Readings: Ezekiel 37:12-14; Romans 8:8-11; John 11:1-45
As we continue our great national experiment
in “social distancing” and “self-quarantining,”
some of us might be feeling
as if we know just a little
what it meant for Lazarus
to be confined in his tomb.
It not simply that we are entombed
within the walls of our homes
for most of the day;
it is the loss of the moments,
casual or calculated,
of embodied human contact
with which our days were formerly filled:
handshakes or hugs of greeting,
lunches with friends or colleagues,
friends visiting in our homes,
dinners out in crowded restaurants,
even face-to-face meetings to conduct business.
And for Christians, of course, there is the loss
of gathering for worship as a visible body,
shoulder to shoulder,
offering praise to the holy Trinity
and receiving into our bodies
the living flesh and blood of the Lord Jesus.
The tragedy of death is not simply
the cessation of biological functioning.
It is also the fracturing of human community,
the loss of bodily connection among people.
The poignancy of the loss of Lazarus
is conveyed in John’s Gospel
not by his dead body,
which lies hidden from sight,
but by the grief of his sisters,
who display for us the raw wound
of human connection torn apart by death.
We see it even in Jesus himself,
who weeps at Lazarus’s tomb
in witness to the devastation that death wreaks
upon the bonds of human love.
Even for those who believe,
as the Church’s liturgy for the dead proclaims,
that for Christ’s faithful “life is changed not ended,”
who believe that we are still united in love
with those who have entered into death’s mystery,
there is still the loss of that day-to-day contact
that lies at the heart of grief.
The resurrection that will restore to us
the embodied presence of the other
lives in us as hope, not as possession.
And so too during this time of pandemic:
even as we know that the lives of our friends and families
continue while we are separated from them,
even as we know that we can still communicate at a distance
and that this time of separation will one day end,
there is for now the loss of that ordinary embodied presence
in which our lives had once been immersed.
In some small way,
in this time of enclosure
we are tasting the loss that death brings,
the confinement and constriction of life,
the absence of embodied presence to others.
This past week the Church celebrated
the feast of the Annunciation,
which draws our attention
to another kind of enclosure
and another kind of embodied presence:
the Son of God coming to dwell
for nine months within Mary’s womb.
Unlike the tomb,
which cuts us off from bodily presence,
the womb is a place of most intimate presence
as the child develops within the mother’s body;
because of this intimacy
the womb is a place of life and growth,
not of death and decay.
And we might say that—
by way of anticipation in the raising of Lazarus,
and supremely and for all time
in his own rising from the dead—
Jesus transforms the tomb into a womb,
a place of death into the place
from which life springs forth.
What we celebrate at Easter,
and anticipate this Sunday in the story of Lazarus,
is precisely this transformation.
I suppose it might be a nice bit of symbolism
if we could, as some have suggested,
choose Easter as the date on which
we would end this experiment in confinement.
It would be nice if Easter Sunday could be the day
on which we emerged from our exile
to be restored to bodily presence with each other.
But to do this would not only be to foolishly ignore
the realities of this global pandemic,
it would also be to deny the ways in which
the risen Lord is already transforming
our time of confinement from tomb into womb.
To limit our contact with others for their sake
and the sake of the common good
is already to embody life in the midst of death.
I have been amazed at the level of concern and creativity
that people have shown in responding to this crisis,
from formerly technologically inept pastors
streaming messages of hope to their flocks
to people sewing protective masks at home
to support depleted hospital stores.
For the love of God poured into our hearts
cannot be confined by walls or held at a distance.
The grace of God can transform this time of confinement
through the same power by which Jesus called Lazarus forth.
Let grace grow in us as Christ grew within Mary’s womb
and let us be reborn by the power of Easter
to lives of greater faith, greater hope, and greater love.
And may God have mercy on us all.
