Chapter VII

Tomorrow

They will grant Him a future and deny Him the hour He claims.

2 min · They Did Not Believe Him

See Lazarus. The sisters were His own. They do not fail for lack of affection. They fail at the tense. They weep, If you had been here he would not have died. The sentence puts His power in the past conditional, where it can be praised without being trusted. You could have. You were able. You arrived late.

Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this? She said to Him, Yes, Lord; I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.

John 11:25–27

He answers with the present. I am. Not I will be. I am the resurrection and the life. Do you believe this? They answer with the last day. Martha can recite the right future. She cannot let the future into the tomb in front of her. They keep weeping. He weeps because their faith stops at tomorrow. He is not weeping at death as a theory. He is weeping at unbelief in His own house, among His own, at the mouth of a grave He intends to empty in the next breath.

They will grant Him a future and deny Him the hour He claims.

This is the most religious form of unbelief. It is not atheism. It is postponement. It will grant Him a last day, a coming, a glory, a throne at the end of the story. It will not grant Him the hour He is standing in. It keeps the doctrine and loses the Man. It is orthodox about tomorrow and vacant about noon.

Lazarus is not a parable for funeral homes. Lazarus is the test of whether I am means now. The sisters loved Him. Love did not get the tense right. He had to call the dead by name because the living would not believe the Name they already knew. The last day arrived early, as it always does when He is in the yard, and they had no liturgy for it except tears.

He still asks the same question. Do you believe this? Not the general resurrection as a clause in a creed. This. Me. Here. The hour I am claiming while you are still explaining why it would have worked if I had come sooner.