Sunday Meditation: Waiting For Jesus

Today is another long reading.  For the Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year A the Gospel reading is of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.  This is such a deep and profound passage that most homilies cannot do it justice.  Homilists may focus on the delay that Jesus takes to go to Bethany, or focus on Martha’s greeting when Jesus arrives, or, of course, the raising of Lazarus.  We’ll get to those in the embedded homilies.  But here are a few details that seem to go unnoticed.  John tells us that “Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and dried his feet with her hair.”  That is interesting.  That happened in a different Gospel; it’s from Lk 7:36-50.  Here’s another interesting detail.  When Jesus is warned by the apostles that the Jews will be trying to kill him, the Apostle Thomas, the same so called “Doubting Thomas,” says, “Let us also go to die with him.”  He may have been skeptical but he is willing to die for Christ.

 

Here is today’s Gospel reading.

 

 

Now a man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany,

the village of Mary and her sister Martha.

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.

So the sisters sent word to him saying,

“Master, the one you love is ill.”

When Jesus heard this he said,

“This illness is not to end in death,

but is for the glory of God,

that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

So when he heard that he was ill,

he remained for two days in the place where he was.

Then after this 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 answered,

“Are there not twelve hours in a day?

If one walks during the day, he does not stumble,

because he sees the light of this world.

But if one walks at night, he stumbles,

because the light is not in him.”

He said this, and then told them,

“Our friend Lazarus is asleep,

but I am going to awaken him.”

So the disciples said to him,

“Master, if he is asleep, he will be saved.”

But Jesus was talking about his death,

while they thought that he meant ordinary sleep.

So then Jesus said to them clearly,

“Lazarus has died.

And I am glad for you that I was not there,

that you may believe.

Let us go to him.”

So Thomas, called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples,

“Let us also go to die 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 have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God,

the one who is coming into the world.”

 

When she had said this,

she went and called her sister Mary secretly, saying,

“The teacher is here and is asking for you.”

As soon as she heard this,

she rose quickly and went to him.

For Jesus had not yet come into the village,

but was still where Martha had met him.

So when the Jews who were with her in the house comforting her saw Mary get up quickly and go out, they followed her,

presuming that she was going to the tomb to weep there.

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?”

 

So Jesus, perturbed 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.

~Jn:11:1-45

 

Dr. Brant Pitre provides a full explanation of the reading.

 

Dr. Pitre:

‘Martha said to him oh I know that he will rise again in the Resurrection on the last day.   Jesus said to her “I am the resurrection and the life;” he who believes in me though he die yet he shall live and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.  Do you believe this?  She said to him yes Lord I believe that you are the Christ, the son of God he who is coming into the world.’  Okay pause there notice what just happened?  Lazarus is dead; he's been dead 4 days.  When Jesus comes Mary says, ‘you know if you'd have been here this wouldn't have happened,’ which the reader now knows isn't true because Jesus knew about Lazarus sickness and that he was going to die but he stayed longer and allowed it to happen.  Why does Jesus wait two days longer to go to Judea?  Well this an interesting thing. John says very specifically that Jesus did this because he loved Lazarus and Mary and Martha.  That's a very mysterious thing.  I mean can you imagine a situation where let's say I'm giving a lecture in class at the Seminary and my wife calls and says you know your daughter is very sick right, very, very sick, I think she might be dying and I would respond okay well I'm going to stay here at work a couple of days longer because I love her.  I mean that's totally counterintuitive; it doesn't make any sense whatsoever, but this Jesus isn't an ordinary man.  He doesn't have an Ordinary Love for Lazarus; he allows Lazarus his friend to suffer and die because he's going to bring him back from the grave and in the living.

What Dr. Pitre calls “counterintuitive” I would call a non sequitur.  There are several what strike me as non sequiturs in this passage.  For instance, when the apostles warn Jesus that the Jews will be looking to kill Him, he gives what strikes me as a non sequitur response: “Are there not twelve hours in a day?  If one walks during the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world.  But if one walks at night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” 

What’s with the non sequiturs?  Dr. Pitre continues:

 

St John Chrysostom said this about this quote: “He said many are offended when they see any of those who are pleasing to God suffering anything terrible.  Those who are offended by this however do not know that those who are especially dear to God have it as their lot to endure such things, as we see in the case of Lazarus who was also one of the friends of Christ but was also sick.”  So what Chrysostom is pointing out here is there's a mysterious reality about the Christian life, that those who are called to a special Holiness, those who in a sense God loves in a special way, he often frequently allows to suffer in a special way; he allows to suffer in a great way.

I have called this a non sequitur, but that’s not quite accurate.  What strikes as a non sequitur is identifying one of the paradoxes of Christianity and of human life.  Suffering and death actually has a purpose beyond common thought.  There is a mystery behind God’s logic.

