(thanks to Graham Turner who drew my attention to this presentation)

JESUS WEPT. Three people, each of whom had lost a precious relative in the past week, homed in on those two words in today’s Gospel account of the raising of Lazarus: Jesus wept. One lady said: “It’s like God knows exactly where I’m at this morning”.

And isn’t that exactly what’s so deeply healing about our deepest and most truthful encounters with God? Isn’t that just exactly what Jesus personifies for us? Isn’t that just exactly what Jesus appears most to love in those around him? A ready and willing vulnerability – to life in general – with all its attendant joys and risks – and to those who live that life, those joys and those risks, alongside and with us. Like God knows exactly where we’re at?

And isn’t that exactly what’s so deeply healing about our deepest and most truthful encounters with one another? Isn’t that just exactly the gift we can personify for others? Isn’t that just exactly what we most love in those around us? A ready and willing vulnerability – to life in general – with all its attendant joys and risks - and to others who live that life, those joys and those risks, alongside and with us. Like we know exactly where God’s at?

Life and love are indeed about risking openness, in God’s case to us, in our case to God – to Life itself – and to one another. Joy and pain, and losing and finding, are all to be found in both kinds of encounter.

Sometimes too quick to grasp at joy, and sometimes too quick to run from pain, it seems that we human persons must learn how to hold the two in proper tension – drawing always and deeply upon Love’s “wells of salvation” that it may, some day be said of us: “she/he is forgiven much because she/he has loved much”. Or, yet more gloriously, “she/he is Risen!”

COME FORTH!

(and thanks to David Herbert for drawing my attention to this “Lazarus Blessing“)