The Oddest Funeral Dinner You've Ever Been To

Have you even attended a funeral dinner?  Have you ever gone away from one hungry?  It is nigh impossible, given the sheer volume of casseroles, salads, and those little desserts with marshmallows (or at least you hope they were marshmallows….).

In my family, funeral dinners depended on which side of the family was involved.  My dad’s side of the family tended to be quieter, a gathering of farmer-types talking about the old days or grain futures while plowing through a plate of mashed potatoes and roast beef.  My mother’s side of family tended to be a noisy bunch, telling stories (some of which were not meant for the church fellowship hall) before heading back to the buffet to graze.

Inevitably, both sides of my family did one important thing the same way.  At the end of the feast, a representative from the family would head over to the dinner’s host to shake their hand, and say, “Thank you!” 

In John’s gospel, we have one of the more bizarre funeral dinners known.  For starters, the recently deceased is back among us!  Lazarus, brother of Mary and Martha, had died.  Jesus arrived four days after Lazarus’ death and raised him from the dead.  The meal is now taking place a little later, just before Passover, and the conversation is still a bit strained. 

On one hand, the family and friends of Lazarus are overjoyed that Lazarus is back among the living.  On the other, the incredible power Jesus evidenced did not go unnoticed.  Rumors abounded that the religious elite were plotting to harm Jesus.  In the midst of great joy is also great uncertainty.  A man who died is eating at table with Jesus, a man marked for death.

The story of Jesus and Lazarus eating together is a remarkable bit of narrative development. I marvel at the juxtaposition of Lazarus and Jesus here.  The dead man is walking again.  Jesus, the one who raised Lazarus, is soon to enter Jerusalem where betrayal and death await him.  Even though it is before the Passion begins, John is fairly clear in this gospel story:  Lazarus may live, but Jesus will soon die.

The story of Lazarus and Jesus gives us a glimpse of the questions Good Friday and Easter ask of the world.  What do we make of the Christian faith’s claim that death is not the final answer?   We can understand the sad inevitability of Good Friday, for death comes for us all.  Each one of us is mortal, and we live a limited life span.  Whether it is illness or accident, old age or “going too soon”, we humans are not masters of our own destiny.

We get to Good Friday of Holy Week, and we should take an appreciative pause, living in the valley between Good Friday and Easter Sunday morning.  Lazarus smelled strongly of death.  What are we to make of a faith that includes this odor of a body beginning to decay while gearing up for the Easter hymns of resurrection? 

Also around the table for this odd funeral dinner are the sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha.  They provide hospitality for the gathering in different ways. Martha serves the meal, a customary role for her to play at the dinner table.  Mary does something less customary, in fact, acts in a way that the disciples find a little unsettling.  Taking her hair down, she uses her hair to anoint Jesus’ feet.  It is scandalous behavior for a woman, considered rather forward in her familiarity with Jesus.  She anoints his feet with an expensive perfume, an extravagant act that fills the house with its smell.

In contrast, Judas, the disciple who will be the one betraying Jesus in a few short days, reacts to this.  The gospel writer takes especial care to highlight how hollow Judas’ words are, being considered a scoundrel as well as suspect in his behavior.  Judas believes Mary is behaving in a foolishly wasteful manner.   He does not see the devotion that prompts her humble act.

It is Judas that Jesus rebukes, surprisingly siding with the scandalous behavior of Mary anointing his feet.   Jesus understands where his journey will take him.  He is not afraid to be confronted with his own death.  He knows of the other side of death, citing throughout John’s gospel that death is not the last word.  Resurrection is part of Jesus’ vocabulary.  He also includes space for “death” as well.

On Wednesday afternoon, I will be a panelist at a hospice/end of life care event held at the hospital.  The VNA Hospice and our local healthcare system will present a video via live remote and then ask a group of local care providers to share their thoughts.  I serve as the “spiritual care” local provider.

As I read the book for the event, which relates to various issues related to cancer diagnoses and the tough decisions that patients and families need to make, I ponder what sort of words to take along with me to give my thoughts on the matter.  I keep turning again to one word that I tend to carry around with me.  It’s a word that goes with me throughout the day.  Sometimes, I drop it and have to remember to pick it up again.  Other times, I lend it to people to try out to see if it helps them

The word I like to take along with me is “hope”.

