The Fourth Sunday of Lent – A

1 Samuel 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a

Ephesians 5:8-14

John 9:1-41

 

Dear Reader,

Years have not dulled the impact of that encounter.  The mother had come to see me to beg me to visit her son.  I was embarrassed by the depth and anxiety of her supplication.  There was no need for her to implore, I said, I would be happy to visit her son. 

Are you sure, she asked?  My son is dying from AIDS.  I was baptized Catholic ten years ago.  I go to Mass every Sunday.  I love the Lord.  But I weep when I think about my son and those like him who are judged as evil and deemed destined for eternal damnation.  I remember the first time I held him moments after his birth.  He nuzzled me to nurse and as he suckled his little hand reached up as if to caress my breast, the source of the nourishment that would sustain him.  Oh, how I loved him.

I watched him grow, she said.  I remember his first steps and his first words.  He is an only child and so there are no others’ beginnings to compare with his, no others to rival for my affection.  His father left me, abandoned us when my son was barely a year.  He was my joy and consolation.  He excelled in every facet of school.  He was a fine athlete and a linguist.  He painted and acted in plays.  He was popular.  And he carried his secret.  I didn’t know.  It was years after he was away from home that he told me, when he introduced me to the one he said he loved.

I’m watching you, she said, to see how you will react.  If I see revulsion I will thank you for your time and be on my way.  I am not looking for pity.  I am looking for a representative of my church to go to my son and tell him that God loves him and that Jesus’ dying has saved him.  He doesn’t need any more rejection.  There has been plenty of that in his life.  Do you think that God hates my son?  Do you think that God will send my son to hell because of who he is?

I had not had the opportunity to say anything.  All I could do was listen and feel the pain in the woman who sat across the desk from me.  In those days, I had a picture of my parents on my desk taken at a reception given in my honor.  As this mother talked my eyes drifted to my own.  I knew how she would have suffered if my brother or sister or I would ever have experienced the condemnation and rejection this woman’s son had endured.  I could almost feel my mother nudging me and whispering, you know what you have to do.

Where is your son, I asked?

Not far from here, she said.  Will you go to him?

Of course, I said.

But do you know what you will find?  They live in a little house that is kept neat as a pin.  It is small but airy with windows that look out on a sweeping seascape.  They are fortunate in that regard.  My son can still sit in his chair and gaze out at the sound and watch the gulls and eagles soar.  But there is not much left of my son and there are odors.  There are signs that death is approaching.  He is fragile and can do very little for himself.  I thank God for the devotion of his partner.  I don’t know where he would be without him.

I think we should go, I said.

*  *  *  *

The house sat on a knoll overlooking the sound, just as the mother had said.  It was autumn and a chilly wind tugged golden leaves from the maple trees and deposited them, sending them swirling across the lawn.  The late afternoon sun created angled shadows and haloed the house against the sky.  We walked up the path and I felt my stomach tighten even as I prayed that no one would know that.  Before one of us could ring the doorbell, the door opened and a young man in his early thirties ushered us in.  He embraced the mother and, after her introduction, he shook my hand.

He whispered that the son had just awakened and seemed to be doing much better than he had the day before.  He has been agitated, he said.  He keeps pulling on a button on the front of his shirt as he looks out the window.  He hasn’t eaten today.

He led us down a short hall to a doorway that opened onto a rather spacious room, given the size of the house.  A small gas fire burned in the hearth in one corner of the room and next to it sat the son.  He didn’t turn to us at first.  His mother said, Hello dear, and moved to kiss him.  Then she introduced me.  I shook his emaciated hand.  He was gaunt with deep-set eyes that still sparkled giving evidence of alertness and wit.  He was nearly bald.  We talked.

From this vantage point I marvel at the journey we took in that room on that October afternoon.  When I first sat opposite him, he studied me.  I remembered what his mother had said to me early in our conversation.  If I see revulsion I’ll thank you and be on my way.  There was no revulsion.  Sicknesses, sores, even bleeding wounds do not make me squeamish.  The smell of cancer might make me queasy for a moment but I am soon able to block out the smell and be present to the person at hand.  I don’t know why this is so other than once in my childhood when my brother gashed his knee and I panicked about the sight of blood, my father told me to get over it.  This is not about you.  You must care for your brother.  And so it has been ever since.  It’s not about me.

In the first few moments, we talked about nothing – the weather, how fast time goes, who would win the football game on Saturday.  Abruptly he said, I’m dying, you know.  His mother protested and so did his partner.  I looked at him and was silent.  What do you think about that, he said?  I told him I was sorry that he was dying at such a young age with what should be so much life yet to be lived.  But death isn’t the end.

He asked me what I thought the other side would be like.  I told him I had no idea, only that it would be beyond anyone’s wildest imaginings.  I quoted the scripture that says, Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, it hasn’t entered the human heart what God has prepared for those who love God. 

Will I be aware, he asked?  Will I know and be known?

Eternity isn’t like anything we have experienced, I said.  We only know time.  But one thing is for sure, it will take all of eternity to know the God who loved you into creation and sustains you in existence.

His gazed shifted back to the view outside the window.  How long was the pause?  The only sound was from a ticking walk clock that chimed the quarter hour.  As a listener I have learned that every pause does not have to be filled with another’s words.  I am not afraid of silence.  I waited.

