Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

I absolutely love our reading from John’s Gospel appointed for today. We see Jesus arriving (at last) in Bethany, four days after his friend Lazarus has died…and Lazarus’ sister, Martha, is upset at Jesus’ apparent tardiness. “If you’d been here five days ago,” she accuses him, “he wouldn’t have died, you’d have healed him.” And here’s where things get interesting.

We know what’s coming. We’ve read or heard this story before. We know Jesus will restore Lazarus to life in a few verses. John, our storyteller, also knows that we know, and he capitalizes on that knowledge by creating some compelling tension in the narrative: we witness an exchange between Jesus and Martha in which it’s clear that Martha doesn’t know what we know, and we have no way of telling her! We have to listen to Jesus say to Martha, “Your brother will rise again,” and realize, as Martha responds, that she has no idea what he’s talking about…even though Jesus just told her! For a moment, the story of Lazarus’ revival becomes about us and Jesus sharing a really amazing and beautifully wonderful secret, and we find ourselves giddily thinking to ourselves, in the midst of Lazarus’ funeral: “Martha, you’re going to be so happy when you find out what’s in store! You don’t know what’s happening or what’s coming, but it’s really really good and I can’t wait for you to find out what it is!”

In the midst of the assembled mourners, the somberness of the funeral rites, the weeping, surrounded by death and sorrow, John finds a way of giving us a taste of what it’s like to be on the inside of God’s holy and wholly astounding imagination. We discover ourselves in cahoots with Joy.

I think most of us probably find ourselves, like Martha, not quite knowing or understanding the depths of the unimaginably spectacular wonderfulness of grace that God has in store for us, in part because it’s…well…unimaginable. More useful than our ability to comprehend or predict grace, though, is the willingness to be surprised by grace. When Martha confesses her belief that Jesus is the Messiah at the end of our reading, her confession isn’t just the articulation of a truth claim: it’s reflective of a conscious willingness to relax into the Messianic imagination, a willingness to be surprised by grace. It’s in that moment that Martha joins us in our conspiracy with joy. She may not know what’s coming, but she begins to trust that it is, in fact, coming. Her subsequent words to her sister could just as well be, “Something’s about to happen! Let’s go see what it is!” as “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.”

I think if we’re to find ourselves in cahoots with joy in our own lives, we, too, will relax by faith into the Messianic imagination of Jesus and prepare to be surprised by God’s startling grace!

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+