This one is by my friend Ian Twiss, who I knew at Seabury. He's one of my inspirations for writing a monologue sermon (the other is my friend, More Cows, her sermon is here and was mentioned in this blog here.) This one is Lazarus' journal, after Jesus raises him from the dead. Ian is rector of Lutheran-Episcopal church in Michigan - Holy Faith Church.
Day 1
It was a muffled sound. A call or a cry. By the time I recognized it, I knew that I had been listening to it for some time. I also remember rock under my back, a stink of rot cutting through perfumed ointments, gauzy light as if from behind curtains. I got up and stumbled toward the call, and then fingers were pulling linen from my eyes and my limbs tingled with the new pulse of blood. I blinked. Immediately I saw the one whose voice had stirred me out of that place. His eyes were wet with tears, and I had the immediate and odd intuition that he would not live long.
I’m not sure what happened next. My memory is still fuzzy. We went back home a while later, I know. I passed into the hut in which I had lived my former life. In my room was a bed, two wool tunics, some pots and jars, and my loom, the tool of my trade. It all seemed both profoundly beautiful and totally unimportant. I almost felt as if I could smell my old life in that room and the smell was as distant and unfamiliar to me as if it belonged to another person. In the hearth room I could hear Martha beginning to stoke the fire for the meal, Mary humming one of her distracted tunes. I sat down on my bed. I didn’t know what to do with myself.
Day 2
This morning I woke early when the light was still dusty and gentle. I slipped out of the house and followed the path up to the olive groves on the hill. I wandered for an hour or more, the fallen olives squishing beneath my feet.
On my way back I met a boy and I remembered who he was—one of the clearest memories I’ve had from my old life: the son of a Samaritan who lives up in the hills in a sort of cave. The boy was herding his sheep and didn’t meet my eyes. We don’t mix with Samaritans because they are not true Jews and the rabbis who study scripture say they make us unclean. But I remembered this boy because I once saw a grown man spit on him in the marketplace. The boy wanted to buy some dates the man was selling. He asked the man a question, and without a second’s pause to consider, the man spat. The boy could not have been more than eight. As the gob slid down his black hair towards his ear, the man turned away to serve someone else, a real Jew.
Anyway, when I got back from my walk in the olive groves, the sun was starting to hammer the cool out of the air. Martha was sweeping ashes from the oven.
“I got up to get you your breakfast,” she said. “Where’ve you been?”
“Walking,” I told her.
She raised an eyebrow. “Well that’s a new development.”
Day 5
At first I thought I might live out my days like a leper, rotting skin falling off of me, but my body seems to be quietly repairing itself. I can almost feel the fibers of my muscles growing firm. The smell of unction and dead flesh has faded some too, though every once in a while I still get a surprising whiff, often as I pass in through the doorway of my house.
The truth is that in my previous life, I spent a lot of time in there. Too much time, really. Long hours in my room. It wasn’t always so, but somewhere along the way I lost interest in going out much. For hours and hours I wove blankets and fabrics at the loom to support our household. None of us was married, so Martha and Mary were happy to have me around. I think I provided Martha with someone to focus on, truth be told, someone to mother and manage. Not that I’m complaining. She runs an orderly household and makes better bread than our own mother did.
But now, I don’t know, there’s just an urgency driving me away from all that. Each day I go out early into the new sunshine, as if I were looking for something. It’s not just that I was dead and am now alive. It’s that, even before that, I think I was asleep. So tragically asleep, while the beggars starved and the young spouses made love and figs ripened and the tenant farmers lost their land and the sweet rain fell or failed to fall. All the gifts and losses of the world! All the love to be shared, while I bent over that loom in my dogged unwillingness to wake up!
Day 8
I saw the Samaritan boy again today, over by the well in the heat when no one else was there. He was drawing up a bowl of water, and when he saw me he froze in place. I stood still and didn’t advance. The boy had bad skin, some kind of rash along his neck. He sucked on his upper teeth and watched me. Slowly I raised my hand in greeting. The boy dropped the bowl and backed away from the well, then turned and ran.
Day 9
Some details of the day of my miraculous return are still lost to me. There was a crowd there, that I know—some day laborers and children. I remember the Messiah’s cry, but not his words. What did he say to me? What was he calling out? All I can bring to mind is the quality of that voice, muted and urgent.
Before that, there is just a gap in my mind, a nothing.
Before that, the last moments of my previous life: how I had been turned on my side, how breathing felt like shoving rocks around in my lungs, how Martha passed in and out with wet rags and wine and liniments and candles, always hovering and fluttering, while Mary sat quietly at the foot of the bed. I grew dizzy toward the end. The room filled with a slow thudding sound. Martha was crying, wailing really, as she paced the floor, and I remember thinking “Too much, too much.”
Day 11
“You sure are spending a lot of time away from the house,” Martha said.
“Does it bother you?”
She shrugged. “I’m just saying. Up so early, gone so long.”
“Well, I guess mornings have a new meaning for me.”
Mary came into the room, doing some kind of little dance. We watched her twinkle across the hearth. Then Martha poured a measure of wheat grains in her bowl and began to grind them for flour, her pestle hammering its quick, practiced rhythm.
“What about the word ‘Samaritan,’” she said. “Does that have a new meaning for you too?”
“Ah,” I said. “The village rumor mill.”
“Lazarus, this is not a joke. Do you know how much trouble you’re going to cause us? The rabbi’s wife is giving me looks. What has happened to you anyway?”
“Well, I died. Remember? Then I was given a new life.”
Still jabbing at the wheat, Martha shook her head. “To think it’s what I was praying for.”
Then Mary stopped dancing and stood still. She just stood still.
Day 12
This morning there was a small warm breeze coming across the valley, and the smell of the olive groves thickened the air like oil. It was still dark out. I was awake even earlier than usual. All the things of my old life rose up like shadows around the room, and I couldn’t believe how many years I had shut myself up in there, just tending to my own business, just being the bachelor brother and the weaver and letting the rest of the world riot past my window. I rose quickly and went out, grabbing a pear on my way.
It was on my way back an hour later that I encountered the Samaritan boy, sitting under a scrub tree near the edge of town where the chief Pharisee lives. Several times I’ve passed the boy with his herd out on the hills during my morning walks, but we have still never spoken. Of course, we are both aware of the rules. I sat by the boy to remove a pebble from my sandal. He didn’t get up to leave. I could see that he was eyeing the pear, which I was still carrying and had put on the ground beside me. I rubbed it on my shirt and held it out to him. He hesitated. Then he took the fruit and ate, chewing and slurping hastily. We sat together there, in front of the Pharisee’s house of all places, watching the dawn creep over the world, daring someone to notice us.
And that was when I remembered the words that had called me into this new life. They came back to me, sudden and clear, reaching through all that linen, all that entombed air: Lazarus, come out!
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