A Figure of Enormous
Dignity: Imitating Christ and
Accomplishing the Will of God Through Times of Sickness and Waiting
A Compilation from The
Stature of Waiting, W.H. Vanstone
By Heidi Dixon
John 9:4 “We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night
comes, when no one can work.”
It is made
explicit in John’s Gospel that Jesus’ time for ‘working’ is limited. In His encounter with the blind man whom He
healed on the Sabbath, Jesus is explaining that He must ‘work’ even on the
Sabbath because His time for working-the ‘daylight’ period-is limited. Within that period Jesus must do all His work
because ‘daylight’ is to be followed by the ‘night’ which, for Jesus as for
mankind in general, must mean the end of work.
P.30
John 11:9-10 “Are there
not twelve hours in the day? If a man
walks in the day he does not stumble because he sees the light of this
world: but if a man walks in the night
he stumbles because the light is not in him.”
So the
period for ‘working’ is limited; but John makes it clear that, while that
period lasts, Jesus is not only commissioned and sent to do the Father’s
works: He is also free to do them. During the
daylight period His freedom to work cannot be fettered or restrained…Throughout
the daylight period John shows Jesus free to work, in accordance with the
Father’s will, beyond the restraint or interference of human hands, even of
those hands which, at one point, would have ‘taken Him and made Him King’.
John 17:4 “I glorified
thee on earth, having accomplished the work which thou gavest me to do…”
And so,
having used the daylight period to the full and without restraint, Jesus is
able to announce at the end of it the completion of the work which is both the
Father’s and His own: He says at the
Last Supper, ‘I have glorified Thee upon earth: I have finished
the work which Thou gavest Me to do.’
And thereafter, significantly, we hear no word more about the work of
Jesus. P.31
John 13:30 “So after receiving the morsel, he [Judas] immediately went out; it was
night.”
According to
John’s account…when Judas leaves the Last Supper to set in train the handing
over of Jesus, John tell us ‘that it was night’… which must mean that the
‘daylight’ period is over and that the time foreseen by Jesus has come-the time
at which ‘no one can work’, the time at which ‘working’ must give place to
‘waiting’…and is also associated, in a most striking way, with the end of
Jesus’ freedom from restraint by human hands…”from working to waiting and from
freedom to constraint.” P.32
John 18:4-6 “Then Jesus, knowing all that was to befall him, came forward and said
to them, ‘Whom do you seek? They
answered him, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’ Jesus
said to them, ‘I am he’. Judas, who
betrayed him, was standing with them.
When he said to them, ‘I am he’, they drew back and fell to the ground.”
“The ultimate dimension of the divine glory becomes manifest
in him when he was handed over.”
John 19:28: “I
thirst”
The Jesus who said, ‘if anyone
thirsts, let him come to me and drink’ becomes He who says, ‘I thirst’…”He who has
previously exercised the power to judge…stands under their power of judgment;
and now He who has previously promised and dispensed the water of life to
others becomes the recipient of their refreshment…The handing over of Jesus was
His transition from working to waiting upon and receiving the works of others,
from the status and role of subject to that of object, from ‘doing’ to ‘being
done to’. P.33-34
John 19:30 “…It is
finished…”
“According
to John, the final word of Jesus on the cross was ‘It is completed’: and this final word was preceded, a moment
before, by His perception that ‘all things were now completed.’…at the Last
Supper, before He was handed over to passion, Jesus announced that His work was
completed. Evidently, therefore something
other than ‘work’ must be completed before ‘all things’ are completed and
before the triumphant cry can be raised that ‘it is completed’. Something beyond ‘work’ is necessary to the
completion of Jesus’ function or mission or calling…” p.71
More from The Stature
of Waiting …
“It is not necessarily the case that man is most
fully human when he is achiever rather than receiver, active rather than
passive, subject rather than object of what is happening.” P.52
“Waiting can be the most intense and poignant of
all human experiences—the experience which, above all others, strips us of
affectation and self-deception and reveals to us the reality of our needs, our
values and ourselves.” P.80
“[In times of waiting] Usually rational
considerations overcome dread and we do not ‘run away’. We count it weakness or cowardice if we do;
and we also count it weakness if as we wait, we find ourselves hoping or
praying that that which lies ahead—that which is ‘for the best’—may not
happen…There is weakness—pardonable weakness, but nevertheless weakness—in
hoping or praying to be ‘spared’ that which we know to be for the best…One
waits at such moments in an agonizing tension between hope and dread, stretched
and almost torn apart between two dramatically different anticipations. A wise person will then steel and prepare
himself for the worst; but the very tension in which he waits shows that hope
is still present, and that hope will often express itself, even in unbelievers,
in the urgent and secret prayer, ‘O God, let it be all right’. In such hope and prayer there is no weakness,
no failure of nerve: torn between rational hope and rational
dread, one may properly pray for the best while still prepared for the worst. Perhaps it was in such a manner that Jesus
waited and prayed in His agony in the Garden.” P.81
“Need or dependence can disclose not only our
own deficiency, but also –and often to a remarkable degree—the power and value
of people and things in the world around us…The need which constrains him to
wait makes him also a point of heightened sensitivity, of more intense
receptivity: in and through him more is going on than in the figure,
who, experiencing no need, has no concern…” p.100
“Without receptivity, the world exists simply as
physical fact…Beauty, as opposed to physical fact, appears within the world
when a butterfly’s wing is seen by a human eye and when its potential for
beauty is actualized in a human mind. So
when a man receives and recognizes the beauty of a butterfly’s wing he is no
less enriching the totality of the world than when, by art and skill, he
creates—if that were possible—a thing of equal beauty. A man who receives and recognizes the beauty
of a garden is no less enriching the totality of the world than a man who works
upon and creates a garden.” P.106
“He must not see it as degrading that he should
wait upon the world, be helped, be provided for, be dependent; for as such he
is, by God’s gift, what God Himself makes Himself to be. That man is made, by God’s gift, to know and
feel his dependence on the world is no less a mark of God’s image in him than
that he is made, also by God’s gift, to know and feel his capacity for acting
and achieving.” P.104
“God creates a world which includes among its
infinite variety of wonders this culminating wonder—that there are points
within it at which, in the consciousness of men, its wonders are received and
recognized…that man receives the world; and as he does so, a figure exposed and
waiting, he appears no diminished or degraded figure but a figure of enormous
dignity.” P.107
Personal Note: If you are reading this, it is because I see
you as “a figure of enormous dignity”. Without
the help of this book, I would never have been able to explain why. It is my hope that these ideas give you a greater
peace and confidence about what you are going through, its place in God’s will
for the completion of your mission, and increased gratitude for Christ going
before us and showing us how. If you are
receptive, and “can choose to accept what you did not want and even what you
would not have wanted at any price”, it will produce tremendous spiritual fruit
for you and those who are blessed enough to walk with you, even if only for a
short time. Thank you for your example
and letting me be one of those who benefit from it.
Heidi Dixon,
Chaplain
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