Peace be with you.
Many of you probably know, somewhere between 4-7 months, a child goes from only knowing what’s in the world by what they see to knowing that someone or something is there even if they can not see it. They call it object permanence. In those first few months, if you get annoyed by the sounds of an annoying toy or if a child becomes fascinated with an electrical outlet, all you have to do is remove the toy or remove the outlet from his or her sight and suddenly it doesn’t appear. However, once object permanence is established, you risk a temper tantrum for removing the object of temptation, especially if it was something that they were taking great pleasure in exploring or if they’re short on sleep.
St. John’s story of the death and resuscitation of Lazarus is extremely vivid and full of details that are definitely worth pondering and remembering. For instance, whereas St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke would have most likely simply started this story from Bethany, St. John starts two days in advance in the Northern part of Israel called Galilee. We know from the other gospels that Galilee was where Jesus did most of his ministry and that Bethany was the place he would stay, instead of Jerusalem, when he either visited the temple or did ministry in the southern part of Israel, called Judea. St. John starts this story when Jesus heard that Lazarus, his friend, is sick. Jesus knows that the illness will end in death so he...waits for two days. It says that he knew the people in the south were trying to kill him so he wanted to wait for things to calm down. So, he waits two days to go. St. Thomas says, “then let us all go up and die with him.” It seems a cynical remark but, in truth, we can hear a willingness on the part of St. Thomas and the other apostles to follow Jesus in death, which they most certainly will do when they are all martyred as one of his followers. See how subtle that is? It sounds like a cynical remark that all of us probably would have made at the idea that two days is enough to calm the anger against Jesus, but instead it points to the fact that they will all be martyred like Jesus even before Jesus has died.
We’re not sure exactly how long it took them to make it to Bethany. The next time-frame we are given is when Matha, of Mary and Martha fame in the Gospel of St. Luke says Lazarus has been dead for four days. In any case, Jesus arrives and there’s a parallel to that earlier story from the Gospel of Luke about Martha and Mary, but also a bit of contrast. You may remember that story as Mary choosing the better part by sitting contemplatively at Jesus’ feet while Martha is wearied about many things, rushing around the house trying to be the good host. The parallel is that Martha is the first to speak to Jesus. Like in the story when Jesus visits them, Martha is also the most active, running to meet him when he is still outside the city.
Now, we know they would have buried the body of Lazarus outside the city because it was illegal to bury them inside. That’s why, on the day of Easter, Mary Magdalene has to go to the tomb outside the city to try to anoint Jesus’ body. So, Jesus may have been making a beeline to the tomb of his friend and was intercepted by Martha. Their interaction speaks to the place that Martha has grown as a person. She says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But…” She adds a “but” to this statement, “But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” There is a statement of faith, of hope, and of love. This is a different Martha from the resentful host trudging around her house. Martha is one with faith in Jesus, declaring that she knows Jesus can do this because God listens to him. Jesus then declares to her that I am, one of his famous “I AM” statements from the Gospel of John, “I am the resurrection and the life” and she responds that she has come to believe in him and so she calls her faithful sister, Mary.
Now, Mary brings with her a group of professional mourners who would have gone from funeral to funeral mourning with people, whether they knew them or not. That’s why they are crying with her, not because they really have a strong connection to the family but because they think it’s their job to go and make the family feel like it’s alright to cry and mourn. What Mary says sounds very similar to what Martha says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” However, there's no “but” at this point. Unlike the earlier experience of sitting at the Lord’s feet in quiet contemplation, her apathy comes through. She’s absent. It’s been four days since her brother has died and she’s lost any hope that he will come back.
In response to Mary, Jesus gets perturbed and weeps. Unlike the professional mourners, he weeps because his friend Lazarus has to die. Even though Jesus knows that all of this is being done for the glory of God, he weeps at what his friend had to go through. But, he also weeps at the lack of faith surrounding from Mary and those with her.
Which is where the third interaction takes place. Storytelling is built on the rule of three, three interactions between Jesus and the sisters in this case. Jesus asks that the stone be rolled away, and this time it’s Martha whose doubts are brought forward as she worries about a stench. Martha is the one who believes but also asks Jesus to help her unbelief, as it says in the Gospel of St. Mark. I believe but I don’t want it to be tested. I don’t want to have to prove that when we roll away the stones we’re not going to smell decay on the inside.
So, Jesus gets perturbed again, frustrated that the one who so proudly said she believed is now saying that she doesn’t believe, won’t put her actions of faith behind her statement of belief. At this point, Jesus says “Lazarus, Come out!”, calling him by his name for the first time since he arrived instead of just calling him the “dead man”, Lazarus comes out wrapped in his burial cloths. It’s like the burial cloths point to the fact that this is a resuscitation instead of a resurrection. He has come back to life, but Lazarus will die. This is definitely a sign by St. John of the resurrection but I like the detail that the body is still wrapped, he is still bound by the laws of death of this world. People still come to faith in Jesus because of the resuscitation of Lazurus.
Death is a confusing thing and, certainly, in this time of Covid-19, there is death all around us. There is the metaphorical death of our freedom to be able to go where we want and be with whom we want and feeling trapped in our house and, yet, I know some people are experiencing actual death of loved ones because of this disease as well. I think it’s not the worst thing in the world to contemplate the reality of death, that each of us will likely face this evil. There are two things that come to my heart during this time. The first is that, if we are with a loved one who is most likely headed toward death and we call upon the Lord saying, “Lord, if you are here, my brother or sister won’t die.” Remember that Jesus waited two days to go to see his friend and that, in that time, Lazarus did in fact die. It was because he knew, as it said, that we would see the glory of God. Resuscitation is great but Resurrection is better. Resuscitation ends but resurrection is eternal. It gives us hope.
St. Thomas Aquinas offered four reasons to believe in the resurrection. I offer the second of his four reasons that I think directly hits us right now. He says, “By removing the dread of death, since we believe that there is another, better life to which we shall come after death, it is evident that no one should fear death or do anything through fear of death. Not that we find death to be something that we long for or yearn for or try and bring about by our own actions. We all have to rely on God to be the author of our lives. But it shouldn’t be something that we dread either, something that we are terrified to face as a reality. Resurrection should give us a sense that death is, as it said in the readings, a sleep, waiting, anticipating. It’s a real sense in faith in an object of permanence. The world tells that that, once you die, that is the end. That all we need to do is to look outside and see things passing away, our cars die, our computers die, things die and, once they do, they end. And yet, we who have faith in the Object Permanence of the resurrection know that death is a reality but is also not the end. It is something that we’ll all have to go through that will lead us to everlasting life. So, as we contemplate this, don’t forget the Object Permanence of the resurrection.