 

I found Cardinal Blasé Cupich pastoral homily unique and insightful.

 

Cardinal Cupich connects Jesus’ delay in this Gospel passage with the time of World War II, a time of great tragedy.

Cardinal Cupich:

An Irish playwright by the name of Samuel Beckett wrote a play that became very famous called Waiting for Godot.  It was a play on words.  Waiting for God was something that he took up. How is it that these terrible atrocities could happen? What was God doing in all of this? God seemed to be out on a vacation, inattentive to the needs of humanity.  Today in this gospel text, Jesus gives us an answer about what God is doing and where God is.  We first of all see that Jesus finds out that Lazarus is dying and he waits until he dies.  It is in that waiting period, that time between the sufferings that we have and knowing what the result is that can be so anguishing.  Maybe as we wait for a diagnosis or we wait to see whether or not someone hurt in an accident is going to survive. or the waiting that comes just in therapy and healing where the end result is not certain.  Jesus tells us he's there in the waiting because the life that he gives is not just a matter of continuation of our existence but rather it's the word, “Zoe,” which is the breathing of God's life in us, that God wants to reveal in the waiting that he's present to us, that God is revealing himself in those moments and then we begin to see.

In those moments of waiting, hanging on the point of a needle to see how some tragedy turns out, God is breathing into us, revealing Himself.  “He's there with us in that moment in which the human frailty is so very present.”  Cardinal Cupich continues:

 

So today Jesus answers Beckett, Waiting for Godot, waiting for God is in fact exactly what we should be looking for in life. That God is present in the inbetweens of life. God is present in the smelliness, the stinkiness of life, the things that we would otherwise want to avoid. When everyone abandons us, God is present there.  And finally, God is present and has to be present in the community that does its best to make sure that the bonds of oppression injustice are untied.

 

 

Sunday Meditation: “Untie him and let him go.”

 

Here is a wonderful hymn in the mode of a country song on this topic, “Jesus Raised Lazarus from the Tomb.”

 

When he's four days

And All hope is gone

Lord we don’t understand

Why you waited so long.

 

But His way is God’s way,

Not yours or mine.

And isn’t it great,

When He’s four days late

But He’s still on time.

 

Performed by the Frank Brownstead Choir. 

 

Lines I Wished I’d Written: Failure with “The Egg” by Sherwood Anderson

I’ve been reading a number of short stories of late, inspired by the new Substack podcast, Classics Read Aloud, but it’s impossible for me to do a full analysis on all the stories I read, even only the ones I think are superlative.  In January I had two posts on a full analysis of Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” (here and here). 

One such story I just read was the great American short story by Sherwood Anderson, “The Egg.”  I’m surprised this story doesn’t have a Wikipedia entry.  It’s a frequently anthologized story from Sherwood Anderson, and possibly his most well-known.  His collection of stories in Winesburg, Ohio published in 1919 centers around the characters of his fictional town of the title centered around the central character of George Willard.  The central organizing principle of Winesburg, Ohio is that the psychological makeup of the characters, shaped by their small town life, leads to a sort of grotesque reshaping of their person.  “The Egg,” published in 1921 and perhaps an outtake of the 1919 collect, follows the same form.  The unnamed Father in the story is reshaped by his acquired life of a small town chicken farmer and subsequent small restauranteur. 

 

You can read the story here and listen to Ruby Love at Classics Read Aloud read it here.

The story is told in the first person of the Father’s son.  Father, Mother, and Son are all unnamed.  The story is at first mostly exposition of the life of Father, first as a single farmhand, then marrying Mother, taking up the chicken farm as a result of his wife’s ambitions, and then having their son.  After failing as a chicken farmer, the exposition takes us to Father starting a small restaurant beside the town’s railroad station.

Of course there is the symbolism of the egg, but I think to fully understand this story is to see Father as one of the grotesqueries that came out of the eggs.  There are many uses of irony in the story but I think transformation of Father from a lucky-as-you-go sort to a distorted figure of a man because of ambition and the hard luck of life is the most ironic.  The story is so tragic comic, one laughs and has pity at the same time.  After the narrative climax of failing to entertain a man, Joe Kane, at his restaurant with tricks using an egg, the Father is reduced to a childlike grotesque when he comes home to cry to his wife and son.

Here is the scene. 

