There are seasons in life when faith feels less like certainty and more like waiting. We pray for healing, but the illness remains. We pray for reconciliation, but the relationship is still broken. We pray for guidance, but the way forward remains unclear. We pray for a child or grandchild who has wandered from the faith, but nothing seems to change. In those moments, we may know what God has promised. We may believe that he is faithful. But we have not yet seen the fulfillment. That is where both Jeremiah and Martha stand in today’s readings.
Jeremiah is exhausted by his vocation. He has spoken God’s word faithfully, but instead of success he has experienced conflict, isolation, and rejection. He cries out: “Woe to me, mother, that you gave me birth!” This is not the voice of someone who has lost all faith. It is the voice of someone who has tried to remain faithful and is tired of the cost. Yet in the middle of his lament, Jeremiah says: “When I found your words, I devoured them; your words were my joy and the happiness of my heart.”
Jeremiah still remembers what first sustained him. God’s word had become part of him. He had not merely heard it. He had consumed it. It had nourished his heart and given meaning to his life. But now he is struggling because the word he embraced has not yet produced the outcome he hoped for. He has God’s promise, but he is still waiting for deliverance.
Martha is in a similar place. Her brother Lazarus has died. Jesus is late on the scene. She says to him: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” There is both faith and pain in that sentence. Martha believes Jesus could have helped. She trusts his power. But she is also grieving what did not happen. Her prayer was not answered in the way she expected. And yet she does not walk away. She remains in conversation with Jesus. “But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” Martha does not understand what Jesus is about to do. She has no clear picture of how this story will end. She is still standing in grief. But she holds on.
Then Jesus says: “I am the resurrection and the life.” He does not explain what He is about to do, rather the first action is the gift of Himself to Martha. That may be the deepest lesson in these readings.
While we are waiting for God’s promise to be fulfilled, God often gives us his presence before he gives us an answer. We want to know when things will change. God says, “I am with you.” We want to know how the story will end. God says, “Trust me.” We want a solution. God gives us his Word.
This does not mean that our questions are wrong or that faithful people never become discouraged. Jeremiah complains openly. Martha tells Jesus exactly how she feels. Faith is not pretending that everything is fine. Faith is bringing our disappointment to God and refusing to stop speaking with him. It is possible to grieve and still believe. It is possible to be confused and still trust. It is possible to feel tired and still hold on to God’s word.
God responds to Jeremiah with a promise: “They will fight against you, but not prevail over you, for I am with you, to deliver and rescue you.” God does not promise that Jeremiah’s struggle will disappear immediately.He promises that the struggle will not have the final word.
Jesus makes the same promise to Martha, only in an even greater way: “Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live.” Death itself will not have the final word. This is the faith Christians are called to live.
We hold on to God’s word while waiting for God’s promise. We do not always know when healing will come. We do not always know how reconciliation will happen. We do not know when grief will become lighter or when a prayer will be answered. But we know the One who has spoken.
And in the end, Christian hope rests not in our ability to predict what God will do, but in the character of the God who has promised to remain with us. Most of the Christian life is lived somewhere between Jeremiah’s words: “Your words were my joy” and Martha’s confession: I have come to believe.”
We remember what God has said. We continue to believe. And we wait with the quiet conviction that the Lord who has begun the story has not abandoned it.
Image credit: The Raising of Lazarus, Duccio di Buoninsegna (c.1310), Kimberly Museum of Art, Public Domain
As we enter the Season of Advent, it strikes me that “Hope” and “waiting” are even more a part of our lives in these times. In the dark hours before dawn, I muse about waiting and hope in the season of Advent, I was pondering what is higher on my list – waiting for Christmas or waiting for a coronavirus vaccine, herd immunity and the return to normalcy. If I am honest, it is the latter. It feels like we are living in the time of Noah. We are not just waiting for the flood waters of illness to reside, but we are optimistically waiting now that the vaccines are on the horizon.
Kerry Weber, an associate editor at America Magazine, a wife and mom, offered her thoughts on Hope. Her words are from a letter she and her husband wrote to her not-yet-born son on their hopes for his life in the Faith. As do all parents, they wait with expectation to see how this new life unfolds. They wrote:
We wait between the two earthquakes – the ones announcing the death of Jesus and his Resurrection
There are lots of different ways to wait. Scripture has over 162 verses that describe all sorts and manners of waiting. I suspect you are familiar with a good portion of the different kinds of waiting – after all, we all wait. In the military, the common experience was to “hurry up and wait.” We all wait. It is a common experience, and yet there are differences in waiting. There is a difference between expectant, on the edge of your seat, waiting; the patient “it will happen in its own good time and there is nothing I can do about it” waiting; and the waiting of dread, tedium, and despair. I think our, “Are we ever gonna’ get there waiting,” because a flight to Europe can take 8+ hours, would fall on deaf ears for our ancestors who traveled months on boats to reach these distant shores. But things change, the world has sped up. Our culture demands fast food, fast cars, and fast answers. We are accustomed to having a world of information at our fingertips with laptops and smart phones. We expect pills that will immediately take the pain away…yesterday. We are not accustomed to waiting, and we do not like it. 
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