Some thoughts on the raising of Lazarus

What was going through the disciples’ heads? First, Jesus tells them that "this isn’t going to end in death." Then, two days later, he says, "Lazarus is dead." Surely that series of events must have shaken their faith in him? At least Thomas remained willing to rally his peers: "Let’s go die with him." It’s the kind of confidence that gets utterly crushed when one falls short. I think Thomas' subsequent doubt was rooted in his own perceived failure to see his resolve through to his own end. But he was ultimately restored, became a faithful leader in the early church, eventually fulfilling his earlier rash promise.

How about Martha? I love Martha; maybe it’s because I think we tend to have a lot in common with her. I know I do. Don’t we compare ourselves to those around us who aren’t measuring up to our standards of behavior, just as she judged her sister for not helping out? Now, here she is, on the one hand saying, "Yes Lord, I know my brother will rise in the resurrection on the last day," and affirming "I believe that you’re the Messiah, the very Son of God." But when it comes to actually trusting Jesus, she says, "Umm . . . but . . . but . . . , if you roll away that stone, it’s going to really STINK!" Aren’t we like that? "Yes, Lord, I believe," we say, but then, when the path before us heads in a direction we don’t want to go, or of which we’re afraid, we hem and haw and look for all the reasons we should choose our own way. "But . . . but . . . ," we stammer. Eventually we'll likely have to face what we're afraid of anyway, and the hurt can get a lot worse if we delay. We may find it easy to trust God to do what we want him to, but not trust him enough to agree to go where he is clearly leading us. We trust in our own judgment rather than God’s, when if we do what we know we ought to do, what God is waiting to empower us to do, our lives would be SO much better. Indeed, we would become the people we dare not hope to be.

I think this passage teaches us about obedience in another important way, too.

Suppose they hadn’t rolled away the stone?

When Christ delivers us from death, we owe it to ourselves to continue to follow his guidance, or we’ll experience further pain and death. Once I know I’ve been delivered, shouldn’t it become easier to obey God in every leading? Too often, it isn't.

In whom do we place our trust, really?

From The Seven Levels of Intimacy

I've stayed home sick yesterday and today with my worst cold in several years. Everything has an upside, though: I've rested a LOT, and have been able to read more than usual. Here are some quotes and reflections from Matthew Kelly's book, The Seven Levels of Intimacy:

"Revealing our feelings makes us vulnerable, but we endure risks in order to reap rewards. The reward of making ourselves vulnerable is mental health."

I'm struck by the simple truth of that statement. Trying to keep yourself safe all the time will literally drive you crazy! We need people in our lives with whom we can just be ourselves, can let our guard down to simply feel whatever it is we're feeling and express it appropriately. We cannot have true intimacy without this freedom.

"The genius of intimacy is that when we bring our dark side out into the light in the context of a loving relationship, our darkness loses its power over us. Darkness cannot abide the light of love. It is intimacy that will hold our hand and walk through the dark rooms of our past and present. It is intimacy that has the power to set us free from our faults, fears, and failures."

How true I have found this to be in my own life. Every close relationship I've ever experienced has involved the sharing of something deeply personal and painful, and in every case it has opened the door to intimacy. Unfortunately, that only brings the light of freedom to the degree that we can acknowledge the darkness' past power over us.

Now obviously in both of these ideas there is an underlying assumption. You can't just take someone off the street and decide that the two of you are going to be emotionally intimate. Obviously, to reach these levels of intimacy requires that a relationship has developed between people with similar goals which has allowed them to develop a sense of trust with one another. Not until our partner proves trustworthy in small matters can we entrust them with larger ones.

"There is a saying in Christian circles that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future."

I believe that most hypocrisy is the result of people being unwilling to face their own failings. If I've never received mercy -- even if it has been offered freely, if I've never wrapped myself in forgiveness and even come to embrace the role my failings have played in making me the person I am today -- then I'm unlikely to be be very accepting of myself. But (I think) it's psychologically impossible for us to live that way, so we project all of our self-judgment on those around us. Instead of striving to be the person we could be, we settle for being better than "them," as if we don't deserve any better than that.

And maybe we don't. Maybe we're all born with an inner awareness of the ugliness of sin, or if you prefer, with an inner hatred of how we hurt others. And it isn't until we have freely received mercy and forgiveness for our own failings that we can begin to accept others in spite of theirs.

Prayer and fasting

I find it entirely too easy to let my life get away from me. I know it isn't just me that sometimes feels overwhelmed by the pace of life amid the circumstances surrounding me. It takes conscious choice to keep my attention on the things I've decided are really important to me, and those choices sometimes have to be adjusted for the sake of others who are important to me.

Prayer time this Lent has been more consistent than in the past months, but really intense reflection time, the sort that leads to some nugget of value to share here, has sometimes had to take a back seat to family issues.

There's a neat thing going on in our parish (and a couple nearby parishes) this Friday and Saturday. Apparently a bunch of our high school kids have taken on a sense of unity with the world's hungry. In an effort to be more in unity with them, as a way to help them focus on what they might do in response to the problem, they're going to have a lock-in this weekend. They're going to have dinner on Friday, then fast together for 24 hours, drinking only fruit juice, until dinner on Saturday. It gives me hope to see our young people looking beyond themselves in this way. Not everyone can do this, of course; some people have legitimate health reasons not to fast thus. But everyone can fast in some way in their lives, give up for a time something that normally has power over them so as to gain possession of themselves in a new way.

Another neat thing that has happened in response to these kids' decision is that some of the adults in our parish have decided to support them in fasting and prayer. A fast is easy to undertake, but takes commitment to see through when the stomach begins to feel really empty. It can be a self-setup for confirming one's sense of failure, if you're not careful. But the thing is, a fast isn't really about the person fasting, and I believe God is pleased when we make a personal sacrifice in order to think beyond ourselves. It expands our awareness of the world, and begets more selflessness, which is a good thing.