For two or three weeks this notion of father's invaded our house. We did not talk much, but in our daily lives tried earnestly to make smiles take the place of glum looks. Mother smiled at the boarders and I, catching the infection, smiled at our cat. Father became a little feverish in his anxiety to please. There was no doubt, lurking somewhere in him, a touch of the spirit of the showman. He did not waste much of his ammunition on the railroad men he served at night but seemed to be waiting for a young man or woman from Bidwell to come in to show what he could do. On the counter in the restaurant there was a wire basket kept always filled with eggs, and it must have been before his eyes when the idea of being entertaining was born in his brain. There was something pre-natal about the way eggs kept themselves connected with the development of his idea. At any rate an egg ruined his new impulse in life. Late one night I was awakened by a roar of anger coming from father's throat. Both mother and I sat upright in our beds. With trembling hands she lighted a lamp that stood on a table by her head. Downstairs the front door of our restaurant went shut with a bang and in a few minutes father tramped up the stairs. He held an egg in his hand and his hand trembled as though he were having a chill. There was a half insane light in his eyes. As he stood glaring at us I was sure he intended throwing the egg at either mother or me. Then he laid it gently on the table beside the lamp and dropped on his knees beside mother's bed. He began to cry like a boy and I, carried away by his grief, cried with him. The two of us filled the little upstairs room with our wailing voices. It is ridiculous, but of the picture we made I can remember only the fact that mother's hand continually stroked the bald path that ran across the top of his head. I have forgotten what mother said to him and how she induced him to tell her of what had happened downstairs. His explanation also has gone out of my mind. I remember only my own grief and fright and the shiny path over father's head glowing in the lamp light as he knelt by the bed.

The moment where father and son are by the bed crying together captures the story in a nutshell: tragi comedy reduced to a moment of pity, Father as grotesque and failure, Mother as the motivating fulcrum of the family, and the son in a coming-of-age moment of his life.  Is this the climax of the story or a denouement?  Sometimes it’s hard to tell.  The narrative climax may have been the moment when Father in frustration throws the egg at Joe Kane.  That’s the height of the narrative.  But this scene where Father collapses to tears from failure could be seen as the emotional climax. 

My other insight on this story is that the first-person narrator, though a little awkward in places, especially in that climatic scene with Joe Kane, is perfect to accentuate the tragicomic effect.  I don't think the story would have been as good in third person.  We pity Father because of the immediacy of the son telling the story.

Here’s another interesting tidbit.  The story was published in 1921 when Anderson was forty-five years old, the same age as the Father in the story.  Does the author identify with the son who is telling the story or with the father who was a business failure living in Ohio just as Anderson was in his life?  Perhaps both.

By the way, I felt the pity much more when I just listened to it being read than reading the story off the page. It felt more powerful. I wonder if others reacted similarly.

 

Sunday Meditation: The Anointing of the Eyes

Are the readings longer during Lent?  Today, Year A of the Fourth Sunday in Lent, must be the longest reading of the entire three-year lectionary.  Today we read the entire ninth chapter of John’s Gospel.  But it is a fantastic read, one that could classify as a short story.  Jesus comes across a man who is blind from birth and cures him.  But the story only starts there.  The city folk and especially the Pharisees who witness the miracle then try to figure out how and why the man was cured, and who the miracle worker was.  I’ll let the homilists I selected below explain most of it to you.  But I did want to focus on a particular word the blind man uses when asked to explain how he got his vision.  He says, “The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’”  He says his eyes were “anointed.”  I had puzzled over what the connections were between the first reading, the selection of David for king, and this reading.  Then I realized both the boy and the blind man were anointed.

 

Here is today’s Gospel reading.

 

 

As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth.

His disciples asked him,

“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents,

that he was born blind?”

Jesus answered,

“Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.

We have to do the works of the one who sent me while it is day.

Night is coming when no one can work.

While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

When he had said this, he spat on the ground

and made clay with the saliva,

and smeared the clay on his eyes,

and said to him,

“Go wash in the Pool of Siloam” —which means Sent—.

So he went and washed, and came back able to see.

 

His neighbors and those who had seen him earlier as a beggar said,

“Isn’t this the one who used to sit and beg?”

Some said, “It is, “

but others said, “No, he just looks like him.”

He said, “I am.”

So they said to him, “How were your eyes opened?”

He replied,

“The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes

and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’

So I went there and washed and was able to see.”

And they said to him, “Where is he?”

He said, “I don’t know.”

 

They brought the one who was once blind to the Pharisees.

Now Jesus had made clay and opened his eyes on a sabbath.

So then the Pharisees also asked him how he was able to see.

He said to them,

“He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and now I can see.”

So some of the Pharisees said,

“This man is not from God,

because he does not keep the sabbath.”

But others said,

“How can a sinful man do such signs?”

And there was a division among them.

So they said to the blind man again,

“What do you have to say about him,

since he opened your eyes?”

He said, “He is a prophet.”

 

Now the Jews did not believe

that he had been blind and gained his sight

until they summoned the parents of the one who had gained his sight.

They asked them,

“Is this your son, who you say was born blind?

How does he now see?”

