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March 9, 2008
Craige McKnight

Lent 5, Year A

RCL
To read the lessons for the day click here:

http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearA/Lent/ALent5.html

Ezekiel 37:1-3(4-10)11-14; Romans 6:16-23; John 11:(1-17)18-44; Psalm 130

Where to begin? I confess, my first temptation was in lieu of a homily to bring a boom box and play the recording of “Mary, Don’t Weep” that Aretha Franklin did in 1972 on her Amazing Grace album. It has been reissued on CD and 36 years later, it still gives me goose bumps. When she calls Lazarus for the third time, you have no doubt he came forth. If you have never heard it, I recommend you find a copy and listen, or at the very least, on youtube you can listen to the rendition by Inez Andrews and the Caravans from which Aretha borrowed.

The language of these lessons is so wonderful I would be perfectly content to simply read them again and revel in their grandeur. “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. . . . I am going to open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel.” All of today’s lessons are about triumph over death. Ezekiel says not only that Israel will be brought to a promised land but even those that died along the way will be brought back for the day of Jubilee and by extension offers the same promise to us. Obviously, the story of Lazarus is about Jesus showing dominion over death.

Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome elevates the discourse but maintains the theme. He is discussing metaphorically the death of life in the everyday, life in the flesh contrasted with life in the spirit which is eternal. I think we also encounter a translation problem here which makes St. Paul’s already dense theology even more difficult to grasp whole. I think it is the same translation problem that allows our fundamentalist brethren to draw what to us are peculiar conclusions about things like sexuality. If you will allow a digression, let me offer some observations that may not connect with each other but I hope like candles all around the room may illuminate the subject.

Digression One

This Lent’s readings from Romans have been a revelation to me. To date, I don’t think I have appreciated the density and importance of the theology he introduces here. First, I will offer a disclaimer. Through most of my life, I have struggled with the writings of St. Paul. I first read him in the King James Version at my grandmother’s Cornerstone Baptist Church in Medina, Ohio. As I grew to awareness and a frank appreciation of women, St. Paul seemed a terrible misogynist. That view was not ameliorated as I raised three intelligent, very strong-willed, very talented and competent daughters. I suspect much of my problem was that I was trying to understand him in MY world rather than seeing him in the context of his own. My college major was in classical and medieval Philosophy which involved considerable time exploring Plato. For years, I never made the connection but one day I realized that when St. Paul said that we see through a glass, darkly, he was articulating what is known as the metaphor of the cave from Plato’s Republic. Plato argues that the things we seem to know instinctively on earth, we know because they exist in a perfect, ideal form in some cosmic place that predates but informs the Christian concept of heaven. For instance, the first time I ever saw a chair, I knew it was a chair because from before my birth I had known “chairness” in its ideal form. A child may not yet know the meaning of justice but he or she recognizes injustice because prior to birth the child had been in the presence of justice in its ideal form. We see things as shadows on a cave wall because we cannot see them directly. We see them in a mirror, through a glass, darkly, but in the hereafter we will again see them directly. St. Paul was a highly educated Greek Jew. It would have been impossible for him not to have studied Plato and Aristotle. It was suddenly as apparent to me, that the King James scholars probably lacked the classical education that provided the subtext that was evident in St. Paul’s writing and if they didn’t really get the metaphor it was as likely they would corrupt the text as to correctly interpret it.

