Down and Out

Down and Out: On the Inconsequence of a Bodily Resurrection Meanwhile, a few weeks ago in Tacoma, Washington, Tiffany Kauth had taken her dog, A Commentary for the Fifth Week of the Sugar, to Ron Paceʼs Saturday morning dog Lenten Season, 2011 obedience class. Once there, the dog suddenly collapsed with a seizure. Itʼs eyes rolled back in [For context it will be extremely helpful to be familiar with the its head, and it stopped breathing. The trainer Common Lectionary Texts found at the end of this first tried chest compressions for a couple minutes commentary] on the animal. When that didnʼt do the trick, he resorted to mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. With Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to his own lips covering those slobbery jowls and Jesus, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days." … Jesus cried wet nostrils, he forced oxygen into the dogʼs out in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The lungs. dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a Seconds later the dog revived! It appeared to be cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let a little frightened and bewildered at having him go." (John 11:39, 45) returned from the dead, but was otherwise okay. Holding back the tears, Tiffany later told reporters, But when you get back up on your feet again, “I was absolutely certain that I was losing my Everybody wants to be your old long-lost friend. dog.” But as it happened, Sugar was only down, Itʼs mighty strange, without a doubt, but not out. Nobody knows you when you're down and out. Depression-era songwriter, Jimmy Cox But the best shaggy dog story recently occurred when a cage with six pups was found dumped outside an animal control shelter in a small town When the catastrophic tsunami swept ashore near Oklahoma City. The vet determined the along Japanʼs north coast last month, it swept so critters were too sick to survive, and the decision much flotsam and jetsam back out to sea it is was made to euthanize them all. Each dog was anticipated some of the floating debris will reach given two lethal doses of a sedative, one injected all the way across the Pacific to U.S. beaches in into the foreleg and the other into the heart. Either the coming days. dose was more than enough to kill a dog. But two weeks after the initial destruction -- once But the next morning animal control officer Scott rescue efforts had shifted to recovery mode for Prall found one of the pups alive and well, peering the thousands upon thousands of bodies to be out of a dumpster used to dispose of the animal dug out from the mud tombs, or retrieved from the remains. "He was just prancinʼ around,” Scott sea, a helicopter twenty three miles offshore said. “He heard me drive up, and he just looked spotted a dog pacing back and forth on what was up and saw me!" once the roof of someoneʼs home. When a young girl in town (the name of the town, The rescue workers winched the mutt to safety, by the way, is Sulphur, OK … hey, you canʼt make with the entire operation caught on videotape, just up stuff this good) heard the news, she named the in time for the evening news broadcast. The dog Wall-e, and posted his story on Facebook. It dogʼs owner spotted what once was lost, but now went viral, of course, and before long thousands was found on the television screen. The tearful, of people wanted to adopt the death-defying tongue-lapping, tail-wagging reunion provided one miracle mutt who nobody wanted before. Even little story with a happy ending, in the face of so with the fresh stench of death all about him, Wall- much death and destruction. Going by the name e had more than beat the odds, to dance on his of Ban, the mutt was clearly down, but not out. own grave. If Iʼd been there to hear Wall-e a-howlinʼ, dollars wings? Or does it raise up the believer -- even to donuts I just betcha heʼd be singinʼ the blues: here, even now -- to a new life of grace; where the feet start to tap a different tune, as the heart canʼt But when you get back up on your feet again, help but leap for joy? Everybody wants to be your old long-lost friend. Said it's mighty strange, without a doubt, Nobody knows you when you're down and out. Is he the one through whom we too can find something more than merely forestalling the inconsequential Now, Johnʼs gospel offers a detailed account of what certainly sounds like a newsworthy story; inevitability of our own mortal death? If about a character named Jesus, bringing his so, then what would such believing entail? friend Lazarus back from the grave. While And … does it raise up the believer … to a Lazarus gets a mention in some of the earlier new life of grace; where the feet start to synoptic gospels, Johnʼs account develops a tap a different tune, as the heart canʼt help highly stylized Christological and cultural but leap for joy? statement of belief by this particular early Christian community. This story ends with that unanswered question, As such, they were a generation or two removed when Jesus turns to the crowd of onlookers and from any eyewitness accounts of what might have delivers that wonderful line, “Unbind him, and let been an original version of a common human him go.” Let him go to do what? circumstance that later evolved into this wonderful mythic tale; meant to convey some profound Whatever becomes of Lazarus? What will gospel truths, over against any unbelievable Lazarus do in the meantime – the days to follow, supernatural feats of magic. between his premature death and his eventual demise – with this emancipation act Jesus has In Johnʼs telling of this story, this Jesus is not just declared, and the new life given him? a miracle worker who (previously) heals the sick and restores sight to the blind. Reading back into It seems to me that is the question for each of us this story from what was a post-resurrection to figure out; if we would believe in the experience of faith, this Jesus now professes to transformative power of Godʼs truth and grace, be the living, breathing reality of God that once made manifest in the way of life Jesus embodies dwelt among us; and still remains among his for us. subsequent believers in fresh and transformative new ways. “I am resurrection, and I am life,” is Again, donʼt get hung up on the believe-ability or the claim attributed to him. un-believe-ability of the too-good-to-be-true part of this story, which temporarily reverses and delays It is this Jesus who has forged the new frontier the inevitability of Lazarusʼ death. I say this with and crossed the great divide for those who will some understanding and appreciation of the fear have to decide whether or not they believe he is and pain, the grief and loss and suffering that can the messiah of God. Is this Jesus the Christ? Is almost overwhelm those who grieve. he the one through whom we too can find something more than merely forestalling the “If only youʼd been here,” Martha plaintively says inconsequential inevitability of our own mortal to Jesus, when he finally shows up a day late and death? a dollar short. I suspect this is the cleaned up version of the original, which was probably closer If so, then what would such believing entail? to, “where the hell have you been?” What is the consequence of such belief? Is it merely some false comfort and cold assent, which There is not one of us who would not have wished simply leaves one stiff as a corpse, awaiting such the death of a loved one -- and our own painful childish fantasies as the grim reaper, St. Peterʼs loss -- could not have somehow been avoided or interrogation, pearly gates, harps and angelʼs reversed; when in our grief, the lingering phantom presence of the one who is dead and gone was And, more than just a graphic detail for the sake sometimes as palpable as our own breath of emphasis, there is almost a throwaway line between two heartbeats. that, if retrieved, can lead us to understanding the deeper message in this story; and to which the But if you have any inclination to want to hang miraculous raising of the one who is dead and everything you believe to be true on a literal gone only points us. Namely, the stench of death reading of this story, the other scripture story we had already taken over. read about Ezekielʼs vision of an entire valley of dry bones getting reconstituted with flesh and And, whereas everybody but Jesus had already sinew can test the limits of this approach. (Ezekiel moved on to the important and painful process of 37:1-14) All but the most diehard literalist would grieving the loss of what was no more, the other understand the old prophetʼs descriptive story is fact of the matter was this: No one was too keen not to be taken as an objective reporter describing on getting too close to what had become of a factually verifiable event. It should more than Lazarus. suffice to convince us of the inconsequential importance of a physical resurrection.

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