His parents answered and said,

“We know that this is our son and that he was born blind.

We do not know how he sees now,

nor do we know who opened his eyes.

Ask him, he is of age;

he can speak for himself.”

His parents said this because they were afraid

of the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed

that if anyone acknowledged him as the Christ,

he would be expelled from the synagogue.

For this reason his parents said,

“He is of age; question him.”

 

So a second time they called the man who had been blind

and said to him, “Give God the praise!

We know that this man is a sinner.”

He replied,

“If he is a sinner, I do not know.

One thing I do know is that I was blind and now I see.”

So they said to him,

“What did he do to you?

How did he open your eyes?”

He answered them,

“I told you already and you did not listen.

Why do you want to hear it again?

Do you want to become his disciples, too?”

They ridiculed him and said,

“You are that man’s disciple;

we are disciples of Moses!

We know that God spoke to Moses,

but we do not know where this one is from.”

The man answered and said to them,

“This is what is so amazing,

that you do not know where he is from, yet he opened my eyes.

We know that God does not listen to sinners,

but if one is devout and does his will, he listens to him.

It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of a person born blind.

If this man were not from God,

he would not be able to do anything.”

They answered and said to him,

“You were born totally in sin,

and are you trying to teach us?”

Then they threw him out.

 

When Jesus heard that they had thrown him out,

he found him and said, Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

He answered and said,

“Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?”

Jesus said to him,

“You have seen him,

the one speaking with you is he.”

He said,

“I do believe, Lord,” and he worshiped him.

Then Jesus said,

“I came into this world for judgment,

so that those who do not see might see,

and those who do see might become blind.”

 

Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this

and said to him, “Surely we are not also blind, are we?”

Jesus said to them,

“If you were blind, you would have no sin;

but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.

~Jn:9:1-41

 

I was absolutely glued to Bishop Robert Barron’s homily on this passage this Sunday.

 

Bishop Barron:

Right at the beginning, it says Jesus passed by. He saw a man blind from birth. So his disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents?" Listen now to the answer of Jesus. Neither he nor his parents sinned. It is so that the works of God might be made visible through him. Let me just say something brief about this.  I think it's so important. Not many days ago, I was watching a replay of the movie Jackie, which is about Jackie Kennedy in the wake of the assassination of her husband. And it's a good kind of heart aching movie, but she's in dialogue in the course of movie with an elderly priest played by the great John Hurt, the English actor.  And she's suffering, of course. Why did this happen? How could God have possibly allowed this horrible thing to happen to my husband, to me, to our family? And the parole priest says, "Let me let me share a parable with you." And he tells this story and he gives that answer of Jesus. It's not because of his sin or anyone's sin.  It's that the works of God might be made visible through him. You know, we all suffer [to] different degrees. I get it.  But we all suffer and we're always looking for the answer. Why? Why? Why?  Why is God allowing this? Let this answer, everybody, sink in. Let it sink in. That when you're going through some terrible suffering, that the works of God might be made visible in you.  Somehow God is using this struggle, this difficulty, this pain for his purposes.

 

Oh that is profound.  God allows tragedy for us to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth.  There is so much more that Bishop Barron brings out of this passage: the dirt and spittle as elements for the sacraments, the dual nature of the incarnation, and the salve as the healing mixture for salvation.  “We are healed by our contact with Him.”  What a great homily.

 

For the pastoral homily, I present the homily from another bishop, Bishop John E. Keehner of Sioux City, Iowa.

 

Bishop Keehner:

But isn't there a bit of blindness in each of us which prevents us from seeing our own faults? Preventing us from understanding our own place in the world and our relationships with others? Don't we all have a blind spot which periodically gets us into trouble when we fail to notice those things we so easily take for granted? Don't we all occasionally fail to see the truth of our prejudice which prevent us from seeing in those around us the image and the likeness of God? Don't we all occasionally fail to see the truth of our relationships, even our relationship with God, so that we assume that there will always be the time we need to do whatever it is we need and want to do in life. There will always be another day for us to mend a broken relationship or to heal the wounds we have inflicted on others because of our selfishness. The season of Lent is passing quickly away.  Have we taken time this season to examine our hearts so that we might recognize that we are in fact blind?

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.  Routinely I am proven to have been blind to some issue or some insight to another’s life.  Perhaps it would be wise to take a moment before criticizing someone to realize that you are blind to their life unless—to mix metaphors—you stand in their shoes.

 

 

Sunday Meditation: “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.”

 

Oh I love this hymn, “Christ Be Our Light.”  It was written by Bernadette Farrell, who I learned from her Wikipedia entry is from England. 

 

 

Christ, be our light! Shine in our hearts

Shine through the darkness

Christ, be our light!

Shine in your church gathered today

Performed by the Frank Brownstead Choir.