(Lazarus, Come Out!)
March 9, 2008, 5th Sunday of Lent: the Raising of Lazarus
Ezekiel 37:12-14 Romans 8:8-11 John 11:1-45
To the churched and unchurched[1]
gathered in a church not built by human hands[2]
First reading from Ezekiel 37:12-14
“I will open your graves.”
Thus says the Lord God: O my people, I will open your gravesand have you rise from them, and bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and have you rise from them, O my people! I will put my spirit in you that you may live, and I will settle you upon your land; thus, you shall know that I am the Lord. I have promised that I will do this---and I will. I, the Lord have spoken.
Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to John
Glory to you, Lord.
The gospel from John 11:1-45
“Lazarus, come out!”
Jn 11:1-3, 5-8, 11-14: Lazarus dying
A man named Lazarus, who lived in Bethany, became sick. Bethany was the town where Mary and her sister Martha lived. (Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and dried his feet with her hair; it was her brother Lazarus who was ill.) The sisters sent Jesus a message, “Lord, your dear friend is sick.” Jesus loved Martha and her sister, and Lazarus. When Jesus heard that he was sick, he stayed where he was for two more days. Then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you, and you want to go back there?” Jesus said, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I will go and wake him up.” The disciples answered, “If he is asleep, Lord, then he will get well.” But Jesus meant that Lazarus had died; they thought he meant natural sleep. So then, Jesus said to them clearly, “Lazarus is dead.”
Jn11:16-29: Martha believing
Thomas (called the Twin) said to his fellow disciples, “Let us all go back to unfriendly Judea with the Master, so that we may die there with him.” When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, only about two miles away. And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him; but Mary sat at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha said to him, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I do believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” Then Martha went back and called her sister Mary privately. “The teacher is here,” she told her, “and is asking for you.” When Mary heard this, she rose quickly and went out to him.
Jn 11: 32-37: Jesus weeping
When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping, he became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Sir, come and see.” And Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.” But some of them said, “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?”
Jn 11:38-45: Jesus commanding
So Jesus, grieving again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to him, “Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus raised his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you for hearing me. I know that you always hear me; but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that you sent me.” And when he had said this, He cried out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.” Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what he had done began to believe in him.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Introduction
A very special friendship
John writes that, “Jesus loved Martha and her sister, and Lazarus.” (Jn 11:5) Jesus apparently had a special friendship with them. He frequently visited their home in Bethany, a small village near Jerusalem. In the gospels we read of three visits. In Luke, Jesus visits their home where Martha, fussing about many things in preparation of a good meal for Jesus, is angry with Mary for sitting at the Lord’s feet instead of giving her a helping hand. (Lk 10:38-42) In today’s gospel, Jesus rushes to the sisters’ home when he hears their brother Lazarus (his dear friend) has died. (John 11:1-45) Again in John’s gospel Jesus visits the sisters and Lazarus (now alive and healthy), and Martha is again waiting on Jesus and her brother, while Mary pours expensive perfume on his feet and wipes them with her hair. (John 12:1-9)
Though Jesus had a special friendship with all three, the church has a special friendship only with Martha -- the one busy and fussing over many things, but who, at the end of the day, came to believe that “you are the Messiah, the Son of God.” (Jn 11:27) The church celebrates a special feast day (July 29) only for Martha and not for Mary and Lazarus.
