Dead Man Walking

John 11:1-45

The sole surviving painting of the 15th-century German artist Albert Van Outwater is a depiction of this week's gospel lesson: the raising of Lazarus. Though set in the context of a Romanesque church with its distinctive arches and customary burials in the nave of the sanctuary, Outwater's painting is still able to capture the drama and conflict of John's story. The artist even adds a bit of his own interpretive nuance with the apostle Peter – here represented in the monastic garb of the Middle Ages – trying to negotiate some form of understanding between "the Jews" (as the text refers to them) on the right, and Jesus and his friends on the left. And there in the bottom center, looking perhaps a little pastier than usual but none worse for the wear, is Lazarus himself. He's ready to venture out into the world as a new man.

But "new man" is really misleading here because it is not an accurate reading of the text, and this is what has given me pause for reflection. The commentaries I have consulted seem not to have noticed what I have, or not to have cared. It's always a little disconcerting when the experts regard your personal interest as unworthy of their consideration. But what I want to know is this: Why, when Jesus calls his beloved friend Lazarus forth from the grave, does John insist that "the dead man (ho tethnekos) came out, his hands and feet bound in strips of cloth…" (John 11:44a)? Though some translations try to smooth this over a bit – referring, for example, to "the one who had been dead" – the Greek text is quite clear on the matter. We're dealing here with a dead man walking.

Often when viewing works of art like Outwater's, I like to practice my own variation of lectio divina by engaging in a close and meditative reading of the image before me. As in traditional lectio, my objective is some sort of spiritual insight that I can take away from the experience. One of the questions I like to ask – and usually with less than admirable results – is where I find myself most at ease in the painting. With what group of people do I most identify and why? I wish I could report in this instance that I was right there with Martha or Mary as they professed their faith in Christ. I wish I could say that I resonated with both their frustration at Jesus' late arrival and the renewed hope that came with his presence among them. But I'm not there. If I had a flare for the sensational I'm sure I could report that the image of Lazarus is what most speaks to me – Lazarus who died, like many Christians after him, in the hopes that his savior would soon come and deliver him from his frightening predicament. But that's not me. I'm no Lazarus.

So here is my confession. I am ashamed to admit it for what it reveals about my deep-seeded psychological and physiological insecurities, but when I'm honest – really honest – I find myself among those nay-sayers and gawkers on the right side of this painting. In fact, I'm the guy in the funky hat holding a rag over his nose. I'm the one who in this situation would have exclaimed incredulously – and I like to think I would have done so in the King's most eloquent English – "Sir, by this time he stinketh!" (John 11:39, KJV).

This passage marks an important transition in John's gospel, for it is here that Jesus effectively trades his own life for that of his friend. In the pericope that follows, "the Jews" begin conspiring against him, plotting to kill him for "the good of the nation." Better to kill one man for his indiscretion, reasons Caiaphas, than to bring the wrath of the Romans down upon Jerusalem (John 11:50). So as Lazarus ventures forth into the unexpected hope of a longer life, Jesus turns his thoughts toward the place of the skull, Golgotha, and the realization that his time on earth is growing shorter with each passing hour. It is no wonder then that he weeps; the drama of his friend's passing, the sorrow of Mary and Martha, the stench of death in the air, and the certain knowledge that a darker road now lay ahead, must have been altogether overwhelming. Before his followers could know that he is indeed the resurrection and the life, Jesus would have to endure his own crucifixion and death.

And this brings me once again to the dead man walking, and the suspicion that when all is said and done, this passage is less about resurrection than about the need, even as life slips from our grasp, to affirm our experience as bodily beings. In first-century Palestine there were a number of beliefs concerning what happened to a person after he or she died. The older, more conservative view saw death merely as a separation from God, and Sheol as that place where everyone – the wicked and the just – persisted as mere shades of their former selves. Others, influenced most likely by Plato and the Greeks, hoped for the release of the soul from the tomb of the body and liberation into the eternal, spiritual realm. Many Jews, however, the Pharisees among them, believed that in the final days God would resurrect all who had died and judge them according to their deeds on earth. Christianity, of course, adopted the latter perspective, though you'd never know it to speak with many in the church today who profess that upon death their "souls will go to heaven" to live forever with God. Whatever happened to the Creeds: "I believe in the resurrection of the body"?

