Scripture: John 11:1–44
“Hope is the thing with feathers,” writes Emily Dickinson,
“’Hope’ is the thing with feathers”
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –
Friends, we are engaged in a great New England winter — testing whether we as a people, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
I’ve been back from parental leave for seven Sundays and it has snowed on five of the seven — I’m including today, though it has yet begun. I will be one of the happiest to see the snowy tundra disappear and ice dams to melt and the buds on trees and flowers to appear in their yearly miracle of new life springing eternal.
But there is something that a great New England teaches us. It’s like Lent, where people sometimes give up something in the hope they will discover what really sustain us.
In the Lenten wilderness there is danger — the same as a New England winter. We need each other to get through both. The poet Robert Frost was able to capture this quality of a New England winter — the nature of a deep, harsh, cold night to clarify our innermost humanity and send us back into the world changed.
Frost captures the power of winter in its silence.
In the poem “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Eve,” there is a silence in a clearing as a traveler stops “to watch the woods fill up with snow” on “the darkest evening of the year.” He writes,
“The only other sound’s the sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake.”
What little sound there is heightens the senses and fills this quiet scene. The traveler remarks that they could sit and look at woods all night — lovely, dark and deep. But the silence reminds them of the promises they have yet to keep, and they continue on the journey home.
The clarifying silence somehow drives us back toward action. In the same spirit, Pope Leo in his Lenten message this past week asked people to fast from speaking words that hurt our neighbors.1 In a sense, it was a call to embrace strategic silence — not to be silent about moral atrocities or behavior that need to be named and held accountable, but to be strategic about the way that we do these things in the hope that words of hate don’t multiply the world’s hurts and harms in our handling of them.
It’s not easy or straightforward, but a good challenge of the Lenten wilderness to seek peace.
In the story of Lazarus, the dead friend of Jesus was alone in the silence of the tomb for four days before Jesus came to below the name of Lazarus into the cave and called him back to life. Four days is a lot of silence — but it’s not too much for Jesus who uses the occasion of Lazarus’s death to perform his seventh and final sign — one last miracle.
I find two especially important moments in this story. The first is when Martha–Mary Magdelene affirms Jesus, saying, “Yes Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” I call her Martha–Mary Magdelene because of a movement in the Christian tradition to see the two sisters of Lazarus (Martha and Mary) as the one Mary Magdelene, in order to correct a scribe’s error in the second century.2 This is a critical moment where the absence of Lazarus helps to clarify the amazing grace and sustenance of Jesus in the eyes of one of Jesus’s most devoted followers.
The second important moment is when Jesus cries. It’s the shortest verse in the King James Version of the Bible: chapter 11, verse 35: “Jesus wept.” The absence of words seems to clarify for Jesus what he wants to do next, which is to return his friend to life.
This past week has been one of those thin times in our own world when we also travel close to other side of the veil.
Ash Wednesday is a reminder of mortality, with the imposition of ashes on our foreheads and that line of scripture from Genesis, remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return. Hundreds of folks came through the church parking lot to mark the outset of this fragile season.
There was also the shooting at the Lynch Arena ice rink in Pawtucket, with tragic loss of life impacting children and families from cities and towns all across the region. The pain of this event hits us all in different but profound ways.
We had two funerals through the church — church member Patricia Anthony, and community member Randa Reyes.
And as mentioned, we’re still in the forceful throes of winter outside with the wildness of the world providing a vulnerable backdrop for everything else.
To top it all off, as I wrote about in the church weekly newsletter, we also had a pigeon trapped in the church boiler room down in the basement.
And I couldn’t help but connect the poor bird and poor Lazarus in my mind throughout the week as I considered this scripture story.
We are not told what sickness killed Lazarus, we know only that he has died — in the same way that we don’t know the bird got into the church boiler room, except for a possible harrowing trip down the chimney.
They both ended up in a windowless room of sorts.
Both draw people to them in the time of need. Lazarus draws Jesus to him, and the pigeon drew East Providence Animal Control to it.
While Lazarus is in the tomb, Jesus talks about God with Lazarus’s family.
Here at the church, while the bird zoomed around the boiler room, we were having a funeral planning conversation with Randa Reyes’s family, discussing how to plan the praising of God for the life of one of God’s beloved children.
And finally both are called out from their tombs — Lazarus and the pigeon are both called forth and sent back into the light of day — Lazarus leaving a stench and the pigeon leaving behind a bucket of brackish water where it had sought warmth and shelter.
The raising of Lazarus from the dead is a wild miracle. Nicodemus — the religious elite who we met back in January — has to step in and exercise his moral authority to keep the temple police from seeking out and detaining Jesus after he performs this wild miracle.
In a context of death and loss, we have these resurrection moments to clarify in a thin season the beauty of the good news.
Lazarus is a bird that has flown free.
We are here watching, and accepting the good news of this story.
Unbind him and let him go. Let us all go.
Even in the heart of winter, “hope is the thing with feathers. / That perches in the soul – / And sings the tune without the words – / And never stops – at all –
Amen.