Out to kill them both
John places the account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead immediately before his passion and death. It was precisely the raising of Lazarus that incited the authorities in Jerusalem to make plans to put Jesus to death. In chapter twelve we read that many Jews flocked to Bethany because they knew that not only Jesus but also Lazarus (raised from the dead by Jesus) would be there. Because of that miracle many Jews were abandoning the Jerusalem authorities and were following the Lord. So the chief priests were out to kill not only Jesus, the worker of a miracle, but also Lazarus, the very miracle itself. (Jn 12:9-11)
Jesus commanding
As we approach the Good Friday tomb of Jesus, the fifth Sunday of Lent (Cycle A) always takes us to the tomb of Lazarus in Bethany where everyone was weeping. There Jesus also wept. (Jn 11:35) Arrived at the tomb he commanded the people to roll away the stone from the entrance to the tomb. (Jn 11:39) They obeyed and rolled the stone away. Then he commanded Lazarus to come out. He obeyed and came out. (Jn 11:43) Then he commanded the people to untie Lazarus and set him free. (Jn 11:44) They obeyed and Lazarus was set free. Jesus Christ, true God and true man, for whom nothing is too heavy, could have easily rolled the rock back by himself, but, as C.S. Lewis said, “God seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures.”
Tombs we build for ourselves
The human journey is strewn with the various tombs we build for ourselves. We build comforting tombs of self-pity, painful tombs of jealousy and cold tombs of fear. We build sweaty tombs of hate, nervous tombs of fret and foggy tombs of addiction. We especially build tombs of certainty for ourselves -- fortresses which conveniently shut out anything we do not want to see and hear -- prisons which happily lock us up in our certainties. Fetus-like we curl up in all these tombs and linger there retarded, unless the process of growth (mandated for all living things) succeeds in calling us out of their darkness and stench.
On this fifth Sunday of our Lenten repentance, Jesus bends down and calls into the tombs we build for ourselves and commands us to come out. And at the tomb which a loved one has built for himself, Jesus commands us to help roll the stone away for him and cut him free from his burial cloths. Yes, during this season of Lenten repentance Jesus calls into the tomb of certainty which even the church has built for herself. In that tomb are certainties about the “one-true-church,” sexuality, homosexuality, celibacy, the ordination of women, etc. Tombs and prisons those certainties are, and Jesus calls in and commands the church to come out and set herself free for a holy conversation with the entire people of God.
The tomb death builds for us
The mother of all tombs, however, is the tomb that death builds for us. That’s the tomb from which all other tombs get their umbrage and stench. That’s the tomb in which Lazarus lay for four days. That’s the tomb in which Jesus lay for three days. That’s the tomb in which you and I and all the ones we love are finally and surely laid to rest. That’s the tomb which the Lord God of Ezekiel promised us He would open to set our beloved dead free. That’s the tomb which Jesus ordered to be opened to set Lazarus free. That’s the tomb in which Jesus was laid on Good Friday until God set him free on Easter morning.
Though we might succeed in evading the thought of the tomb, at the end of the day, there is no escaping its fact. In a little volume entitled A View from the Ridge, Morris West (who characterizes himself as an optimist) in his eightieth year faces the inescapable fact that we are born to die. He writes,
We are conceived without our consent and come whimpering into a mad universe with our death sentence already written on the palms of our helpless hands: a cancer will eat our guts, a fanatic with a sword will cut off our heads, a drunken fool will mow us down with an automobile [a sociopath will shoot up our sons and daughters in a university classroom]. There might be deferment of the death sentence to a ripe old age of 80 but there is no amnesty from it.
Morris West trusts.
In the same little volume West pictures himself as a climber who, after a long and arduous ascent, has reached a height and then pauses to catch his breath to muster up enough courage for the last lap of his journey. He writes,
Before me the land falls steeply into a dark valley, beyond which I see (or I think I see) the lights of the city which is the goal of my pilgrimage. By any measure of time, I am not far away from it, but I wonder, as I have often wondered before, whether the city is an illusion and whether its lights are only jack-o-lanterns. However, I have always known that one day I would have to go down alone into the dark valley and make my own discovery of what lies on the other side.
Strange as it may seem, I am not afraid. I have accepted long since the fact that a confession of faith is a confession of not knowing. I have accepted to trust that the city does exist, and that the lights are real, and that what awaits the pilgrim is a homecoming. Prove it I cannot, but with trust I accept it.
