March 26 Lenten Reflection: Lazarus in the cave

I listened to a Lenten sermon on death and evil as part of my Lenten reflection yesterday (on top of the sermon I heard at church).  They were both very different.

The church readings I heard had a different feeling than the sermon I listened to.  The readings in church were joyful, and a sense of what was coming: the end of Lent.  An end to fasting, the beginning of the rising from the dead, both in season and in eternal life.

The Lenten sermon on death was perhaps a reflection on the priest's state of mind.  He had just returned from his mother's funeral, and when he spoke about Lazarus coming back to life as one of the miracles of Jesus, it probably had some personal significance in relation with his family life.  Indeed, it was a deep and moving reflection on the language of the Bible and the language of the apostles.

There is a tension in the Bible, in the old testament, which is still a challenge for Christians: how do you make sense of the world of suffering of Job, in light of the wisdom and advice that promises doing good will end in good things for you as a person?  How do you understand the relationship of evil in this world, which can seem to triumph in many circumstances, with Job being the perfect example? 

Because Jesus opened up the eyes of the blind man, he rolled away the burial stone, and brought someone back to life, and probably Jesus could have done many more miracles.  But how many miracles remove the evil of mankind?  How many things that the crowd that follow Jesus seem good, how many more miracles are required for repentance?

 And when I say repentance, I mean how can we turn away from evil, and towards good unless we are contributing something towards the good of the world to-be.  I read a very good novel recently, called Half-A-Soul, which commented on the problem of systematic evils, of historical evils that are too big for one person, too big for one moment in time.  It is only our ability to right small evils in front of us, to sew up and connect the broken and frayed strings in our own lives.  

And I think Jesus comes to a similar answer for us.  Jesus did not come to wave a magic wand, to solve all problems immediately. Indeed, there is a system in place for goodness to thrive, but it is not immediate, because the system of goodness itself is not for gratification.  Neither for the gratification of the crowd or the individual does the goodness of God exist: instead, salvation is an experience that can only be found in broken spirits, in quiet moments within the storm where God resides.  Because God did not come to gratify or to make us grateful, but to save.