Thoughts on 5 Lent, 29 March 2020

From Rev. Clarence,

Ps. 130; Ezekiel 37:1 – 14; Rom. 8:6 – 11; Jn. 11:1 – 15

When one reads or hears too often the same thing, a certain familiarity threatens to set in and lull one into a “hearing but not hearing” mode.  So it is often with the chapter-long rehearsal of the Lazarus Story by the writer of John’s Gospel appointed for this Fifth Sunday in Lent.  However, as I sat this past week with long uninterrupted hours on my hands to reflect on our current health pandemic, the Gospel according to John offered a new insight into how individuals and people have dealt with anxiety, disappointment, and despair, and emerged as a people still with hope.

It occurred to me that John, who lived millennia ago and could not have anticipated our current state of affairs, does provide us with an insight that defies boundaries of a specific time and place.  John is a biographer and the subject of his biography is Jesus of Nazareth.  And as any good biographer, John weaves into the main story a crucial side story [that] is guaranteed to pique our interest but [that], in so doing, tells us also more about his primary subject.

The secondary biography within that biography is that of Mary and Martha and, of course, Lazarus.  This secondary biography is not placed here as a distraction or, as is so often the case in literature, to give the illusion of the passing of time.  There is more to this secondary biography, [that] is, on its surface, about community and how individuals function within community, and community is essential to John’s biography.  There is a hidden nugget, and to that we will turn in time.  But first we must establish the context.

Not too many weeks ago, before we became sequestered in our respective residences, obeying one of the several mandates aimed at limiting the further spread of COVID -19, I was privileged to visit one of our parishioners.   My visit was just a routine pastoral call.  It was not one connected to our annual Every Member Canvass. And neither did that parishioner speak of money and all the maintenance items, if funds were available, we could address in our parish.

Rather, what she did was to show me photographs and share with me stories about the people in those pictures. During that visit, I gained a glimpse into the bigger historical picture of our parish family, as well as of our immediate neighborhood.  In telling me the names and tales of long deceased childhood friends, relatives and acquaintances, she revealed tons about herself, which I, because of social etiquette and my ignorance, would never have formulated into questions.

When we read biographies or share oral family histories, we, you and I, learn not only about others, but also about ourselves.  In discovering the strengths, weaknesses, successes, failures, foibles, high achievements of others, we discover more about our own lives.  It is inevitable that we fantasize about the figures in the biography, just as we imagine how our lives might have been.  That recognition is the beginning of discovery, or often a rediscovery of who we are.

So it is also in the stories of the Bible.  We recognize ourselves in Biblical stories: the Prodigal son (or daughter), the Good Samaritan, Virgin Mary’s discreet husband Joseph, the beleaguered Job, devoted Sarah, wife of Abraham, Judas Iscarius.  We are there in those stories, even if we do not give voice to our recognition.  And we are there in the Lazarus Story, as well.

If John’s gospel is a biography of Jesus, what we learn is that Jesus is always in complete control.  There is no uncertainty of voice; no weakness; no indecisiveness in actions.  He listens to, but very coolly rejects the temptations placed before him by the devil.  He listens to but always outmaneuvers his critics and adversaries.  Jesus is absolutely clear from whom he has come and why he is here.

The story of Lazarus is a story within a story, a biography within a biography.  A request comes to Jesus from Lazarus’ sisters.  But Jesus follows his own clock and calendar in responding to the sisters’ request.  When he arrives, the sisters greet his arrival not with thanksgiving, but with news that he is too late to be effective.  Both repeat the litany: “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  This one-liner gives us, the reader, insight to their prior relationship with Jesus and that there is a recognition from their prior relationship with Jesus that he possessed certain powers [that], even if they did not know whence those powers came, could have prevented the inevitable.  Prior to Lazarus’ death, a photograph, so to speak, had already been taken of Martha, Mary, Lazarus, and Jesus.  We readers are introduced into a backstory of a story.

It is because of that familiarity and interdependence between Jesus and Mary and Martha that we hear and participate in their grief.  There was an unspoken and unwritten expectation of support.  That is what community and the Church as community are all about.  In community, we look out for each other; we care not only for our individual selves, but for other[s].  During these days fraught with anxiety caused by an unforgiving virus, we abstain from corporate public worship because we care not only about our own wellbeing but that of others.  We grieve because we cannot be present physically for others to offer, in person, words of comfort.  Our sense of community makes us want to do that.

The early church clearly recognized itself in this biography within a biography.  Living with loss was their daily state of affairs.  Jesus, in whom they had banked their hope, was not physically there.  Imagine their prayers for the imminent return of Jesus.  Like Mary and Martha, they petitioned: “Jesus, if you come soon, we will be saved.  Please, come quickly.”  Separated now from each other, you and I, millennia removed from Mary and Martha and from the early church, share in their loss, their despair, and their grief.  Yet, we find in that historical mirror more than grief; we find hope reflected there, as well.

Jesus asked them then, and asks us now, the question: “Do you believe in the resurrection?”  Sure, on the last day, responds the sister.  Jesus corrects her theology.  No, not the last day—now!  ‘I am resurrection and life,’ says Jesus, not future tense—now!  Jesus redefined hope.  Not ‘in the sweet by and by’—as sweet and enticing as that may be.  But in the here and now.  Where there is Christ, there is resurrection power in the lion’s den, catacombs, marketplace, or graveside.  The power of the resurrection is discerned in and displayed by those in our national and global communities who search to find vaccines to combat COVID -19 and other diseases, and who put themselves at risk in order to minister to those who are ill, both in mind and body.

If John’s gospel is a biography, the inclusion of the Lazarus story is not to fill pages or to invoke in the reader [ ] the impression of passing time.  That second story has a clear purpose: a dead body over three days in the tomb, a stone rolled away, burial garments left behind, a dead man comes to life, a shout of victory.  If one holds the page to the light, another narrative emerges.  The Lazarus story foretells Christ’s great story of death and resurrection.  That is the story Lazarus wants us to hear.

The story of Lazarus reminds us that reality transcends the visible moment.  Just because the present seemed for Mary and Martha empty, it did not mean that the future is hollow.  And so it is then, that our story, yours and mine, gets attached to the greater biography.  And our stories, though sometimes overwhelming or seemingly of no significance, have been redeemed from the edge.  The bottom line is triumph—Christ’s triumph.  Through God’s grace, we recognize our names in the story and (to paraphrase an observation made recently by New York State’s Governor Cuomo), perhaps not according to our timeline, so shall we emerge from this current experience a stronger and more loving community.

AMEN

Clarence E. Butler

Priest-in-Residence