Trusting our hearts
Morris (who died in 1999 in the 83rd year of his life) trusted concerning the grave, and so do we. What is it we both trust? We trust our hearts. We trust our hearts demanding nothing less than life beyond the grave for a departed and very beloved spouse of many years. We trust our hearts demanding life eternal for a son or daughter, a brother or sister, a husband or wife whose young life has been cut short in the battlefields of Iraq. We trust our hearts demanding blissful eternal life for a loved one finally laid to rest after a very long painful battle with cancer. We trust our hearts demanding nothing less than life beyond the grave even for man’s best friend -- our faithful and loving dogs.
We trust our hearts. We trust that such demands of our hearts are not tricks our hearts are playing on us. We trust that such demands are our hearts knowing (in the very unique way that the heart knows) that the heavenly Jerusalem does exist, and that its lights are real. We trust our hearts, even though our heads cannot strictly prove anything in the domain of the profound.
A robin
That trust, however, is not a sheer shot in the dark which grits its teeth and believes with simply no proof at all that the heavenly Jerusalem exists. That trust has its own unique kind of proof. It’s the kind of proof we in northern climes experience in the yearly rebirth of spring. At first we are delighted with the first snow which turns the landscape into a winter-wonder-land. But winter soon turns into a tomb for us (as it especially did this year). A heap of snow like a huge rock lies before its entrance. We become P. O. Ws—Prisoners Of Winter. By the beginning of March , we have had it and are crying out, “Who shall roll the huge stone away for us?” Suddenly one day, a solitary robin appears, and the silly thing hoists her wings against the huge rock. She does not know (or does not care to know) that there's one more blizzard waiting in the wings.
At the end of the day, however, we know that the back of winter has been broken when the first robin appears. From now on it is the snow that's silly. Diehard snowdrifts, holding on for dear life, finally succumb to the newborn sun, and spring bursts forth in all its glory. All heaven and earth are flooded with intimations of immortality[3] -- with hints and hunches that God, indeed, will open all our graves and raise us up and bring us to the land of Israel.
A cardinal
A friend, who bravely battled ovarian cancer for two years and finally succumbed to it, wrote in an Easter card,
I like spring a lot. It's a time when so many things are giving just the slightest inkling, the smallest sign, that perhaps things aren't really what they appear to be--dead. Trees aren't really dead at all. Seeds aren't really lifeless pebbles. There is a lady cardinal taking twigs, one at a time, to a secret place in a fir tree. It's the merest whisper of a promise of things to come.
A mystic experience
On his blog a wayfarer writes of a mystic experience.
I have said a few things here about the spirit, but the other day I felt its reality. I was walking up Desborough Avenue to the intersection with West Wycombe Road. People in their cars were waiting for the lights to change. Pedestrians were on their way to the doctor’s surgery or the clinic next door which does blood tests and so forth. Mechanics were fixing cars in a yard. I don’t quite know what triggered it, but it hit me that all of us are more than our bodies and minds.
It is so easy to say, “Oh, yes, I have always believed in that!” or perhaps, “No, there’s no evidence for that!” What hit me was an experience that I cannot easily put in words. In that moment, near the traffic lights, about 11 AM on Tuesday, June 13, 2006, I had personal knowledge of the spirit. My knowing had nothing to do with religion. There are no short cuts to such knowing. It was a subtle intimation, but I will never be the same anymore.
Conclusion
Intimations of immortality
At the sunset of his life, Morris West wrote that he accepted to trust that the heavenly Jerusalem does exist, and that what awaits him is a homecoming. He could not prove it; he trusted it. We too trust. We trust that our hearts are not playing tricks on us as we demand nothing less than eternal life for all the living beings we love. And we trust the silly robin hoisting her wings against the rock before the tomb of winter, and the lady cardinal carrying a twig to a secret place and the mystic experience which suddenly pops up before us at an intersection in our journey. We trust them as Intimations of Immortality. Because of them we are never the same anymore.
[1]] By “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!