We cannot get through this life without hardship and encounters with our own frailty and weakness.  Hope is not for the faint-hearted.  To be a person with hope, you take for granted that the world will be a rough go.  Nonetheless, you see a different outcome is possible.  The last word shall not be pain or death.  Hope leads us to see the last word as God’s alone.  In that hope, we find our faith, which is shaped by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, offers us something more than the odor of death.  In Mary’s extravagant gift, we sense a fragrance of something far more precious than we can assign a cost.

A few years ago, the seminary we attended was going through a critical time in its history.  The issues were numerous, and the feeling on campus was veritably funereal in tone.  Was the school going to pull through?

I remember our New Testament professor observed that the school was dealing with difficult matters.  He observed, “But we are a people of resurrection.”

I find myself recalling that story fairly often.  It might be when the 11 o’clock news is reporting the latest calamity to strike an already struggling nation.  Or when a family calls me to come and be with them as a loved one is in critical condition.  Or when I’m dealing with a number of other situations where the temptation is quite palpable (and in some cases, quite understandable) just to give in to the futility of the moment.

The story of Lazarus eating and drinking again at the table and Mary giving herself over to a great act of devotion beckons us to see the world through a different lens.  Jesus shall indeed suffer death, yet this will not be the last word.  Judas, in his bluster, shows us what happens when someone can be so close to the truth yet miss it altogether.

The fragrance that lingers is one quite marvelous that fills the air.  It hints of the joy, the love, and the new life that shall overcome any trace of death.  The devotion of Mary, sister of Lazarus is a prelude to Easter.  Hope shall keep us, even in those times where the stench of death nearly overpowers. 

May we strive to be a people of resurrection.

The Need for Fierce Landscapes (Luke 4:1-13)

Of late, I have been going to my bookshelf and reading books that I picked up at one time or another (usually with the recommendation of a friend or strong review in some journal that I read).  I am working my way through the book The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, written by Belden Lane.  Lane offers some fine reflections on Christian spirituality, interspersing stories drawn from his own life.  At first glance, the two types of stories he shares seem a bit distant.  One strand of narrative involves the act of being on pilgrimage.  The other strand revolves around our mortality, particularly through Lane’s memories of sitting at his dying mother’s bedside.  Lane weaves these two strands together: pilgrimage and mortality, helping his reader with some sage thoughts about faith, life, and those things that often distract us from the way of following Christ.

At various points of the book, he shares reflections of persons traveling (himself included) to remote places in the world to experience some form of spiritual pilgrimage.  These journeys take you far from places visited by the average tourist, out into the places that most of us would term inhospitable or lonely.  Out into the desert or somewhere in the mountain range, Belden Lane observes one is confronted with the vastness of the wilderness.  Along the way, the pilgrim traveler encounters glimpses of the divine, often in ways difficult to predict or anticipate.  In such places, “the divine preference for self-disclosure in space is declared to be an austere, deserted, feral terrain” (The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, p. 47). 

For centuries, various Christian individuals and religious orders withdraw intentionally away, seeking God in places less urbanized or developed.  In our Baptist traditions, we rarely speak of withdrawing away from things.  We tend to be a fairly noisy, “in the midst of the fray” kind of Protestant people.  Thus, the stories of monastic movements in the history of Christianity tend not to be history we rehearse and recall. Nonetheless, in reading of such history, I suspicion you and I might find something we have longed for and appreciate: a deepening sense of God’s presence in the world and our lives.  We yearn, even when unaware, for something more to our lives than the hectic, near chaotic pace of work, keeping up a household, raising children, tending elders, dealing with our bills, and wondering where the day has gone by the time we finally feel like it is “safe” to unwind, and the clock says “10 PM”. 

Now that you mention it, a trip to somewhere where you can be alone sounds quite appealing….

            Off in the lonely places, Jesus lived for forty days. One might think this a bit of a letdown after the great celebration just beforehand.  Read the gospel again, and the opening chapters of Luke are one big celebration of Jesus.  The Nativity story of Luke resounds with songs of praise.  At his baptism, Jesus is proclaimed as the one greater than John the Baptist.  The voice of God comes from heaven above, declaring Jesus the divine and beloved Son.  The Spirit descends upon him. And just for extra measure to establish Jesus’ credentials, Luke’s gospel inserts a genealogy after the baptism, showing Jesus’ worthy ancestors.  So why does the gospel writer tell this story of Jesus out in the wilderness?   Just as the story builds up steam, Luke has Jesus take forty days away.