Digression Two

The development of the computer in the mid twentieth century has resulted in a complete reconfiguring of the physical, cultural and intellectual world, a cataclysmic shift of which we are all aware and through which we are still living. Gutenberg’s refinement of moveable type and mass publication of the Bible had as cataclysmic effect on the world of the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Ireland and the Scottish Isles are given credit for saving western civilization during the dark ages because that is where the monasteries were that saw the great literature of Greece and Rome and the Canon of Scripture painstakingly copied by hand and saved while the great libraries of Rome and Alexandria were burned. As the chaos receded and the missionaries went forth onto the continent, they took with them the great literature that had been spared by the obscurity of its hiding place. Before Gutenberg, only The Church (because remember there was only one church) or extremely wealthy people could own Bibles. Without Gutenberg, there was no Protestant Reformation. While those copyists in the monasteries of Lindisfarne and northeast Ireland were diligent and disciplined. They weren’t always literate. Many if not most of them could not read what they were set to copy. If they encountered mistakes in a previous copy they had no way to recognize and correct it. If they made a mistake themselves, it was compounded through generations. In other words, what we regard as the Canon of Scripture did not come directly from the mouth of God. That’s why sometimes the Psalms don’t break properly at the versification. Sometimes a chapter of an epistle ends because the copyist ran out of room at the bottom of the folio. The errors are minor but they compound. After college, I helped my friend, Ted build a geodesic dome for his father’s summer property. The triangles composing it were fabricated of wood with plywood skins. Normally in carpentry, you can allow yourself a margin of error of up to a sixteenth of an inch when you cut a piece of wood, that’s about the width of the saw kerf. In cutting the skins for the geodesic dome’s triangles, we kept to a margin of error of a thirty second of an inch. When we rough assembled the bottom three courses of the dome everything looked fine until we went back to tighten the tie bolts. By the time we were halfway round, the far side of the dome had lifted six inches off the foundation. We had to disassemble the structure and trim the triangles to a closer tolerance in order for things to fit. Tiny errors grow exponentially.

Back on task, let me offer some different language for the passage from Romans from the New Jerusalem Bible, a fairly contemporary translation, but using the oldest texts they could find and revised from the original Jerusalem Bible based on criticism that the English version was just a paraphrase of the original French Jerusalem Bible. I like this translation because it is contemporary but focused on historical accuracy rather than contemporary acceptance. It has also always been intended as a study bible and if you buy the right edition is extensively annotated. In other words, when Jesus makes a reference to one of the prophets, or interjects a poetic excerpt from the Law or the Psalms or Proverbs, because that’s what a well trained rabbi of the time would do, it acknowledges the poetic form or references the Old Testament passage.

The Revised Standard Version says, “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace.” New Jerusalem translates, “And human nature has nothing to look forward to but death, while the spirit looks forward to life and peace,” Contrast, “the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God” with, “the outlook of disordered human nature is opposed to God”. “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” versus, “those who live by their natural inclinations can never be pleasing to God”.

Read the King James or the Revised Standard or the New Interpretive Version, all of which are branches from the same root, and you are probably certain that St. Paul is talking about sex. “To set the mind on the flesh is death.” Read the New Jerusalem and you recall that the Greeks had five different words for love. Plato drew comparisons in Symposium between agape, the selfless kind of love that is characterized by love of God and love that is confined to earthly bounds be it the passion of eros or philia, the neighborly, fraternal love that encompasses friends and close companions. In other words, your focus is either on the world around you which certainly includes the flesh or it is focused on getting as near as possible to becoming one with the ideal, with God. With King James, you are inclined to draw a bright line saying that one behavior is proper and by default, the other is improper; if one is good, the other by default is evil. That’s not the way Plato viewed it and I believe now that St. Paul was saying to us that the ordinary could not partake in the divine, but was not by default, evil. I fear, I confess, I have spent much of my life in the ordinary. I have been as careful as I know how not to be evil. But St. Paul tells me ordinary is not enough. There is still a bright line. My life depends on the spirit.

With your indulgence, I would like to take a closer look at Mary and Martha. The resurrection of Lazarus is not the only time they appear in the New Testament. In Luke, Jesus calls at their house and they don’t behave much differently than they do in the Lazarus story.

Luke 10:38-42 New Jerusalem Bible

In the course of their journey he came to a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. She had a sister called Mary, who sat down at the Lord’s feet and listened to him speaking. Now Martha, who was distracted with all the serving, came to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister is leaving me to do the serving all by myself? Please tell her to help me.’ But the Lord answered, ‘Martha, Martha,’ he said, ‘you worry and fret about so many things and yet few are needed, indeed only one. It is Mary who has chosen the better part, and it is not to be taken from her.’