[2] Acts of the Apostles 17:24
[3] Intimations of Immorality is the title of one of William Wordsworth odes
March 9, 2008, 5th Sunday of Lent: the Raising of Lazarus
Ezekiel 37:12-14 Romans 8:8-11 John 11:1-45
To the churched and unchurched[1]
gathered in a church not built by human hands[2]
First reading from Ezekiel 37:12-14
“I will open your graves.”
Thus says the Lord God: O my people, I will open your gravesand have you rise from them, and bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and have you rise from them, O my people! I will put my spirit in you that you may live, and I will settle you upon your land; thus, you shall know that I am the Lord. I have promised that I will do this---and I will. I, the Lord have spoken.
Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to John
Glory to you, Lord.
The gospel from John 11:1-45
“Lazarus, come out!”
Jn 11:1-3, 5-8, 11-14: Lazarus dying
A man named Lazarus, who lived in Bethany, became sick. Bethany was the town where Mary and her sister Martha lived. (Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and dried his feet with her hair; it was her brother Lazarus who was ill.) The sisters sent Jesus a message, “Lord, your dear friend is sick.” Jesus loved Martha and her sister, and Lazarus. When Jesus heard that he was sick, he stayed where he was for two more days. Then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you, and you want to go back there?” Jesus said, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I will go and wake him up.” The disciples answered, “If he is asleep, Lord, then he will get well.” But Jesus meant that Lazarus had died; they thought he meant natural sleep. So then, Jesus said to them clearly, “Lazarus is dead.”
Jn11:16-29: Martha believing
Thomas (called the Twin) said to his fellow disciples, “Let us all go back to unfriendly Judea with the Master, so that we may die there with him.” When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, only about two miles away. And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him; but Mary sat at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha said to him, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I do believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” Then Martha went back and called her sister Mary privately. “The teacher is here,” she told her, “and is asking for you.” When Mary heard this, she rose quickly and went out to him.
Jn 11: 32-37: Jesus weeping
When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping, he became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Sir, come and see.” And Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.” But some of them said, “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?”
Jn 11:38-45: Jesus commanding
So Jesus, grieving again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to him, “Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus raised his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you for hearing me. I know that you always hear me; but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that you sent me.” And when he had said this, He cried out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.” Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what he had done began to believe in him.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Introduction
A very special friendship
John writes that, “Jesus loved Martha and her sister, and Lazarus.” (Jn 11:5) Jesus apparently had a special friendship with them. He frequently visited their home in Bethany, a small village near Jerusalem. In the gospels we read of three visits. In Luke, Jesus visits their home where Martha, fussing about many things in preparation of a good meal for Jesus, is angry with Mary for sitting at the Lord’s feet instead of giving her a helping hand. (Lk 10:38-42) In today’s gospel, Jesus rushes to the sisters’ home when he hears their brother Lazarus (his dear friend) has died. (John 11:1-45) Again in John’s gospel Jesus visits the sisters and Lazarus (now alive and healthy), and Martha is again waiting on Jesus and her brother, while Mary pours expensive perfume on his feet and wipes them with her hair. (John 12:1-9)
Though Jesus had a special friendship with all three, the church has a special friendship only with Martha -- the one busy and fussing over many things, but who, at the end of the day, came to believe that “you are the Messiah, the Son of God.” (Jn 11:27) The church celebrates a special feast day (July 29) only for Martha and not for Mary and Lazarus.