Beyond the biblical narrative, why would a time of withdrawal make sense when everything’s pointing toward success?  A reader versed with the financial or political world would be confused by this story.  Why does Jesus go off far away?  He’s just been proclaimed to have the right pedigree, the best resume, and even the “Big Boss” giving a good word.  Jesus gets all of this glory, and what’s he do?  He heads out to….nowhere.

Out in the desert, Jesus spent time withdrawn from people and the basic comforts, if not needs, of life.  He endures out in the midst of a place not for the faint of heart, making John the Baptist’s frugal existence of hair shirts and locusts with honey look positively opulent.  Luke’s telling of the story has Jesus out there for forty days, echoing another era of the Bible as Israel wanders in the wilderness for forty years.  When the Devil shows up, this is the first time Jesus has encountered somebody else for forty days.  I imagine Jesus, quite weary from the relative lack of sleep, fluids, and food, wondering at first if he is hallucinating this figure standing before him.  The first temptation alone (turn stones into bread) would bend, if not break, many of us right off, after three plus weeks away from a decent meal.

The gospels tell this story as a way of demonstrating Jesus’ commitment and obedience to God.  Do not gloss over Luke’s especial emphasis to the forty-day period, for it evidences the sort of discipline Jesus undertakes.  The forty days are just as difficult as the temptations to follow.  Withdrawing to be alone, voluntarily taking leave of one’s comforts is a hard decision to keep, let alone make.  What happens out in those remote places in the desert or in the mountains might be unsettling, far more than losing the assurances of three meals a day and a decent bed at night. 

In our day, Belden Lane observes, “Wild places are uncompanionable to the qualmish, to those compulsively anxious to please.” (The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, p. 43) A wilderness experience allows a person to see without distraction the things that keep us from living more fully or obscure our devotion to God.  Lane reminds us of Saint Jerome, a third-century Christian, who said, “The desert loves to strip bare” (p. 23). 

Withdrawing allows one to focus, “strip[ping] bare” who we are and what we presume is most important or pressing in our lives.  After forty days and forty nights, Jesus is weak in his physical deprivations, yet as it is said, that which challenges strengthens.  He is offered three temptations that have increasing degrees of enticement:  food to eat, power over the world, and finally to challenge God for power.  Each temptation challenges Jesus to exercise his power, to take the easier path.  Jesus refuses each one, which again, by the general measure of the world, would be increasingly foolish.  “If you have power, use it!” the world would say.  Jesus could have done any of these three things, yet he did not.  Jesus not only refuses, he refutes the very thought of being tempted to stray from God’s ways.

In the forty-day period away, Jesus experienced the fruitfulness of the wilderness.  He claims his authority in its proper use and understanding.  Throughout the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is said to live and minister by an authority that is from God, not derived by his own devising or grasping.  Jesus will minister to those whom society and religion alike have deemed lesser people.  Jesus speaks truth to the powers of Empire and Temple.

The opposite of the Devil, the one who has fallen from the heavens above, Jesus remains grounded in his radical trust of God.  Jesus will derive his authority from God, not by any means necessary.  The desert has stripped him bare, just as surely as the desert would any of the rest of us.  In his sojourn among the fierce landscape, Jesus emerges resolved in his faithfulness and goes onward to live out this calling to proclaim the Kingdom of God at hand.  Rather than draining him, the desert experience nourishes him.

In turn, this story becomes a challenge and an invitation to the reader. For the gospel writers, the story of Jesus in the wilderness and the temptations that test him also serve as stories to challenge the disciple.  While we might never climb a mountain or travel far across a desert, the fierce landscapes still await us in the midst of our lives.  We need times away to be stripped down, to face our issues and to examine ourselves before God.  The “fierce landscape” may come in that day spent away from work, clearing your head while letting the noise of life drift off.  The “fierce landscape” may be the time as Belden Lane discovered, while sitting in an anti-septic smelling hospital room, keeping vigil and companionship with a loved one as they die. 

The fierce landscape, whether desert or mountain, is that place where you feel pared down, made to take a hard look at who you really are and whether or not God is there in the midst of your life.  You will know these times for their fierceness, the way they make you feel apart or adrift.  Yet in that ferocity, the journey will be well worth it, strengthening you as surely as it challenges.  As Belden Lane reminds,

In early Christian tradition, the desert was perceived ambiguously, usually as an unfriendly, intimidating domain; but for those able to endure its purifying adversity, an image also of paradise.  If desert terrors can be sustained as the self is laid bare under its harsh scrutiny, dry land becomes an avenue of hope (Lane, p. 43).