March 26, 2023
Reflecting on this gospel after the death of her husband 5 years ago, Jan Richardson wrote:
When we suffer an agonizing loss, something of us goes into the grave. As we wrestle with our grief, we will be visited by questions about what new life waits for us. We will find ourselves faced with a choice: will we gather the graveclothes more tightly around ourselves, or will we respond to the voice of Christ, who stands at the threshold and calls us to come out?
The choosing is not to be rushed. We need to give the weeping and wailing their due, the tears and the anger their place. It is only in reckoning with death—including the death that has taken place within us—that we can begin to discern what new life lies beyond the tomb of our heart.
Reckoning with death..in a very critical way is at the heart of John’s gospel, really of all the Gospels. For the early Christian community the death of Jesus was a scandal and the fundamental obstacle to faith.
Not the teachings of Jesus. Yes, they are enormously challenging, but not hard to understand. And, they are not SO different from that of many faiths. Charity towards others, especially towards those who are suffering in any way is a mainstay of most religious teachings.
The stories of healings and miracles presented in the gospels may be a greater difficulty for those of us brought up with the scientific method that for earlier peoples. But whether we accept them literally or not, we understand that they serve as testimony to the extraordinary person of Jesus and give insight into the power of God manifesting itself in acts of feeding and healing. They are not an obstacle for believers.
But the sadistic torture and brutal execution of Jesus of Nazareth?
How in God’s name do we begin to understand this?
And it is not just a historical problem for the evangelists to overcome. How in God’s name do we understand the insane violence of war- bringing suffering and death on an industrial scale? How can we come to grips with the cruel indifference and irrational fears that keep refugees penned in camps little better than prisons for decades? Or the savage inequalities that deny food, shelter and healthcare and bring death to so many of our brothers and sisters across the globe?
How in God’s name do we face the loss of people we have loved so deeply. Friends, parents, spouses and children. How do we face the prospects of our own death?
In John’s gospel the raising of Lazarus is the last in a series of signs that will help us enter into the mystery of the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus. Not to understand it, God knows, not to understand it. But to enter in.
In the horrific torture and execution of Jesus, the God of the universe shares our sufferings. In the resurrection, the God who has so deeply shared our sorrow and even our death calls us from the tomb.
It is not about understanding, it is about entering in. This is the first challenge of our faith-to be fully present in whatever ways we can to the suffering and loss of the people around us and to our own.
The 2nd and often greater challenge is about allowing ourselves to be called forth from the tomb. Each of today’s readings spread over some 7 centuries from Ezekial to Paul to John represents a call to a radical hope that, whatever we have experienced, God calls us to a new and deeper life.
This is the great mystery at the heart of the Christian faith. It is one that we will reenact during the liturgies of Holy Week and Easter. Our task today and over the next two weeks is to be faithfully present to all that our lives and our world are and to open ourselves to the ever deeper possibilities to which God calls us.