There was a sudden intake of air and a shudder, or rather, something like the shiver that comes with a thrilling insight or when the beauty of a symphonic phrase is almost unbearable.  He looked back to me and said, do you think so?  Do you really believe that?  Is that what death will be like?

Oh, yes, I said.  And Jesus will be there.  You will recognize him among those others more familiar to you who will gather around your bed to encourage you.  You might not recognize him at first because he probably won’t look like any of the romantic pictures of Jesus that you have seen.  But from the crowd one will speak up and begin to thank you for all the good that you did for him when he was hungry, or thirsty, or naked, or in prison or hospital.  You will notice that all those standing about your bed will be nodding.  And when you ask, when did I do these things for you?  The answer will be whenever you did it for one of these you did it for me.  Then the Lord will reach out and take you by the hand and say, arise and come.  Inherit the kingdom.

Tears rolled down his cheeks.  He didn’t stop them from falling onto his shirtfront.  His chin didn’t tremble.  His hands didn’t fidget.  They lay quite relaxed in his lap.  Then he sat up and leaned toward the window.  Look, he said.  I followed his gaze.  Two eagles with wings outstretched soared on the early evening currents, rising and falling like the waves far beneath them.  I have a friend, he said.  He told me that when the eagles gather it is the angels come to take you home.

Can I be baptized, he asked?  There was no transition, no preamble.  Can I be baptized now?  My mother would like it.  I’ve thought about it and so would I.

Silly the responses we make when taken by surprise.  I started talking about a preparation course and the proper time of the year when an adult baptism should happen.  Usually, I said, adults are baptized in the course of the Easter Vigil.  I talked about the night and the fire and the Candle lit from that fire.  I spoke of the church shrouded in darkness and the people assembled and how they would break into song proclaiming Christ to be our Light as the Candle is carried in procession to the font.  And on that night the story of God’s love from the beginning is proclaimed in passages from the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. In the Candle’s glow, the Candle that is the sign of the Lord’s resurrection, the baptisms take place in the font. 

I found myself jabbering on, unleashed by the opportunity to talk about a favorite topic.  The litany of the Saints invoked to pray with us, the Saints who are our ancestors in the faith.  The oil.  The white robes worn by the newly baptized.  I wasn’t really mindless of him.  I thought the information was important for him.  But still, he was fragile and his medications might make him drowsy and unable to follow.  Instead he was riveted as I talked about the font as tomb and womb, that in the early church those being baptized stripped naked, leaving the old self behind as they entered the font to die and rise.  He thrilled when I said that the person dies in the waters to be born anew in Christ.  I said that when he would be baptized all of creation would respond.  The earth would quake, the waters would part, the heavens would open and God would call him by name and say that he was God’s beloved son.

Oh, he said.  That was all.  Oh.  And he sat back in his chair and closed his eyes long enough for me to think that he might want to sleep.  I looked at his mother and partner meaning to apologize for having gone on so long and exhausting him.  Their eyes were fixed on him.  Each seemed to barely breathe.  And the clock chimed.

He didn’t open his eyes.  Can we do it now, he said.  I don’t think I’ll see Easter next year from here.

I thought about Phillip and the Ethiopian eunuch.  They met and took a chariot ride together and talked about Jesus.  One ride.  One day.  And when Phillip was about to leave, the Ethiopian said, Look, there is some water right there.  What is to keep me from being baptized?

I told his partner to fill the tub with warm water.  In what seemed like a moment, he returned and said the tub was ready.  I went into the bathroom to check the scene for myself.  I worried how awkward this might be if the tub were too small or too high or too deep.  None proved to be a concern.

I went back into the bedroom and he stood naked, framed in the window by the light from the setting sun.  His robe and pajamas lay in a heap nearby.  His body was gaunt and covered with sores and dark splotches.  Are you ready, I asked?  I reached my hand out to him.  He took it, tripped and faltered and seemed about to sink to the floor.  I moved toward him and caught him in my arms and lifted him.  His arm went around my shoulder and I marveled how light was the burden.

We made our way the few yards to the tub.  His mother and his partner knelt on the tile floor.  Tears streaked their cheeks.  His mother’s hands were clasped in a tight grip beneath her chin.  Her eyes were closed as her lips moved in what I was certain was a prayer.  Don’t kneel, he said with a sternness in his voice I had not heard before.  Stand and witness this.

I held him over the font and asked him, Do you believe?  Do you want to be baptized?  And to each question his answer was, Oh, yes.  Yes, I do.

His mother and his partner supported my arms as I knelt to plunge him into the water.  As he began to enter it, he looked up and with his right arm he seemed to point to the heavens.

Lazarus, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

*  *  *  *

We watched as the casket was lowered into the gaping grave.  His mother and his partner stood and watched.  Strange how silent the moment was.  I looked up a wondered if the eagles would gather.  I thought there should be a prayer to cover the moment.  Only silence.  Eternal rest…we prayed.  And may perpetual light shine on Lazarus forever.

We walked back to the waiting cars.  His mother held the crucifix that had adorned her son’s casket. She stooped to enter the car but then stood and faced me.  You will never know, she said.  She kissed me on the right cheek and touched the spot with her hand.  You will never know.