Resurrection: Culture of Life Defeats Culture of Death

"Jesus was a one-man crime wave." - Father John Dear

I was privileged to hear Father Dear speak on Tuesday. He requested that we call him John, as "Father, Dear" was just a little too over the top. So John, then, is a Jesuit priest and peace activist who has been arrested 80 times (by his own count) and who was nominated for the Nobel Peace prize. He was at our church as part of the tour to promote his latest book,
Lazarus, Come Forth!: How Jesus Confronts the Culture of Death and Invites Us into the New Life of Peace.

In John's presentation he breathed new life into the Gospels, particularly the Gospel of John, which is the only gospel to contain the story of Lazarus. Fr. John (as opposed to the gospel of John) argued that Lazarus represents all of humanity; we belong to the culture of death as it is expressed in war, poverty, preventable illness, trafficking, racism, sexism, and death row. Fr. John argued that we are in thrall to death's power, that we do not fully believe that we can defeat it. Just like the mourners in Bethany, like Mary and Martha, our faith is not strong enough to let us believe that life in God / Jesus is truly stronger than death.

Fr. John noted that Jesus wept out of sorrow for our lack of faith in him and in life itself. Then Jesus went to Lazarus' tomb and issued three commands:
1. Take away the stone!
2. Lazarus, come forth!
3. Unbind him, and let him go free!
In Fr. John's reading of the Word, he sees these commands as life-giving orders for each of us. We can roll away the oppressive stone of fear on our heart, walk forth into new life in faith, and be unbound to see, hear, taste, touch and smell what life truly can be.

Fr. John also revisited the foot - washing aspect of the Last Supper, another piece of our faith tradition that only John describes. In Fr. John's narrative, the foot washing is a call to a nonviolent Way, not a call to service (as I described it in my already - outdated epiphany below). He noted the verbs, "Jesus, bent over, lifted, rose" were verbs from the Passion narrative and presaged Jesus' ultimate nonviolent act of death on the Cross. Certainly rich food for thought. New thoughts, new imaginings, new directions - a blessing.