“Martha, Martha, you worry and fret about so many things.” When Lazarus died, Mary stayed at home, Martha went to meet Jesus. She uses the exact same words as her sister Mary. “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” The same words, but where Mary broke down, wept in grief and acceptance, Martha won’t let it stop there. “But even now, I know God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Martha is living in the world, living by her natural inclinations, living in the flesh. Mary is living in the spirit.

The story begins when Jesus was away. Mary and Martha sent for him but Jesus didn’t come right away. When he finally says to the disciples that it is time to return to Judea, they caution him that there are those there who want to stone him. He answers in a poetic form that also refers back to his own words from Chapter Eight after rescuing the adulterous woman from stoning. Jesus isn’t speaking in verse just because he’s weird and that sometimes happens. He cites his own previous words in the same form as he would have cited the Law or the Prophets but he’s quoting himself. He knows who he is. He knows where he is headed. The disciples recognize the formalism of his speech but unless they were with him in the temple square, they don’t recognize the reference. He says, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.” Three elements are repeated. One, walk in the day; two, don’t stumble; three, there is light. One, walk at night; two, you will stumble; three, there is no light. Earlier in Chapter Eight he had said, “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

Lazarus has been dead four days. The formal mourning is well under way. The out-of-town relatives have gathered. Jesus tells Martha,

“Your brother will rise again.” Martha, firmly in and of this world, of the flesh thinks he is making a theological statement. ‘I know all

about the resurrection on the last day,’ she tells him. For the second time, Jesus answers in poetic form. “I am the resurrection and the

life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Three elements repeated, one, believe; two, die; three, live again. One, live; two, believe; three, never die. And again he is citing his own words from the sermon at the pool of Bethesda where he had healed a sick man. “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him

who sent me, has eternal life; he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”

Jesus asks, “Where have you laid him?” They reply, “Lord, come and see.” He tells them to remove the stone and Martha, ever the practical one says, “There is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus, for the third time answers in poetic form. “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” Element one, Father answers his son, who is also element two, God made man, so that, element two repeated, all men can know that he comes from, element one repeated, the Father. He uses a formal mode of address that they all recognize as the form he would use when citing the Law or the Prophets, so they all know to pay attention because something big is about to happen. He is about to conquer death for Lazarus but he is not referring back anymore. His reference is forward to his own death and triumph over death. “He cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out.”

Let me see if I can tie this package back together. Ezekiel has foretold the resurrection of Israel. As the lessons from the first Sunday in Lent showed, Jesus is the embodiment of the Nation of Israel. His temptations were their temptations. The prophesied death and resurrection of the Nation of Israel foretells the death and resurrection of Jesus. But there is more than one kind of death. There is more than one kind of life. If you believe, you can die and live again. When Martha and Mary believe, their brother can live again.

Jesus came back to Judea to face his own death. He has made the authorities in Jerusalem angry. They really truly are out to get him. Even Thomas, the Twin seems to understand this because he says to the other disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” He delayed answering the summons of Mary and Martha because he wanted there to be time for the crowd to gather. He knew Lazarus was dead and he intended that raising him up should be a public spectacle so those who saw it could believe his claim that he was sent from the Father. It also guaranteed that word would spread that he was back; so that those who sought his destruction could be ready.

In the end, it all comes back to what St. Paul taught us in the passage for the First Sunday in Lent. We are justified by our faith.

When we believe, the gift is freely ours. This Lenten Season, we have, every week dealt with lessons about light and darkness,

good and evil, life and death. As his last admonition to us before this Easter cascade of events and serious liturgy begins, he reminds

us what the gospel lesson really means. Life in Christ is life eternal. Ordinary life only ever ends in death, and it ends in death.

Live in the spirit and for the last time this year, have a Happy Lent.