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March 08, 2008
Fifth Sunday of Lent - Never Forgotten
I know a retired friend who travels the back roads of the U.S., mostly in summers, visiting small towns, trying to get a sense and flavor of the people who have immigrated here over the many years.
One way he picks up this flavor of our history is by visiting cemeteries where, on tombstones, he often finds epitaphs, some humorous, some serious, that give him a sense of how the relatives of the deceased thought of him or her. I’ll quote just a few to give you a sense of it all. Sir John Strange: “Here lies an honest lawyer and that it is Strange is no business of yours.” “Here lies Lester Moore. Four slugs from a.44, no less no more.” On the 22nd of June Jonathan Fiddle went out of tune.” Margaret Daniels: “She always said her feet were killing her. Nobody believed her.” Harry Edsel Smith: Born 1903—Died 1942. “Looked up the elevator shaft to see if the car was on the way down. It was.” “Here lies an Atheist. All dressed up and nowhere to go.”
So, why am I sharing all these quotes with you? First of all, they are pretty funny. Sometimes the lives of the deceased are rather humorous. Even death itself, when you think about it, is sort of humorous. None of us wants to die and yet we have no control over it. As a humorist once said: “None of us will get off this planet alive.”
Part of the reason I also wanted to share these poetic verses with you is because I have a sense that none of us wants to die and be unremembered. Our relatives and friends want us to be remembered. So they print mortuary cards or long obituaries. After all, it does seem to me that every person born onto this earth was important to somebody and, hence, should be recalled, remembered, spoken-well and written well of. Of course, the deceased person himself or herself has no more control over that, but someone else, someone living has that option and they often make use of it.
Epitaphs, obituaries, et cetera also can give us a sense of the meaning our own lives and its shortness and its tenuousness. In short, the lives of the dead are often a lesson for the living.
Well, if you have the sense that epitaphs and obituaries are a modern invention, let me point out two examples, two pieces of writing, that are in the very scriptures for this Fifth Sunday of Lent. Let me point out also that they are resurrection stories because in our Church calendar we are nearing Holy Week and Easter.
The first story, or epitaph comes from the prophet Ezekiel. He has this vision where he sees scattered on the desert floor the bones of thousands and thousands of his fellow Israelites. But in his vision he also sees these bones being reattached one to the other by the power of God. He imagines all these reattached bones springing alive and returning back to their own land.
So, you see, this is a resurrection story, a prediction that death is never a total separation. Some day God will put us back together and gather us into our own land, the Kingdom of God.
The second epitaph or obituary story is about the only man in recorded history who died, was buried for three days and was brought back to life…Lazarus. If you believe in Jesus’ miracles, of course, as I do, you will have no difficulty with the details of the story. But if you don’t then some items may puzzle you: Where was Lazarus for those three days, on earth or in heaven? Did he ever tell anyone about the experience? Did he remember anything in the grave? How did he breathe? Did his body start to decompose, as Martha feared?
Well, those are useless question, useless because this is really more a resurrection story, not simply about dry bones or the dead Lazarus; it’s about all of us. The power of Jesus to bring Lazarus back from the dead is the power that Jesus will bring to bear for all who believe in him.
The interesting and mysterious feature about both these readings is that they assume the reality of death but tell us nothing about what follows except to say that death is not the end. We are all destined for a life beyond this one, whether, like Lazarus, we are in the grave three days or for a millennium.
The point that give me some hope is the sense that we are all remembered. Life is precious. For many of us, someone in this world will remember us after death, even if only on a grave marker. For all of us, our God will remember us. I just can’t imagine a God who has the power to create all things, simply allowing us to disappear from existence…period. I still believe in resurrection although what form it may take is still a mystery to me…perhaps to all of us.
The scriptures: Ezekiel 37: 12-4, Romans 8: 8-11, John 11 1-45
Posted by Julie Galligan on March 8, 2008 12:13 PM.
