(Jn. 12: 2)
Monday in Holy Week
Jan Robitscher
CDSP Chapel
April 2, 2012
Isaiah 42:1-9
Psalm 36:5-11
Hebrews
9:11-15
John 12:1-11
In the Name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
We have
completed the forty days
that bring
profit to our soul.
Now we ask
you in your love for us:
Grant us
also to behold the Holy Week
of your
suffering and death,
so that in
it we may glorify your mighty acts
and your
purpose for us,
too great
for words.
May sing
with one accord:
O Lord,
glory be to you.
The canon
on the Resurrection of Lazarus by Saint Andrew of Crete, chanted
at Vespers the night before Lazarus Saturday.1
The Saturday before Palm Sunday is, for our Orthodox counterparts,
devoted to this story of Lazarus. It is celebrated as a day of joy, with hymns
with resurrection themes. Wine and oil are allowed on this day, and
special spice breads called Lazarakia are made and eaten. It is also a
custom to make elaborate crosses of palm leaves or olive branches which are
used on Palm Sunday. For the Orthodox, Lazarus holds a central role in their
celebrations of Holy Week.
Orthodox Easter is not until a week after ours, and we, in the
West, have not quite completed the forty days, but we are at the beginning of
Holy Week. And we celebrate it knowing the end of the story. But between here
and there is something like a labyrinth, or the road we must walk, which begins
at the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry and ends at the beginning of his
new resurrected life. So let us begin with the scene from today’s
Gospel.
Two memories come to mind. The first is a poster I had in college,
the one with bread and wine and the words:
JESUS OF
NAZARETH REQUESTS
THE HONOR OF
YOUR PRESENCE
AT A DINNER
TO BE GIVEN IN HIS HONOR.
The second is that I once saw a painting or an icon representing
the dinner party Mary threw for Jesus in the home of Lazarus. Jesus was there,
and Mary and Martha. and Lazarus. What was striking about the icon was that
Lazarus was depicted as being green--resurrected and yet still corrupted,
unbound by the shroud that encased him when Jesus called him forth from the
tomb. It was about as strange a picture as this story is--and yet it
spoke a deep truth.
The story of the raising of Lazarus, which just precedes today’s
Gospel, is Jesus’ final miracle before his Passion. In the earliest
lectionaries for Lent, it was read (and still is in Year A) proclaimed on the
fifth Sunday, the climax of the miracles which were meant to help prepare
candidates for baptism. It is also the fifth of the I AM sayings of
Jesus,
“I AM the
resurrection and the life. Those who believe
in me, even
though they die, will live.” (Jn. 11:25)
Today’s reading happens just after that, and features two
elements: that Lazarus, called from the tomb, is present at the meal as a
guest(the meal is in Jesus’ honor) and the anointing of Jesus by Mary.
The raising of Lazarus is the culminating miracle, revealing both
Jesus’ humanity (he wept at the tomb of Lazarus) and that at death, as we say,
“life is changed, not ended”, showing Jesus’ divine sovereignty over time and
space, life and death. But it is also the immediate and precipitating cause of
Jesus’ death; it is the final sign that attracted crowds of believers,
convincing the authorities that they must kill Jesus, setting in motion all of
the rest of the events of his Passion.
The focus of the dinner party, however, is not the miraculous
presence of the “risen” Lazarus, but Mary, presumably the sister of Martha.
Mary’s act of anointing Jesus was, for her, an act of adoration,
an expression of her love for Jesus. But, whether she knew it or not (and
clearly those hearing this story were intended to know) her anointing of Jesus
was a prophetic act. For what she did confessed Jesus as Messiah and was also a
preparation for his burial. She knew Jesus was to die. Moreover, she used very
expensive nard, made from the plant and probably imported from India.
Little wonder that Judas objected, albeit for all the wrong reasons. Mary held
nothing back and was not afraid to touch Jesus and to show her devotion to him.
This act also foreshadows Jesus’ washing the disciples’ feet. The fragrance
from the nard filled the whole house.2
And what of Martha, ever the busy one? Without Martha the dinner
would not have happened. Without Mary, Jesus would not have been anointed for
his burial. Without Lazarus, loved by them all, they would not have seen Jesus
as the Lord of Life. All of them are necessary to the story. Each of them calls
us to a different aspect of our walk through Holy Week.
What draws all of these people and actions together is the lesson
Jesus taught by his own life, Passion, death and resurrection: that if we want
to have life, we must be willing to die; to ourselves, to all the powers that
draw us from God, to this very life, itself. And this Holy Week Jesus
imvites us to walk with him through his Passion and death, all the way to the
empty tomb of Easter morning.
In the recent experience of my mother’s death, I knew the “long
good-bye” of her dementia. I knew there there was a finality about her death.
No resurrection dinners as Lazarus had. But I also had the experience that
“life is changed, not ended” and I am certain in the knowledge and faith that
Lazarus’ brief resurrection was but a faint echo of Jesus’ resurrection and our
eternal life with him.
JESUS OF
NAZARETH REQUESTS
THE HONOR OF
YOUR PRESENCE
AT A DINNER
TO BE GIVEN IN HIS HONOR.
We are invited to the dinner given in Jesus’ honor. Here, at this
table we will receive the food that will sustain us on our Holy Week walk
through the story of Jesus’ Passion and death and resurrection; here we will
remember Jesus’ death and receive his Body and Blood, food to sustain us now
and to eternal life.
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