What’s
behind your stone? What’s in your cave,
shut up behind a stone? What are you
afraid to smell? What can you think of…
something you wouldn’t want to tell everyone here, or maybe anyone here? What is there that you don’t want to carry,
because you know how terribly it would weigh you down? Dead weight… weigh that leads the death. Roll the stone over it, try to forget. Because most of us have something that
threatens to weigh us down. A memory, a
fear, an injustice suffered or inflicted, an incompetence or a deception. Something which threatens to reek of the
absence of God. But to try to live our
lives with part of us siloed off and shut up behind a rock is not to live, it’s
to tacitly consent to a slow-fade to death.
And Jesus commands Life.
Jesus
came to Bethany to command life and comes here today to do the same. Of course, he comforts the sisters first,
just as he’ll strengthen us to begin to roll our stones away, but he came to
Bethany to command life and he comes into our lives to do the same. Maybe we’re like Martha, confident in
approaching Jesus, completely correct and orthodox in what we say about him
(and, for Martha, this is no small feat – to come to the faith she has before the benefit of Easter), she’s
even bold enough to challenge Jesus, to enter into a prayer of “real fight;” a
term Pope Francis used for the way Moses prayed. There’s so much for us to admire in Martha,
to pray that we might emulate, but she doesn’t have it all. Her faith doesn’t give her full
understanding. She limits the horizon of
Jesus’ saving power by putting it far off, inaccessible, waiting till the end
times. “We will rise again,” she confesses,
but now… now we wait in gloom. Don’t you
dare roll my stone away yet… I’m terrified of the stench!
Jesus
commands life. Jesus who is resurrection
and life, not who will be, proclaims himself, gives his very self with his
powerful and effective word. But before
we rush there, let us dwell a while with Mary.
Scared, timid Mary, who waits to be invited, to be called to Jesus. Maybe that’s where some of us are. We daren’t rush to Jesus like Martha because
we’re sobbing too loud to hear the call; our eyes too misty with tears to see
his loving arms outstretched, longing for embrace. Do we dare to see that? Or can we see Martha, coming towards us,
bringing us to Jesus? Maybe we need to
be Martha for some tear-filled Mary, risk making that invitation, because at
times we all need to let ourselves fall to Jesus’ feet and weep. And he’ll meet our sorrow. Joy incarnate will weep with us, for us, if
that’s what we need. But then, he’ll
command life.
Against
all objection, all reason, he’ll be blunt and brusque and commanding: roll away
the stone and, Lazarus: Come out! Life
wins. Life conquers death. Jesus risked his life to come to Bethany that
Lazarus would be restored to his life, for a while. Jesus gave his life on Calvary that we would
gain our lives, forever!
I’ve
never seen a stone rolled away quite like that, but I often marvel at how much
new life I’ve seen wrought. I remember one moment I spent walking in my
community’s cemetery at Notre Dame. I was still in seminary, a couple of years
away from being able to make a permanent commitment to live and die in my
religious family, as a perpetually vowed member of the Congregation of Holy
Cross. And a couple of years felt the shot clock was on, and I still didn’t
feel like I had that final forever yes from God. I’d just found out that one of
my older brothers in community, an avuncular mentor, was very likely going to
die from the cancer they’d found just a month or so ago. And walking in that cemetery,
the tone of that news changed. From “Br. Thomas is dying” to “Br. Thomas is
coming here, to rest with his brothers.” Gently, I discovered an insistent
undertone to that sound: “I’m coming here.” Not any time soon I hope! But, I’m
coming here, to rest with my brothers in this cemetery. I heard that ‘yes,’
that ‘yes, of all the beautiful vocations I have in store for people, this is
yours, to love like this, as a vowed religious of Holy Cross, as a priest.’ It
was in the moment when loving my brothers smelt the most like death that I
realized I didn’t need to be afraid of that. Because that’s where Jesus is;
commanding life.
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