Ps. 102.16 (the time of Lazarus)

Having regard / for the prayer of the destitute
instead of despising / their prayer 

This psalm opens with a call to Yhwh to “listen to my prayer, let my cry for help reach you. Do not hide your face away from me.” This cry embodies the same dynamic found in today’s verse of ‘having regard’ ‘instead of despising’, the ‘facing’/’turning away’ dynamic. Also, we find in verse another important echo: “you will arise and treat Zion with compassion….for your servants regard its rubble with favor.” Here, Yhwh is ‘having regard’ for their prayer in the same way that they ‘had regard’ for his city, Zion. We are, in this verse, entering the dynamic of prayer that forms the ‘call and response’. And it forms a confirmation of something we said earlier: that the servant’s regard for the rubble of Zion is the precondition of its rebuilding because it functions as a type of implicit petition to Yhwh to rebuild it. Here, it is their ‘favor’ that is now answered by Yhwh’s ‘favor’ in responding to them. As we have said before, this is a particular aspect of Israel’s mission—to be the people that maintain favor for Yhwh’s city in its destroyed form. This is their ‘perpetual cry’ that will “at the right time” be heard and resurrection will occur. They keep time moving forward to the appointed time. And at this point we need to emphasize something we neglected in the previous reflections—the rebuilding of Zion is not merely the reconstruction of Zion; it is the return of Yhwh’s glory and name to his people in his temple. It is his re-tabernacling himself among his people. His ‘incarnating’ himself. This return is not merely the return of the object their profound delight (which it is), but it is the re-establishment of his reign such that justice will now be enacted. This is why, for the first time, the psalm mentions ‘the destitute’. The ‘answer to their prayers’ is the return of Yhwh, their protector and judge, who will ‘work righteousness’ on their behalf and ‘lift them up’ out of their destitution. This is more clearly seen in the following verses where he “releases men under the sentence of death”.   

One wonders here whether the ‘time before redemption’ is the ‘time of Lazarus’. What I mean is this—the psalm clearly shows that the psalmist and Yhwh’s servants are now living in the time of the ruined Zion. They are, moreover, living in a time of extreme sickness (psalmist) and injustice (servants). This time, however, is also a time ‘of favor the rubble’, of looking forward to the “right time” when Yhwh will act with mercy. But the question the psalmist asks, and the question that Lazarus’ sister ask, is “why didn’t you come sooner?” Importantly, this psalm offers two perspectives on this question. On the personal level of the psalmist there is no real answer to this. However, from the perspective of Zion, that the psalmist also cherishes, the ‘time of the rubble’ prepares for ‘the time of glory’. It is, in a sense, Yhwh’s allowing Zion to be a place that is only held in favor ‘by his servants’ so that, when it is rebuilt, its glory will unite all the nations and kings of earth. The further into obscurity and death that Zion descends into, the greater the glory of its rebuilding will be. And, this is what happens, on a smaller scale to Lazarus and why Jesus says he waited to come to him. Lazarus is like a mini-Zion in this regard. He is a mini-resurrection of the ‘rebuilt Christ/Temple’. What we find here, then (and this is, to me very profound) is that the Lazarus event does not so much point to Lazarus as it points to the effect of Christ’s resurrection/rebuilding. What happened on an almost mundane level when Lazarus was ‘resurrected’ will happen at a total level when Christ is resurrected/rebuilt. This dynamic is of Lazarus-to-Jesus is similar to the dynamic in this psalm of psalmist-to-Zion. As such, the individual is never just an individual but must find in its own life and death, its incorporation into the life-and-death of Christ. This is the ‘momentum of Christ’ when he, like an undertow, pulls everything into himself, as Zion ‘pulls the psalmist’ into herself.