Ep 82 - When God blue ticks us

In this homily, Fr. Isaac reflects on the raising of Lazarus from the Gospel of John, exploring one of the most difficult experiences in the spiritual life: when God seems silent.

Martha and Mary send word to Jesus in desperation, asking Him to come and heal their brother. But instead of responding immediately, Jesus delays — leaving them in confusion, grief, and unanswered questions.

Why would God wait? Why doesn’t He act when we need Him most?

This reflection explores how God’s apparent silence is not indifference, but an invitation to deeper faith. Rather than simply removing suffering, Jesus leads us through it — revealing a greater truth: that He is not just a miracle worker, but the Resurrection and the Life.

In moments when prayers feel unanswered and God seems distant, this homily reminds us that His timing is purposeful — and that even delays can become places of transformation.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hello, and welcome to episode 82 or Brother from Another Father as we celebrate the fifth Sunday in Lent.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Dear friends, I'm sure that at one time or another we've all had the experience of being blue-ticked on WhatsApp. It is, I'm sure we will all admit, a painful experience. We send a message to someone, it blue ticks, but then they don't reply. And we're there racking our brains, wondering, why are they not replying to me? Have I offended them in some way? Have I forgot their birthday? Do they not love me anymore? It's an agonizing experience. And one I'm sure we would all say we should never put someone through. And yet, I think we should recognize that this is exactly what Jesus does to Martha and Mary. Jesus blutics them, Jesus leaves them hanging. Martha and Mary send a message to Jesus to say, the one you love, Lazarus, our brother, is sick. In other words, please come quickly. And what does Jesus do? He decides to stay where he is for another two whole days before going to them. If they knew that Jesus was only one day's journey away from Bethany, they would have expected him the very next day after they sent that message. And when he didn't come, they would have been in absolute agony. Why is he not coming? What could possibly be more important than him coming to save our brother, the one that he loves? It must have been total agony for Martha and Mary. And so I think that we must recognize that if Jesus blue ticks them and leaves them hanging, it would have been for a reason. But when Jesus finally arrives four days later, they don't let him off the hook. They want to really, you know, screw it into him to say, Martha comes up and says to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Mary says the same thing to him. Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Even the people in the crowd, as Jesus is accompanying Mary and Martha to the graveside, to the to the tomb, they say, He opened the eyes of the blind. Could he not have prevented this? It's all trying to reproach Jesus to say, you should have got here earlier. Why didn't you? What could possibly have been more important than coming to save the life of your friend? It can't have been easy for Jesus at all. On the one hand, he has all these reproachful looks from the crowd, from Martha, from Mary, people staring daggers into him, saying, Why did you not come earlier? I'm sure we've all been in this situation in our lives where we've made a judgment call, a certain decision, and we have everybody around us criticizing us for it. In fact, so much so that we're so overwhelmed by the criticism that we begin to doubt ourselves. We begin to question and say, Have I really made the right decision here? That could have happened for Jesus. Have I really made the right decision? Staying away so long and allowing people to fall into all of this pain. Then there was also the pleading eyes of Martha and Mary saying to him, But even now, Lord, I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you. What Martha and Mary wanted Jesus to do is to do a miracle to take away their pain. And the point I'm trying to make here and bring out is that this was not a walk in the park for Jesus. We should not imagine Jesus just simply waltzing into Bethany like a suave superstar and then waving his magic wand and taking away the pain of everybody. No, Jesus must enter into the messiness of human emotion and of his own emotion. Because the gospel makes it very clear that this, all of this, the recriminating looks of people, the pleading eyes of Martha and Mary wanting a miracle, all of this had an effect on him. And we're told that Jesus was deeply troubled. Now there's some debate, by scripture scholars, as to how we should interpret this deeply troubled emotion of Jesus. Some have said, oh, it proves that he was human, that he was sharing the deep sadness of Martha and Mary and the mourners at having lost Lazarus. That other scripture scholars, especially the early fathers of the church, have interpreted in a different way, which I think for me makes Jesus even more human. They say that Jesus was frustrated. They say this deeply troubled emotion of Jesus points to his frustration, to his anger. His anger at having so many people just expect him to work a miracle. His anger at having so many people make so much demand of him. It would have been easy for Jesus to simply instantly do away with all these recriminating looks, instantly wave his magic wand and remove the pain of people. But Jesus knows that this is not what he came to do. When Jesus comes into our lives with his redeeming power, it is not simply to take our pain away and to restore things back to the way that they were. That's effectively what everyone wants Jesus to do. But when Jesus comes into our lives with his transforming power, it is not simply to take our pain away, it is to enable us to move through the pain and come out on the other side as transformed people. And so what Jesus must do here is that he must shut out all the noisiness of these emotions that surround him, these people who want him to work a miracle, these people who are criticizing him for not having come earlier. He must retreat into the silence of his soul and hear once again that still quiet voice of the Holy Spirit guiding him on, telling him what to do. When Jesus speaks to his disciples in chapter 4 of John's Gospel, he tells them, My food is to do the will of the one who sent me. And so, again, in this situation, Jesus must find that calm inner center to know what the Father wills him to do. And what the Father wills him to do is not simply to just waltz in, wave his magic wand, and call Lazarus out of the tomb. Because that's not the point of this miracle. It's not simply to take away people's pain. The point is to lead people to faith. And so patiently, instead of letting his frustration and anger show, what Jesus patiently tries to do is to invite this faith out of Martha and says to Martha, Do you believe that I am the resurrection, that I am the life? What Jesus wants to do through this miracle is to demonstrate to his disciples, to Martha and Mary, that as they move towards his death, to his own death, that death will not be the end, that God has power over everything that threatens our life, including death. If Jesus had come and waved his magic wand too early, before Lazarus died, and made him well again, they would have not seen the full extent of God's power over everything that threatens our life. They would have not known that God had power over death. And so the point of this miracle is to invite them into a place of hope, even in the face of his own death that is soon approaching. I think what we are invited to do is to realize that when God blue ticks us, there is a reason for God blue ticking us. We are invited to realize that God is not ignoring our prayers, God is inviting us to a deeper faith. And this is the whole point of John's Gospel. In John's Gospel, we don't have as many miracles as we encounter in the Synoptic Gospels, the other four, uh, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This is because John was writing 60 years after the death of Jesus, in the year 8090, 80 100, even. And by this time, John had realized that there was a problem with many Christians who simply focused on Jesus as a miracle worker. They simply focused on Jesus as someone who could wave his magic wand and remove all their problems. And so this is why John reduces the number of miracles in his gospel. He only gives seven. And he doesn't call them miracles. Instead, he chooses another word. He calls them signs. And there's only seven signs, and this sign is the last sign. It closes the book of signs and opens the book of glory that we'll see Jesus go into his death and finally into his resurrection. And the point is that this sign must point us to a deeper faith in Jesus. Must get us to commit to Jesus so that even in the midst of darkness, the darkness of the cross that is coming, they are able to see the light. They are able to know that as long as Jesus is here, we have nothing to fear. And this is what we must know as we walk, sometimes in the midst of darkness, in the midst of doubt, in the midst of unreasonable expectations placed upon us, in the midst of a long illness of a loved one, in the midst of God seemingly ignoring our prayers. It is all to invite us to a deeper faith, a deeper commitment to Jesus, who is our life and our resurrection.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.