·If only he had started down that highway a few minutes before…
·If only my party had won the election…
·If only we’d have caught the cancer earlier…
·If only the plant hadn’t shut down…
·If only she had made me happy and done what I want…
·If only you’d have gotten here sooner Jesus…
If only.We all have our expectations for the way things will go, and if only represents a disappointment in the order of things, an interruption to those expectations.In this pain-filled plea from Mary the “only” is implied, but it is clearly there.If only.If only you’d have been here sooner Jesus, things would have turned out different…OK…the way I want.
We all have some clear plans for our future and how things ought to go.We’d like to control, not only ourselves, but others and our world, so that things come out the way we’d like.We’d like to think we have things figured out in terms of steps, stages, causality… if we do this, then that will happen, and then the end result will be in line with what we want.Behind that we have this sense that if we do the right things, God will reward us…with what we want.If only tells us it often doesn’t work that way.
Act II:Jesus wept
Jesus doesn’t dismiss Mary’s concern and protests of if only.His response is deeply compassionate…absorbing her sorrow, shock and confusion…weeping with these sisters and for them in their grief.He deeply feels the loss of expectations, but his compassion leads to its endpoint, beyond expectation, in act three:
Act III:Unbinding
Jesus doesn’t do if only.His word was “Unbind him, and let him go.”He calls his friend Lazarus out of the tomb, back to life—when it was too late for if onlys.The endpoint of his compassion is “unbind him…”
Those words are a command to us.We are to unbind ourselves and each other from our if onlys, our willful projections upon others—wishful manipulations, trying to get things to come out “right”… [translation]…the way we want. We are to unbind ourselves from our fear, our shame, our guilt…our if only I would have done this or that or tried harder…, and simply be open to the life that God seeks to bring—beyond our expectations.
And isn’t this what the saints among us do, in word and deed? They absorb the backward looking if onlys that are often the focus or obsession of the rest of us, they surround us with compassion, and then move us firmly (yet compassionately) in the direction of unbinding and releasing to new life.
“Unbind him and let him go”…this is our work.Once we unbind, then what?We can’t control him.Once we unbind ourselves… then we must let go of our If Onlys.We can’t reign it in.Resurrection happens.
If we would unbind each other and ourselves…we wouldn’t need “if only.”There would be no more only, just if… open with possibility, hope…wild beyond expectation.
