Life to the Dead (Lent 5A)

The Raising of Lazarus, Vincent Van Gogh 1890

 

Life to the Dead
Homily delivered the Fifth Sunday of Lent (Lent 5A RCL)

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
2 April 2017; 8:00 a.m. Said and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)
Readings:  Ezekiel 37:1-14; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45; Psalm 130

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

The author of the Gospel of John clearly tells us his purpose: "...these things are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through faith in him you may have life” (John 20:31).

The fourth Gospel reveals Jesus to the reader through a series of startling acts: turning water to wine, healing the paralytic, multiplying the loaves and fishes, walking on the sea, curing the man born blind, raising Lazarus from the dead. John does not call these things miracles. He calls them signs, or pointers to the true meaning of Jesus. The word he uses is semeia—the word where we get the word semantics, or the study of meanings.  These six signs are completed by a seventh, like the days of creation.  It is Jesus being raised in deathless glory from the dead after being lifted high upon the cross for all the world to see him.

John sees these acts of power not as evidence that Jesus is God’s chosen one, God’s Son. Rather, for him they indicate—they point to, they serve as symbols for, and they participate in—the mystery that John sees as the reality of God in Christ.

This is not an effort at biographic history. This is an effort to point the reader to Christ, the risen Lord, the Eternal Word of God come down from heaven and now returned there, as experienced by believers now.

At times in the narrative the signs give Jesus a chance to give a discourse—at other times, a chance to engage in dialogue—on aspects of Jesus as Eternal Word of God and Son of the Father.

The Raising of Lazarus, New Basilica of Sant'Appolinare, Ravenna (6th century)

Today’s Gospel reading, the raising of Lazarus from the dead, is the great final sign before the passion and death of Jesus.  The story is my favorite of all scripture.  Here Jesus is shown to us not only in his divinity but also his humanity.  He shows his love and solidarity with Lazarus and his sisters several times.  He weeps with them.  He gets angry and indignant at how rotten a thing death is.  He takes time to talk with Martha.  He affirms his own faith amid the troubling context of a world of darkness, illness, and death.

In Dostoyevsky’s great novel Crime and Punishment, this story plays a central role.  Young radical Raskolnikov has committed a murder and theft to even, as he thinks, the score of social injustice and prove to himself the sincerity of his revolutionary opinions.  But he suffers from guilt and self-loathing as a result.  He meets a young prostitute, Sonya, who helps him come to grips with his feelings.  Sonya, though reviled and loathed by all around her, has been forced in prostitution in order to feed her younger siblings.  She herself also has suffered from guilt and self-loathing.  At a key turning point in the story, she tells Raskolnikov that she used to read to a beloved common acquaintance.  He insists that she read to him, and read to him what she used to read to their friend. 

She has trouble doing it.  Her voice breaks several times, she pauses and stammers, but she reads the story, this luminous tale from the Gospel of John.  When Jesus says, “And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” Sonya continues reading Martha’s reply: “’She said to him,’ (and drawing a painful breath, Sonya read clearly but strongly, as though she herself were confessing he faith for all to hear:) ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who should come into the world.’”    The story and Sonya’s sharing her faith turns things around for Raskolnikov, though it takes a long and complicated while for him to confess his crime, and suffer the penalty.  In the end, there is redemption and joy, both for him and Sonya, who accompanies him to Siberia to help him through his penal exile. 

The story is a sign-post, an indication, of the true nature of Jesus: our great healer, our pattern, and birth-giver.   Often during our weekday morning prayers, we sing a canticle that expresses the idea and feelings of this story.  It  is by one of the first round losers in this year’s Lent Madness, Anselm of Canterbury. 

One of the reasons this canticle so moves me is its tone 7 setting uses a figure that also appears in the tone 1 setting of Psalm 88:

O Lord, my God, my Savior, *

   by day and night I cry to you…

I am counted among those who go down to the Pit; *

   I have become like one who has no strength;

Lost among the dead, *

   like the slain who lie in the grave…

The figure is for the words “lost among the dead” which appears in Anselm’s canticle as “life to the dead” (chanting):

Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you; *

you are gentle with us as a mother with her children.

Often you weep over our sins and our pride,  *

tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgment.

You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds,  *

in sickness you nurse us and with pure milk you feed us.

Jesus, by your dying, we are born to new life; *

by your anguish and labor we come forth in joy.

Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness; *

through your gentleness, we find comfort in fear.

Your warmth gives life to the dead,  *

your touch makes sinners righteous.

Lord Jesus, in your mercy, heal us; *

in your love and tenderness, remake us.

In your compassion, bring grace and forgiveness,  *

for the beauty of heaven, may your love prepare us.

Note that when Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, he leaves the deed unfinished.  Lazarus comes forth, but Jesus tells Mary and Martha to untie the funeral cloths, to “unbind him.”    That is how it often is with us:  Jesus may be our bread and give us strength, may be our water and give us relief, may be our warmth and give life to us the dead, but we often are held back by our own fears, foolishness, and false sense of self.  We, though alive back from the dead, remain bound.  And Jesus tells our friends, our family, and our loved ones, “Unbind him.  Complete the miracle or me.” 

St. Teresa of Avila wrote,

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

No matter what good God is up to, here below, we are God’s hands and feet here, God’s eyes, God’s ears, God’s heart.   Just as Christ bid the disciples to unbind Lazarus, so he bids us. 

Sisters and brothers, I am very glad that Deacon Meredith read the Gospel today.  I don’t think I could have, not without choking up and pausing again and again like Sonya.  That’s because I know this story and recognize it.  I have known the healing word and hand of Jesus.  I have seen it give life to the dead.  And with Martha, and with Sonya reading this story, I can say with all my heart, “Yes, Lord Jesus. I trust you.  I believe, I give my heart, that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who should come into this world you have made.” 

Christ weeps with us.  He gives moments of joy and thanks.  He heals.  He gives life to the dead. 

Thanks be to God.