The lectionary certainly does not spare us
during these weeks of Lent. For Lent V
the Gospel is the long and puzzling story of Jesus raising Lazarus. After all the years, the only way this story
helps me now is to approach it as a paradigm, a picture, of Christian inner
transformation. The story comes to us
from the Johannine traditions of the early church, and I am sure it was
intended to be read not so much as an account of actual events, which would
have seemed to say the least unlikely, but as a coded narrative conveying deep
inner truths.
The home at Bethany, near Jerusalem, was clearly
a place of welcoming for Jesus. The
sisters Martha and Mary, and their brother Lazarus, lived there. It was a loving and luminous circle. And perhaps this home at Bethany serves to
demonstrate something elemental about the church. Martha comes to Jesus by willing and ready service,
preparing food, ensuring hospitality, being available. That is the way she responds and expresses
her love. Mary is different, she
responds to Jesus by her presence and her keen attention, her mindfulness as we
might say, and her love for this man. It
is another kind of response of the heart, every bit as authentic as Martha’s,
but very different. I think the reason Jesus
said Mary’s response was the better part,
was mainly that Martha had been critical of it and Mary needed to be defended.[1]
But what about Lazarus? In one of the two stories we have (Luke 10:
38-42), Lazarus is absent altogether.
Not mentioned. Invisible. In this other story he is there but he has died. Jesus, after getting the news that his
friend Lazarus was ill, deliberately delayed going to Bethany, and when he
arrived he was four days too late.
Well, in thinking about this I am helped by the
Benedictine Cistercian, Fr Thomas Keating.
He sees Lazarus as exemplifying, in the understanding and teaching of the
early church, yet another truth of spiritual growth. Lazarus is one who comes to Jesus, not by the
paths of Martha or Mary, but through a Dark Night which will seem like a
death. The night may be quite different,
of course, and for different reasons, for different people, but it is always a dark
time, a dark experience. Finally,
perhaps long delayed, it is Jesus who calls Lazarus out of it, as it were. This is a very moving reality of some in the
church.
Of course this is intimately linked with
resurrection. It would be nice if we had
a simple untroubled pathway through ever deepening and dignified enlightenment. We don’t have that. I don’t know anyone who does. What we may get is a succession of dark nights
and sunrises, mountains and plateaus. We
may follow the path of Martha or of Mary or of Lazarus – or even some variation
on those themes. But it is in the
disciplines of silence and stillness that we are steadied, and brought back
into the present where we can shed our fears of whatever change is
happening. It is the path Jesus walked,
and I believe he knows it quite well.
[1] The Greek, την αγαθην μεριδα, “the better part”, awkward
in English, is actually not so judgmental.
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