Jesus weeps, and he weeps for you. For His friend, you, has died. Next to Lazarus you lay, and you both rot. You rot with isolation and loneliness. You rot with fear and uncertainty. You rot with danger of eviction and joblessness. The other corpses cry out in darkness - this tomb isn’t so bad. Learn a new skill, enjoy the cold stone beneath your back, read a book, become one with the burial shroud and its spices and myrrh, watch a movie, learn to love the tomb.
The sepulchral stone is so heavy. You want to see your loved ones, to smell incense in church, to cry out with others “Christ is risen!” But the stone remains unphased.
Yet you hear voices from beyond, you hear them from the overworld, from the land of the living. Are those saints? Are those angels? Isn’t that God amongst them, His face covered in tears? For if You were there, your patron saint says, my friend would not rot. Take away the stone, says a powerful voice, so full of authority that you marvel that the slab itself did not crack at these words to let the sunshine in and to let the stench out. You hear your guardian angel cries in disbelief: But Lord, there is a stench, for this one has been dead for many days.
And so we wait, until we hear those powerful words, “Lazarus, come forth!” We finally fear air in our lungs, and only now we realize that we did not breathe; we feel warmth in our body, for a moment ago we were no warmer than the rock beneath us. They remove the shroud, and for the first time in our death, we feel alive.
For the name that we heard when Jesus bid us to come forth, “Lazarus,” was not that of Lazarus, but our very own.
The sepulchral stone is so heavy. You want to see your loved ones, to smell incense in church, to cry out with others “Christ is risen!” But the stone remains unphased.
Yet you hear voices from beyond, you hear them from the overworld, from the land of the living. Are those saints? Are those angels? Isn’t that God amongst them, His face covered in tears? For if You were there, your patron saint says, my friend would not rot. Take away the stone, says a powerful voice, so full of authority that you marvel that the slab itself did not crack at these words to let the sunshine in and to let the stench out. You hear your guardian angel cries in disbelief: But Lord, there is a stench, for this one has been dead for many days.
And so we wait, until we hear those powerful words, “Lazarus, come forth!” We finally fear air in our lungs, and only now we realize that we did not breathe; we feel warmth in our body, for a moment ago we were no warmer than the rock beneath us. They remove the shroud, and for the first time in our death, we feel alive.
For the name that we heard when Jesus bid us to come forth, “Lazarus,” was not that of Lazarus, but our very own.
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