Scarred
but Moving Forward: Lazarus and Living Beyond Wounds Scarred but
Moving Forward: Lazarus and Living Beyond Wounds Scarred but Moving
Forward: Lazarus and Living Beyond Wounds

Scarred but Moving Forward: Lazarus and Living Beyond Wounds

In this Sunday’s gospel, we hear about the raising of Lazarus, who had died after an illness at his Bethany home. Lazarus and his sisters, Martha and Mary, were very close to Jesus and had let him know that Lazarus was not well.  So it seems a bit odd that Jesus, having heard his friend is not in a good way, doesn’t go to see him immediately. He stays where he is for a couple more days and, when he does eventually get to Bethany, his mate has been dead for four days!  Both Martha and Mary say to Jesus at different points in this Sunday’s gospel, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died!” which implies, “So why weren’t you here?  What were you playing at?  He was your mate!”  When we suffer in life because of situations we have brought on ourselves - say if I have crashed my car whilst driving over the limit or ruined my liver through drink - we might more easily understand and accept our troubles.  But if our suffering is not our fault or seems unjust - say a hereditary illness or if someone we love dies in the rubble of an earthquake - then we might be tempted to ask, “Why am I suffering?” or (if we believe in God) “Why has God allowed me to suffer?”

Well, in this Sunday’s gospel, we see for sure that God’s mates suffer! Saint Theresa of Avila once said that when she complained to God about some suffering going on in her life, God replied, “But all my friends suffer.” To which Theresa replied, “Well, it’s no wonder you’ve got so few friends then, Lord!” Believing in God does not exempt us from the human condition, from living through the same garbage everybody else has to go through. Suffering, humiliation and death will eventually find us all at some point in life.  If there’s such a thing as God, it is abundantly clear that God doesn’t offer special mates’ rates in this world!  The Christian might reply that God in human form (Jesus) also had to find that reality out the hard way, when God the Son asked God the Father for mates’ rates in Gethsemane!  God the Son asked for a dispensation from suffering the night before the crucifixion, but the Father doesn’t bail the Son out.  When the mob ridicules him on the cross - “If God is your Father, let him come and rescue you!” - there’s no SAS-type rescue attempt. God brings good about through suffering and death, raising him up only after he had gone through that.

As a little aside, this is one of the reasons why most Christians dismiss the prosperity gospel.  Have you ever heard of it?  It basically says that if we trust in God, have faith, stay positive, give money to churches (also known as “sowing seeds”), we will find that our material wealth and our health increase!  (It seems immediately obvious what makes this decidedly dodgy - flourishing is linked to our gifting money to churches!)  Be religious, and God will see that we prosper financially! This prosperity gospel is more common among Reformation Christian communities (I think it grew out of Pentecostalism originally, but I may be wrong).  Before Catholic Christians get too pleased with themselves, however, it is worth pointing out that some would say this is today’s version of the transactional thinking that lay behind the abuse of the medieval Catholic system of indulgences (which was a big factor leading to the Reformation). Both indulgences and the prosperity gospel have a quid pro quo relationship whereby financial contributions (“buying indulgences” or “sowing seeds”) are expected to yield tangible, divine benefits (material wealth for the former, spiritual indulgence and time off Purgatory for the latter).  The obvious contradiction of the prosperity gospel, THE glaring example to the contrary of this skewed theology, is Jesus’ life of simplicity and his death in shame.

So is there a reason we suffer?  Or is suffering just plain, stupid, meaningless pain (because life is ultimately futile)?  That is too big a question to answer in a Friday Thought, and people far cleverer than me have written long books about it!  So just one thought from me. Timothy Radcliffe asks us to notice how Lazarus, emerging from the tomb having been raised by Jesus in this Sunday’s gospel, walks forward still bound in bandages.  In other words, he walks forward into his future still bearing past wounds.  So do we, says Radcliffe.  We have no choice but to carry wounds.  Some wounds are huge and gaping, some are smaller and less painful, but none are pleasant, and they leave us hobbling, sometimes even unable to take a first step.  Wounds in life find us all and scar us all.  But, as Lazarus shows us, we can eventually move forward with those scars.  What was once powerlessness can be used as power, as an energy to move us and those whose lives we share into a better future.

I am presently writing a chapter for a book celebrating the life and work of a BBC journalist who wrote a doctoral thesis exploring how human wounds can become sources of healing for others and for ourselves.  How?  He says that it is not that our wounds heal others, but rather that our wounds can add to our gifts and colour our personality in such a way that they can make us kinder, more compassionate, and more attractive to others.  Sadly, gifts and qualities in another person can make some people jealous of that person.  They see that gifted person as a threat.  That’s life.  Often, this is because some people use their gifts and qualities to stand out and be set apart from others.  Gifts and qualities can be things that some people use to say, “Hey, look at me!”  That’s understandable and okay when we are starting out in life, trying to forge an identity for ourselves.  It’s a bit worrying when we are still doing it, like an overgrown child, in our maturer years.  But if our gifts and qualities have been coloured by our wounds and weaknesses, we become more compassionate and humble.  Our gifts and qualities become a source of grace, a source of help and strength for others, when they issue forth from a decent human being who has become softer, kinder because of their mistakes and wounds, and who employs them for the good of others, rather than as a way of showing off and standing out.

The most remarkable thing about some dry talented people is not their talents, but their deep humanity. Our schools, our parishes, our churches, our workplaces, our boardrooms and our world are full of brilliant, gifted, talented people.  Their gifts are great and, for a theist like me, are blessings from God, to be enjoyed, celebrated and admired.  But when these gifts are also augmented by our wounds, they can make us softer, more compassionate, more emotionally intelligent, more attractive to others, and more human, and they can be used to make the world a better place. Have a lovely weekend, Beaulieu!