When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” [John’s Gospel 11.32-38]

We are measuring out our lives in missile strikes. We are becoming accustomed to an appalling situation where war in Ukraine and Gaza are superseded by Venezuela, then Iran, Lebanon and now swathes of Arab nations. The obscene colonisation of language means that “taking someone out” now means execution of an opponent, as opposed to having a meal with a person we like.

Political agitators encourage us to focus on ourselves, to feel aggrieved about the economic burden of fuel (and consequent) prices, while certain individuals, communities and faiths are typecast as terrorists and tyrants, justifying our actions of death as the measure for their sins.

We need to be angry that this is the world we are offered, that we are called to shape our lives around powers and principalities offering death and naming it life, offering slaughter and naming it peace.  

This passage concerning Martha, Mary and Lazarus is one of the most revealing about Jesus’ emotional state. The death of his friend and his family’s accompanying grief affect him deeply.

Death is all around; it is not only his friend’s death, but the reality that Jesus’ own ending draws closer. The gospel writer notes that following the Lazarus miracle, the response of community leaders is not celebration, but them plotting to extinguish both Lazarus and Jesus.

Jesus weeps at what has happened and according to the reading is “greatly disturbed.” A more precise translation is “indignation”; it arises from the sound a horse makes when it is unwilling to comply. Jesus expresses this emotion at least twice, we are told; his friend is dead.

Jesus’ grief is not simply profound sadness, it is unwillingness to accept what is before him.  “Take away the stone.”.

As we draw nearer to the weekend which transforms history, the Lazarus story asserts to us how Jesus understands God’s economy, surrounded by death, yet insisting on life.

We cannot become accustomed to the world where might makes right. The powers that claim authority over life and death, wealth and poverty, faith and other faith must be named – and confronted. The saving of Lazarus, the healing of the blind man, the welcome of the Samaritan woman are not nice, neat gospel stories told to palliate the church, they are the assertion of a God who will not tolerate the powers that isolate and blame, marginalise and condemn.

This is the God of the cross, and the empty tomb.

We are citizens of God’s economy. We will proclaim – and live – the impossibility that death is defeated by resurrection. We will assert that love is offered to all, and mercy is not constrained by politics or geography. Or faith.

We will not be satisfied with the story of death on offer from the world around us. Take away the stone.

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.” [John’s Gospel 9.13-18]

A few weeks ago, a church leader sat with Jesus in the dark, talking (spiritual) obstetrics. The Spirit breathes where it wants. Just last week, a foreign woman shared a midday drink with Jesus, talking about water which quenches thirst forever. The Spirit breathes where it wants.

A man, sitting always in his individual darkness, is suddenly able to see. The Spirit breathes … and people of faith erupt. This in the wrong day. What poor theology.  Something, everything is wrong – wrong day, wrong man, wrong act, wrong answer. There must be someone to blame, to punish, to banish, to deny.

We read this story, and watch it unfold. We wonder how anyone, any community, could act in this way. Then we walk past a mirror, and stumble. All too easily we can locate our face in the crowd, and perhaps even hear our voice.

A gift is given. A life enhanced. One translation uses the phrase, “The Spirit respires where it will”, as if the breathing, the respiration, of the receiver is eased by Jesus’ presence.

Yet, for an awful moment, all the air is sucked out of the room by the indignation of the community of faith. There are rules. The Sabbath is not for healing.

You can’t just feed someone because they are hungry.

There’s a queue, they have to start at the back.

What if she was asking for it?  

The risk of these gospel stories is finding ourselves within them. We hope to imagine ourselves as the one receiving life, and that may well be our experience. We may also find ourselves mingling with those offering judgement, not justice; blame, not blessing.

These narratives of respiration disrupt our faith and our lives. When someone is offered life, it is disturbing for everyone they meet. When a person is offered forgiveness, when people discover mercy, they become entirely different.

There is, however, a profound danger in forgetting. When we forget the wonder of our first respiration; when we misremember what mercy is all about; when we only recall the culture which constrains us and not the Spirit who breathes us life.

When we forget what it is to see again.

This church leader, this foreign woman, this formerly blind man are all offered mercy and life for the circumstances in which they find themselves. Perhaps they, or their families, are members of John’s community, to remind us so that we, in turn, are able to remember.

Our remembering is never solely for ourselves, but for the one who comes to us at midnight, or midday, or in their own personal darkness. Jesus never turns us away.

The Spirit breathes where it wants. May you hear the sound of it.

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?”Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people,“Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him. [from the Gospel of John 4.4-42]

The darting poetry of this conversation, John’s narrative, as this woman and this man engage with each other in the heat of the day. Image and metaphor, question and reframing, step and dance; two thirsty people.

It could almost seem whimsical, even allowing for the context of her apparent social marginalisation and his presence in the wrong territory. With the wrong person.

Notwithstanding, she does not shy away, even at the cultural baldness of his request … demand. The conversation moves through theology and need, to theology again. Claim and counter claim, as sibling cultures engage, working themselves out in the midday sun.    

Perhaps she serves him. Perhaps they each imbibe the well’s gift. Perhaps they are equally blessed to have their thirst relieved.

At what appears to be the utter end of everything, he will be thirsty again. Sour wine must suffice on that occasion, stuttering heartbeats from his final breath. Perhaps one of the faithful women there held it to his lips?

And then the (potentially hazardous) blessing of knowing. And being known. She has hidden here because the journey of being known has proved all too costly. Yet here is the profound gift he proffers her.

A man who told me everything I have ever done. Then the words, unspoken, yet clear as midday sun, and still he offered me life!

This encounter, beyond theology and culture, claim and counter-claim. When we are told (and even believe) that we have no name, no faith, no future, no place but the margins, no worth but our failure, he meets us where we are, he asks us for help, and he offers us life.

He knows all our story, and loves us, this Jesus.

Nothing will prevent Jesus’ offer of life, to each and all of us. Always.

A Drink of Water | Seamus Heaney

She came every morning to draw water
Like an old bat staggering up the field:
The pump’s whooping cough, the bucket’s clatter
And slow diminuendo as it filled,
Announced her. I recall
Her grey apron, the pocked white enamel
Of the brimming bucket, and the treble
Creak of her voice like the pump’s handle.
Nights when a full moon lifted past her gable
It fell back through her window and would lie
Into the water set out on the table.
Where I have dipped to drink again, to be
Faithful to the admonishment of her cup,
Remember the Giver, fading off the lip.

Tell us, what do the living do?
Do you dance? Do you make bread
with each other? Do you walk in the parks
in Autumn, smelling the late summer flowers?
Is it true that some things get to grow old?
What is the world doing now? Are you fighting
with sticks and stones? Do you remember
us? Do you lie down under the stars
and listen to the birds passing overhead,
and do you get to feel the little wings of your own
wild heart be opened? You have somewhere
to go then, don’t you? Go. Don’t let us keep you.
We have names, we are safe. We’re at school.
We are hiding in our favourite little places, waiting
for you to tap us on the shoulders, to tell us
it was just a joke, come home now,
and the bombs and boots are just a game we’re playing,
and the bread and milk are waiting on the table,
and the moon is new, and the gardens are in blossom.
This sentence is the length of one of our shoes.