Out to kill them both
John places the account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead immediately before his passion and death. It was precisely the raising of Lazarus that incited the authorities in Jerusalem to make plans to put Jesus to death. In chapter twelve we read that many Jews flocked to Bethany because they knew that not only Jesus but also Lazarus (raised from the dead by Jesus) would be there. Because of that miracle many Jews were abandoning the Jerusalem authorities and were following the Lord. So the chief priests were out to kill not only Jesus, the worker of a miracle, but also Lazarus, the very miracle itself. (Jn 12:9-11)
Jesus commanding
As we approach the Good Friday tomb of Jesus, the fifth Sunday of Lent (Cycle A) always takes us to the tomb of Lazarus in Bethany where everyone was weeping. There Jesus also wept. (Jn 11:35) Arrived at the tomb he commanded the people to roll away the stone from the entrance to the tomb. (Jn 11:39) They obeyed and rolled the stone away. Then he commanded Lazarus to come out. He obeyed and came out. (Jn 11:43) Then he commanded the people to untie Lazarus and set him free. (Jn 11:44) They obeyed and Lazarus was set free. Jesus Christ, true God and true man, for whom nothing is too heavy, could have easily rolled the rock back by himself, but, as C.S. Lewis said, “God seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures.”
Tombs we build for ourselves
The human journey is strewn with the various tombs we build for ourselves. We build comforting tombs of self-pity, painful tombs of jealousy and cold tombs of fear. We build sweaty tombs of hate, nervous tombs of fret and foggy tombs of addiction. We especially build tombs of certainty for ourselves -- fortresses which conveniently shut out anything we do not want to see and hear -- prisons which happily lock us up in our certainties. Fetus-like we curl up in all these tombs and linger there retarded, unless the process of growth (mandated for all living things) succeeds in calling us out of their darkness and stench.
On this fifth Sunday of our Lenten repentance, Jesus bends down and calls into the tombs we build for ourselves and commands us to come out. And at the tomb which a loved one has built for himself, Jesus commands us to help roll the stone away for him and cut him free from his burial cloths. Yes, during this season of Lenten repentance Jesus calls into the tomb of certainty which even the church has built for herself. In that tomb are certainties about the “one-true-church,” sexuality, homosexuality, celibacy, the ordination of women, etc. Tombs and prisons those certainties are, and Jesus calls in and commands the church to come out and set herself free for a holy conversation with the entire people of God.
The tomb death builds for us
The mother of all tombs, however, is the tomb that death builds for us. That’s the tomb from which all other tombs get their umbrage and stench. That’s the tomb in which Lazarus lay for four days. That’s the tomb in which Jesus lay for three days. That’s the tomb in which you and I and all the ones we love are finally and surely laid to rest. That’s the tomb which the Lord God of Ezekiel promised us He would open to set our beloved dead free. That’s the tomb which Jesus ordered to be opened to set Lazarus free. That’s the tomb in which Jesus was laid on Good Friday until God set him free on Easter morning.
Though we might succeed in evading the thought of the tomb, at the end of the day, there is no escaping its fact. In a little volume entitled A View from the Ridge, Morris West (who characterizes himself as an optimist) in his eightieth year faces the inescapable fact that we are born to die. He writes,
We are conceived without our consent and come whimpering into a mad universe with our death sentence already written on the palms of our helpless hands: a cancer will eat our guts, a fanatic with a sword will cut off our heads, a drunken fool will mow us down with an automobile [a sociopath will shoot up our sons and daughters in a university classroom]. There might be deferment of the death sentence to a ripe old age of 80 but there is no amnesty from it.
Morris West trusts.
In the same little volume West pictures himself as a climber who, after a long and arduous ascent, has reached a height and then pauses to catch his breath to muster up enough courage for the last lap of his journey. He writes,
Before me the land falls steeply into a dark valley, beyond which I see (or I think I see) the lights of the city which is the goal of my pilgrimage. By any measure of time, I am not far away from it, but I wonder, as I have often wondered before, whether the city is an illusion and whether its lights are only jack-o-lanterns. However, I have always known that one day I would have to go down alone into the dark valley and make my own discovery of what lies on the other side.
Strange as it may seem, I am not afraid. I have accepted long since the fact that a confession of faith is a confession of not knowing. I have accepted to trust that the city does exist, and that the lights are real, and that what awaits the pilgrim is a homecoming. Prove it I cannot, but with trust I accept it.
