Olivia Hamilton
The Episcopal Chaplaincy at Harvard
The Fifth Sunday in Lent, 2017
This past summer I worked as a chaplain intern at Boston Medical
Center. We’re really not supposed to have favorite patients, but the truth is,
I did. The first time I met Marcus, as I’ll call him, he was brought onto my
ICU floor – he had been living across the street at the Barbara McGinnis House,
a medical facility for people experiencing homelessness, but he had been having
severe shortness of breath and needed to be transferred over to BMC to get more
advanced care.
Before I went to visit Marcus for the first time, my supervisor
told me that Marcus was a frequent flyer at the hospital – she said that he may
be too sick to talk, but that he loves having scripture read to him. So, I
grabbed a bible and headed up to the fifth floor. When I arrived in his room,
Marcus was pretty out of it, his eyes barely open and his breathing incredibly
labored. He had a nebulizer mask over his mouth and nose and hardly responded
when I introduced myself. Given his sorry state, I didn’t have high hopes for
our visit, and wondered if he would even know I was there. Nonetheless, I
flipped open the bible, and happened to land on the story of Lazarus being
raised from the dead, which I then read to Marcus. I couldn’t tell if he
was listening or not, but at the end of the reading, I asked him, “Marcus, what
did you think about that?”
“Well,” he wheezed, still in what seemed like a half-sleeping
state, “it’s a great teaser for the main event.” I wanted to make sure I
understood what Marcus was saying – “tell me more,” I inquired. “You know,” he
replied. “The Resurrection! If we didn’t know that life after death was
possible, how would we believe it when it happened to Jesus?”
The irony was not lost on me that this acute theological insight
– about life after death and how we understand it- was coming from a man who
seemed to be on the brink of life and death himself. The next time I visited
Marcus, he was feeling better and was much more alert. I quickly learned that
although he spoke very little during our first meeting, that his personality
was anything but quiet. Now, feeling stronger and breathing better, and without
the nebulizer mask covering his mouth, Marcus talked for nearly an hour,
nonstop. In that second visit, Marcus, as a means of introducing himself, ran
through a vast and diverse litany of his own near death experiences; gruesome
fist fights, police chases, drug use, asthma attacks, pneumonia, and the
everyday dangers of living life on the streets. “I really shouldn’t be here,”
he would always say. “There’s just no way not
to believe in God after everything I’ve been through! Somebody’s watching
over me, I know it.” To Marcus, resurrection wasn’t experienced in the abstract
– he had, on many occasions, existed in that thin space between life and death,
and recounting these experiences was how Marcus made meaning of his life, and
how he conveyed his faith to me in our many subsequent visits. In a sense, it
seemed to me that the fabric of Marcus’ life had been punctured or perforated with
experiences of being near-death, and those places were the places where God’s
love penetrated his heart and shown through most clearly.
And, back to Lazarus, of course Marcus was spot on when he said
that the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead helps to prepare our
minds, hearts, and our imaginations for the Resurrection, with a capital R,
that is to come. The narrative that John’s gospel develops – and of which
Lazarus is key - both bespeaks the resurrection inherent in everyday life and transforming
the experiences of everyday people, and also points toward Christ’s own passion
and resurrection that is to come. For John, a persistent theme is that our God is
a God that beckons sweet life in all its forms to emerge from the stench of death, and in turn beckons us,
as God’s people, to emerge from binding brokenness into the freedom of wholeness
in Christ.
Another foreshadowing element of tonight’s gospel is found in
the theme of sacrifice that permeates the story. When Jesus encounters Mary and
Martha in Bethany, he has just been in Jerusalem, where he was stoned for
claiming himself to be the Son of God. After being pelted with rocks he
narrowly escapes arrest. It is no wonder, then, that the disciples say to him
“Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there
again?” Jesus loves his friends, Mary and Martha, and their brother Lazarus,
and risking death, goes to them at once. By raising Lazarus from the dead,
Jesus asserts his power in a way that ultimately makes him a threat to the
imperial government, and secures his fate on the Cross. Through this action, we
come to understand something significant about the character of Jesus and the
nature of God; that the power that Jesus has to bring to life that which was
once dead is subversive. It shakes up the social order, and takes a Samaritan
woman, a blind man, and Lazarus – a man who has been dead for four days – and
places them in the heart of our salvation narrative.
This business of resurrection is dangerous stuff, and it also
poses a threat to anything and anyone who uses violence and death as a means of
gaining power. As theologian John Dear remarks, “Wherever he goes, [Jesus’]
disarming presence leaves merciless death embarrassed and impotent. Threats and
dicey situations abound, but Jesus faces them with fearlessness and truth. The
downtrodden who cross his path feel better, more dignified, because here is one
with no trace of violence in him...His was a risen life before resurrection
ever occurred.” In other words, Jesus is not just one who has the capacity to
resurrect, Jesus is Resurrection itself.
--------------------------------
In closing, I want to turn your attention to one of the elements
of our liturgy, the Nicene Creed, which serves as a symbol of our faith and a
testament to our beliefs as Christians. As you likely know, the final phrase in
the Creed is this: “we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of
the world to come.”
This statement serves as a simple reminder that being a
Christian means not only believing that Christ was resurrected, but just as
importantly, perhaps, it means living as though resurrection is a constant and
unfolding feature of our world, which it is. The language of the Creed says
that more than acknowledging resurrection as a possibility, we look for it in the world around us and
in our own lives. Perhaps you’ve never seen a dead person return to life, or
rolled a stone away from an empty tomb. But I’m willing to bet that you’ve seen
a relationship that you thought was hopeless mended, or a missed opportunity
redeemed, or a new pathway or possibility emerge where you thought there was
none. Following Christ, then, means that we are continually cultivating our
senses in order to perceive the places where life is emerging from death.
The late, great writer, thinker and neurologist Oliver Sacks knew
quite a bit about looking for resurrection – he was known to connect with, and
to bear witness to the experiences of patients whom many other doctors, for a
variety of reasons, considered unreachable. Sacks once wrote that “every act of
perception is an act of creation” and I think that this is precisely what it
means to look for resurrection of the dead – by perceiving life through the
lens of the Cross, but also the empty tomb, we create openings where life can
emerge and where love can transform us.
“Can these bones live?!” cries out the prophet Ezekiel. My
prayer for each of us, as we journey toward and through the Passion in the
coming weeks, is that we can say, without hesitation, YES, they can. These
bones which were once dry and rattling, can come together, can move, can live.
Amen.
