A GRAVE THOUGHT

Today’s lectionary gave us the story of the raising of Lazarus – one of the most moving of all the Gospel stories, and one that has given many people furiously to think. How did Lazarus look? How did he feel? What did the world look like, after four days in the tomb? Where had he been, those four days?

Two considerations may be relevant. The first is derived from our Algerian parish priest’s sermon, in which he said that the point for us is not only being touched by Jesus’ tears and at the sisters’ emotion, but that we should realize to what degree we too are buried, enclosed in a tomb, often of our own making, unable to rise and come out into the light and air of love. The Epistle was Paul’s letter to the Romans which reminds them that being ‘of the flesh’ hinders one’s approach to God, ‘but you,’ he goes on, ‘are not of the flesh, but of the Spirit’. We need imperatively, said Fr Jean-Kamel, to stop thinking that ‘the flesh’ is invariably linked to sex. Being of the flesh, he said, means being caught in the web of anger, contempt, fear, indignation, and a general rejection of others. I’d add to that that it also means the attitude that of course, for a modern thinking person, stories like the raising of Lazarus are either charming fictions or complex allegories, but that in no case can they be simply true. ‘Life’s a bitch; then you die.’

Jesus called to Lazarus in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ John Donne, praying in his Devotions, which he wrote when almost mortally ill, referred to this and said to God:

I have a grave of sin; senselessness of sin is a grave; and where Lazarus had been four days, I have been fifty years in putrefaction; why dost thou not call me, as thou didst him, with a loud voice, since my soul is as dead as his body was? I need thy thunder, O my God; thy music will not serve me.

This wonderful interpellation of God, as powerful as a Psalmist’s, may serve to start a meditation for this day.

The second consideration is that, as Fr Swain of New York’s Church of the Resurrection announced last week, this Sunday, the Fifth Sunday in Lent, is Passion Sunday. Now, like me, you might not have heard that term used; I looked it up. It is the beginning, traditionally, of Passiontide, which used to be longer than it tends to be today. Statues are veiled; vestments turn from violet to crimson. There is much to be said for ceremony, and I will come back to the subject. In this case, after more than four weeks of Lent, it represents an intensifying, a moving gradually into the meditative condition around the hugeness of Good Friday and Easter. It helps us to remember how huge those occurrences are. It helps us to forget chocolate bunnies and to approach immense and terrifying paradoxes. It helps remind us that had we been there and part of it, we should probably not have done better than, at the very least, Pilate (who intuited the truth but bowed to what he thought was political necessity) or the disciples (who, apart from Peter and perhaps John, took off for parts unknown the minute Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane). It reminds us that for all of us, there are things in our lives we are not proud of, things a great deal bigger than the small gluttonies we ‘give up for Lent’. Veil those statues. Wear the crimson. Hush the music. Face up to the biggies. Admit them, to God if not to a priest. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts; and there is damn little health in us.

                        Almighty God, who hatest nothing that thou has made,

                        and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent;

                        create and make in us new and contrite hearts; that we,

                        worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our

                        wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy,

                        perfect remission and forgiveness. Through Jesus Christ

                        our Lord.

If we can recite this without rebellion and realize that, yes, without remission and forgiveness we would be and are fairly wretched; then we are in a fair way to getting ready to receive the immensity of God’s sacrifice and God’s gift (which are one and the same). Things get damn serious, this time of year. But remember: ‘Heaviness may endure for a night; but joy cometh in the morning.”(Psalm 30)

Image: Rembrandt, 'The Raising of Lazarus', Los Angeles County Museum