you to follow them to their car, RUN. If someone knocks on the door when your parents aren't home, lock the door and THEN RUN. 

While this mindset might seem like extreme caution, I also had a dad who spent several of his growing-up years in lower-income D.C., and I am grateful for his extra caution. It makes me vigilant, especially now that I have my own children.

It's because of this, though, that I reacted the way I did when I heard a knock on my door once. I was a young teenager at home alone, waiting for my parents to return from a meeting. I don't remember where my brother was, but he wasn't present. It was getting dark, and I was sitting on the living room couch when someone knocked on the front door across the room from me. 

I have no doubt (now) that it was a harmless visitor: a neighbor, a salesman, someone completely innocuous, but because of the Stranger Danger mentality, I flipped. I launched myself off the couch and fled through the dining room, the kitchen, down the hallway, and into my parents' bedroom. I ran into their bathroom and shut the door, my heart pounding in my ears. I heard the knock again, once or twice, and then nothing.

But I didn't open that bathroom door for a long, long time. I sat there in the bathroom, staring at the door, imagining what might happen if I opened it and found someone on the other side who had come to "get me." 

Obviously, I'm all right. I came through the experience and laugh about my silliness now, but that outright refusal to open the bathroom door, to step into the safety and security of my own home, came flooding back to me as I read John 11:38-44 this morning.

I've got to admit, I have never thought about what the Lord showed me this morning, and it has kind of bowled me over. 

Jesus is at Mary and Martha's house. Lazarus has been dead for four days, and the house is full of paid mourners, weeping and wailing and fulfilling their contracts to mourn as effectively as possible. Martha has already met Jesus on the road and had that conversation I talked about in yesterday's blog. Mary has gone to see Jesus, too. Jesus... has wept. 

Some of the witnessing Jews have been moved by Jesus' tears. "See how He loved him," they say. Some of the witnessing Jews are skeptical. "Could not He who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"

Where is God when bad things happen to good people? Spoiler: He weeps with us, then He uses those things to bring about His glory. He is far less interested in life events than He is in the condition of our hearts, and while our perspective is often trapped in the former picture, His much larger perspective generally adheres to the latter.

Now, Jesus stands at the entrance to the tomb. Per tradition, Lazarus' body is not buried in the ground; it has been laid inside a cave with a stone rolled over the entrance, presumably to keep wild animals out. Most people agree that it is not to keep the dead bodies in -- this is not a horror story. :)

Two nights ago, I had the chance to watch a Zoom tour of the old city of Jerusalem. The guides took the viewers through the four quarters of the city: Armenian, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian, and they showed many of the "holy sites" throughout the place. When they took us to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (which is a church built over the hill of Golgotha and also supposedly features the tomb where Jesus was laid), they showed the viewers a tomb similar to what would have been in place around the time when Jesus walked the earth.

It was much smaller than I have always envisioned, and the entrance, where the stone would have been was low and narrow. There was no way to stand up inside, so my visions of an enormous stone that takes ten or twenty strong men to strain away from the tomb's entrance would be inaccurate.

Here's what Jesus says, and let this just really... sink in. This is important.

"Take away the stone."

Take away the stone. 

English-Major Nerd Moment: The subject of this sentence isn't a visible subject; it's what is called "the understood 'you.'" It's an imperative sentence; it gives an order, and the understood you is the receiver of the order. The understood you does the transitive action to the stone, and the stone receives the action from the understood you.

Clear as mud? Thought so.

Let me try to explain: 

Jesus doesn't roll away the stone. He tells Martha and Mary and company to roll away the stone. Could Jesus have rolled away the stone Himself? Absolutely. It wouldn't have been that large if the tomb is relatively the same size as what we saw on the Zoom tour, and even if He didn't have all the power of heaven at His fingertips, He could have pushed against it and moved it aside. 

But... He doesn't.

You take away the stone.

You take away the hindrance to the miracle. You take off your blinders that keep you from believing. You open that bathroom door that keeps you trapped in your fear. 

And THEN... watch this.

When you believe!! When you take that stone away from the grave... 

Yesterday, I discussed in my post a few of the Jewish funeral proceedings from that time period. For three days, there was a period of intense mourning with paid mourners who wept and wailed loudly. Then for four days (total number of days now equaling seven, the Biblical number of completeness and perfection), mourners wailed a little less intensely, but still... you know... mourned. And then for the remainder of thirty days from the death, light mourning took place. 

In that day, many Jews believed that during the initial three days, the period of the heaviest mourning, the spirit of the person still hovered near the body, and the person had a chance of coming back to life over that 72-hour period. When the fourth day hit, that death became irrevocable. To put it in Princess Bride terms, the person went from being "mostly dead"... to "all dead." 

By day four, Lazarus was now "all dead."

Jesus knows this and is why I think He waited until that fourth day to show up. Like John's mission statement in John 20:31, He does this "so that we may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, we may have life in His name."

"Lazarus! Come out!" Jesus says.

And the dead man, the beyond-all-hope dead man, the "all dead" dead man... comes out. Per the burial process, he is wrapped up in strips of linen, and there's a cloth over his head, so he's essentially a prisoner in his own grave wrappings, wiggling his way through the entrance as best he can.

Can you imagine what the witnesses are thinking?!

Here's one more understood you imperative order. "Take off the grave clothes and let him go," says Jesus.

Yes, you. 

You remove the trappings of death that keep you a prisoner. You put one foot in the grave as you obey the command of Jesus. You approach your fear and unwrap it to find joy. You.

You take the first step, and you'll see the beautiful, miraculous, glorious, amazing, faultless power and glory of God Himself.

This just... knocks my socks off (I'm currently barefoot, but whatever). Take this with you today: Jesus meets us in the understood you. When you take off your blinders and open the door on your fears, your inhibitions, your no-God-not-me's... He's there on the other side, waiting to blow. your. mind.

Give Him the chance. He'll absolutely do it!