(Passiontide begins)
Ezekiel 37.1–14
Romans 8.6–11
John 11.1–45
‘Resurrection’ began as a metaphor for the return from exile. Ezekiel’s surreal vision was an image of Israel, ‘dead’ in Babylon, being restored to her own land. It goes with the promises of the previous chapters, promises of covenant renewal, of cleansing from sin, of God’s gift of a new heart, a new spirit. The God who breathed into human nostrils at creation will do so again. Covenant renewal will mean new creation.
After Easter, metaphor and history changed places. ‘The resurrection’ should have happened to all God’s people at the end of time, not to one person in the middle of history; Jesus’ followers explained Easter in terms of return from exile, the long-awaited new Exodus. Romans 8 is the classic passage: what God did for Jesus he will do for all creation, liberating it from its present slavery to corruption. Those whose bodies are heading for death, but who are indwelt by God’s Spirit, are assured that what God did for Jesus as an individual he will do for all the Messiah’s people. (Notice how Paul moves between the name and the title: ‘Jesus’ is the individual, ‘Christ’ the one who represents God’s people.)
A preacher who needs help with John 11 is in bad shape. But the story has oddities as well as obvious, indeed spectacular, moments of glory. Jesus heard that Lazarus was ill, and therefore (vv. 5–6) he stayed where he was two days longer. This is only partially explained by vv. 4 and 14: Jesus has something in mind through which God’s glory will be revealed, and the disciples’ faith strengthened (perhaps not only the disciples’, either?). Jesus is the bearer of Israel’s destiny: he doesn’t just teach about the great Return, the new Exodus, he is embodying it. Then the exchange in vv. 39–42: Martha, characteristically anxious, warns about the smell from a three-day corpse; Jesus commands that the stone be removed, and then thanks the Father for having heard his prayer. We must presume that there was no smell: Jesus had prayed for Lazarus’s death to be temporary, and the prayer had been answered.
The life and light of this story are framed by a dark background. The Judaeans (not ‘the Jews’ as in most translations) include many who want to do away with Jesus, and this supreme sign – the sixth in John’s sequence, pointing on to the coming completion of Jesus’ work – will only exacerbate their opposition. Jesus’ prayer and action for Lazarus looks ahead to his own coming ordeal. The resuscitation of Lazarus into the same sort of body partially anticipates the greater event of Easter, when the Messiah will go through death and out into the unmapped new land beyond. But, as Lenten pilgrims know, the road to Easter lies along the way of the cross. Was Thomas doubting, or was he believing, when he said ‘Let’s go too, so that we may die with him’ (v. 16)?
Palm Sunday
(Liturgy of the Passion)
Isaiah 50.4–9a
Philippians 2.5–11
Matthew 26.14—27.66
C. S. Lewis, writing as a literary critic, proposed a test for good writing: how often does it deserve to be read? Cheap magazine stories come at the bottom (once you know what happens, you don’t read them again), and the great novels and plays near the top (I once knew an octogenarian who read through Shakespeare every year). Thus measured, the passion narratives score highly. The action is swift, the dialogue terse and pregnant. A dozen brilliant human cameos: Jesus and Judas; Peter; Caiaphas; Pilate (and his wife); Barabbas; Simon; the bandits; the mockers; the centurion; the women; and Joseph – each one deserving careful mulling over. The whole drama swirls to and fro with friendship betrayed, new worlds evoked, justice denied, empire appeased, faith insulted, innocence abused. And still we are only in the foothills, aware of the crags looming above us, of the drama’s central character, of the questions he posed for his contemporaries and still poses for us, of his strange words and even stranger silences. Tales of torture and death are always ugly and awesome; this torture, and this death, still provoke thunder and lightning. When Matthew tells us of the earthquake, we somehow feel that nothing less would do. If these events were not pivotal to human destiny, what else could take their place? How can we not reread this tale without ceasing?
The story brings to its head the tale of the strange prophet-Messiah from Nazareth. This itself, in the evangelists’ telling, brings to its climax the entire drama of Israel – which, in Scripture, is the focal point of world history. Here we are offered that which unmakes and remakes the world, ourselves included. Here, could we but scale the crags, is the answer to our deepest questions, our most agonizing longings. And it comes, not as a theory, not as an explanation, but as a story which opens up to embrace or perhaps engulf us, sweeping us off our feet like a giant wave, carrying us off, out of our depth, away on the dark sea of God’s passion. And still the figure at the centre beckons, woos, disturbs, frightens and compels us. Like the Psalms, this story contains all that we are and feel, and lays it bare before the presence of an overmastering love.
Paul, echoing Isaiah, speaks of Jesus’ obedience (to the plan of God; to Adam’s call, and Israel’s) and vindication. Isaiah himself pictures a strange teacher, called to listen, to sustain the weary, and to undergo suffering. Elsewhere (e.g. Romans 8.31–39), Paul with considerable daring applies this same passage to Christians. Those who tell, and live by, the story of the cross may learn to hear between its lines the story of the martyrs, ancient and modern, and the call to take our own share of this world-changing, world-healing, passion. Those who go this way may have to face and suffer much. But they will not be put to shame.
Easter Day
Jeremiah 31.1– 6
Colossians 3.1–4
John 20.1–18
Again you shall plant vineyards; the planters shall plant, and shall enjoy the fruit. Jeremiah echoes Deuteronomy’s promise of covenant renewal, and points forward to John’s Easter garden. Mary was on the right track, mistaking Jesus for the gardener. In typical Johannine irony, he was indeed the gardener (though not the way Mary thought), the true Adam, planting again the vineyard of Israel, bringing God’s people home from the exile of death and sowing them like seed in their new land.
Only imagery like this can begin to do justice to the reality of Easter. Too often the story and its meaning are flattened out into subsidiary truths: a belief in life after death (which most of Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries held anyway), or the truth that Jesus is still alive, and we can come to know him. John’s poetic genius tells a larger story through hints and allusions. Easter is the beginning of God’s new creation, new covenant, God’s whole new world. John’s readers are invited to live in that new world, to become partners in the new covenant, to be under-gardeners in the new creation. With the rolling away of the stone, a great door has swung open in human history, and we are summoned to go through, to make our own the undiscovered country on the other side.
Scarcely surprising, then, that the story is full of puzzles. Where were the angels when Peter and John (if it was John) went into the tomb? Could only Mary see them, and if so why? Why did John describe the linen cloths and the headpiece so carefully? And – perhaps most perplexing – why did Jesus forbid Mary to hold on to him? What does his explanation (‘I have not yet ascended’) mean, and how does it relate to his subsequent invitation to Thomas to touch him and see?
The only way of coming to terms with all this is to grasp the nettle. Easter invites us to recognize a new level of being, a new