At the risk of exposing myself as a heretic I will make another confession: I have a very difficult time getting my head around the resurrection of the body. It just leaves me with so many unanswered questions. Paul says that on that day we will have "spiritual bodies," but this really doesn't tell me much. I guess I can look forward to not having to endure Crohn's Disease as I have my entire life, or my bad knee, or that annoying bald spot on the back of my head. But what kind of body will a spiritual body be? Will I eat? Will I drink? Go to the bathroom? What about sex?

The questions are overwhelming if I let myself get drawn down this path. But then I consider another possibility: perhaps our affirmation of the resurrection isn't so much about our mode of existence after death, but about the goodness of the body that accompanies and in some ways defines us throughout this earthly life. I do not inhabit a throw-away vessel, though there is much in our "culture of cleanliness" that encourages me to think this way. The illusion is that we can all live very neat, very ordered and fulfilling lives if we can only tap into our "true spiritual nature." Of course, this pursuit requires that we eliminate the unsightly distractions that challenge us along the way. So we hide away the anomalies. We place our elderly in assisted living facilities and pay other such undesirables a pittance to clean up after them and keep them company. We enable the disabled with the proper legislation hoping that their marginalization can at least be made a little easier for them, and a lot more efficient for us. With respect to end-of-life issues, our medical professionals pursue the ideal of life at all costs, but at the expense of a meaningful death welcomed ritually in the context of a caring human community. In such a somaphobic society it is no wonder that so many of us aspire to some unencumbered, purely spiritual existence in the great hereafter. It seems that in all we do we attest along with Plato that our bodies are just burdensome tombs for our souls.

But the blessed reality that lies at the heart of the gospel reading this week is this: though we do our best to deny it, we are all "dead men walking." We may not identify immediately with his image in the painting above, but we are all Lazarus. Our hoped-for culture of clean is just a pipe dream, for we all stinketh.

And yet Jesus still calls us forth.

We bear the marks of our immortality within us, and this is as it should be. We like to think that the work of Christ somehow saves us from our deaths, but this is not entirely true; it saves us only from the finality of death. We must then do what we can always to honor the earthly end to which we will one day come, as well as the often frustrating and sometimes repulsive bodies that will accompany us along the way. How easily we forget that it was into such a state that God became incarnate as a living being. "The Word became flesh," John tells us. "He took on the form of a slave," Paul elsewhere confesses -- a slave (dare I say it) who didst stinketh.

I do not know what my resurrected frame will look like in the life to come, and I'm not going to spend much time worrying about it. Thankfully, the story of Lazarus has helped me instead to focus my attention on the here and now. It is enough to know that the body I now bear – with all its smells and unsightly imperfections – is the very one that was baptized and welcomed into the church, the body of Christ, all those years ago. And it is Christ himself who is continually calling me forward, like Lazarus, to touch, to smell, to taste, to hear, to see – to serve – so many other bodily beings in my midst.

"Welcome all as Christ," St. Benedict admonished his fifth-century monks. I'd like to think that John might encourage us also to "welcome all as Lazarus," as "dead ones walking" as it were, and even to do so in gratitude, from the very core of our fragile and vulnerable humanity, as if stepping forth from the darkness of our own tombs into the light of the world. And don't be surprised if at some point along the way you, like Jesus, have occasion to weep, for it is in our empathy, our "suffering with," that Word touches flesh, and Christ is made manifest among us.

Questions for Further Discussion

1. With what person or group in Outwater's painting above do you most identify, and why?

2. Do you agree that we live in a somaphobic (body-fearing) society? What evidence can you offer in support of this? Are there instances that you can think of where bodies are glorified? If so, what kind of bodies do they often tend to be?

3. Does Paul help or hinder us by speaking of "setting the mind on the flesh (sarx)" in contrast to "setting the mind on the spirit (pneuma)" (Romans 8:6)? Do we tend to confuse his theological references to "the flesh" with our understanding of the body? Is there a difference between the two, sarx and soma? If so, what is it?

4. In what ways might the church be more body-affirming in its worship and ministry?