Trusting our hearts
Morris (who died in 1999 in the 83rd year of his life) trusted concerning the grave, and so do we. What is it we both trust? We trust our hearts. We trust our hearts demanding nothing less than life beyond the grave for a departed and very beloved spouse of many years. We trust our hearts demanding life eternal for a son or daughter, a brother or sister, a husband or wife whose young life has been cut short in the battlefields of Iraq. We trust our hearts demanding blissful eternal life for a loved one finally laid to rest after a very long painful battle with cancer. We trust our hearts demanding nothing less than life beyond the grave even for man’s best friend -- our faithful and loving dogs.
We trust our hearts. We trust that such demands of our hearts are not tricks our hearts are playing on us. We trust that such demands are our hearts knowing (in the very unique way that the heart knows) that the heavenly Jerusalem does exist, and that its lights are real. We trust our hearts, even though our heads cannot strictly prove anything in the domain of the profound.
A robin
That trust, however, is not a sheer shot in the dark which grits its teeth and believes with simply no proof at all that the heavenly Jerusalem exists. That trust has its own unique kind of proof. It’s the kind of proof we in northern climes experience in the yearly rebirth of spring. At first we are delighted with the first snow which turns the landscape into a winter-wonder-land. But winter soon turns into a tomb for us (as it especially did this year). A heap of snow like a huge rock lies before its entrance. We become P. O. Ws—Prisoners Of Winter. By the beginning of March , we have had it and are crying out, “Who shall roll the huge stone away for us?” Suddenly one day, a solitary robin appears, and the silly thing hoists her wings against the huge rock. She does not know (or does not care to know) that there's one more blizzard waiting in the wings.
At the end of the day, however, we know that the back of winter has been broken when the first robin appears. From now on it is the snow that's silly. Diehard snowdrifts, holding on for dear life, finally succumb to the newborn sun, and spring bursts forth in all its glory. All heaven and earth are flooded with intimations of immortality[3] -- with hints and hunches that God, indeed, will open all our graves and raise us up and bring us to the land of Israel.
A cardinal
A friend, who bravely battled ovarian cancer for two years and finally succumbed to it, wrote in an Easter card,
I like spring a lot. It's a time when so many things are giving just the slightest inkling, the smallest sign, that perhaps things aren't really what they appear to be--dead. Trees aren't really dead at all. Seeds aren't really lifeless pebbles. There is a lady cardinal taking twigs, one at a time, to a secret place in a fir tree. It's the merest whisper of a promise of things to come.
A mystic experience
On his blog a wayfarer writes of a mystic experience.
I have said a few things here about the spirit, but the other day I felt its reality. I was walking up Desborough Avenue to the intersection with West Wycombe Road. People in their cars were waiting for the lights to change. Pedestrians were on their way to the doctor’s surgery or the clinic next door which does blood tests and so forth. Mechanics were fixing cars in a yard. I don’t quite know what triggered it, but it hit me that all of us are more than our bodies and minds.
It is so easy to say, “Oh, yes, I have always believed in that!” or perhaps, “No, there’s no evidence for that!” What hit me was an experience that I cannot easily put in words. In that moment, near the traffic lights, about 11 AM on Tuesday, June 13, 2006, I had personal knowledge of the spirit. My knowing had nothing to do with religion. There are no short cuts to such knowing. It was a subtle intimation, but I will never be the same anymore.
Conclusion
Intimations of immortality
At the sunset of his life, Morris West wrote that he accepted to trust that the heavenly Jerusalem does exist, and that what awaits him is a homecoming. He could not prove it; he trusted it. We too trust. We trust that our hearts are not playing tricks on us as we demand nothing less than eternal life for all the living beings we love. And we trust the silly robin hoisting her wings against the rock before the tomb of winter, and the lady cardinal carrying a twig to a secret place and the mystic experience which suddenly pops up before us at an intersection in our journey. We trust them as Intimations of Immortality. Because of them we are never the same anymore.
[1]] By “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!
[2] Acts of the Apostles 17:24
[3] Intimations of Immorality is the title of one of William Wordsworth odes
