I had needed to visit Robbie for several weeks.
When he moved from Micah’s respite house to a nursing home, I had promised he would not be forgotten. But in the busyness of leading a young non-profit, raising money and learning the many things I had to learn about caring for unhoused neighbors, time had gotten away from me. I needed to go. I thought about it daily; and most importantly, I had promised him a pint of Chunky Monkey ice cream when I came.
The day came when I had made plans to visit Robbie. I stopped at the store, had the ice cream in tow, and my phone rang. The priest from the Catholic church, where I later learned that Robbie’s family worshipped, was calling to tell me that he had died.
Tears immediately fell from my eyes. “I promised to bring him Chunky Monkey ice cream,” I cried. “And I was on my way.”
“You can still take it,” the priest replied, and he hung up the phone.
When I arrived in Robbie’s room he was still cold in the bed. A small, gentle woman about my height introduced herself as his mother. The young, well-put together man who sat at Robbie’s bed side, she said, was his brother.
I had no words. I had obviously been crying, and all I could squeak out was, “I’m so sorry, I know I’m late; but Robbie had asked me to bring him Chunky Monkey ice cream.”
And we all cried some more.
I knew of Robbie’s family; but I had never met them. It was at his death bed that I learned of the years he had struggled with mental illness and addiction. They tried to help. They wanted to help. They did what they could to help.
“I know you only knew my son for a little while,” she told me that day. “But I have had more hope for my son these last few months, than I have had in years.”
I wondered how a mother who had struggled so long and now lost her son could express hope in his untimely death. “He did not leave us,” she said, “without knowing he was loved.”
I don’t believe it is a coincidence that the man brought back from the dead in John 11 and the poor, homeless, beggar who sat at the rich man’s gate, in Luke 16, have the same name. Lazarus means “God has helped.”
You may recall from the Luke story that a man who had been discarded by society discovered new life in heaven. The man who had everything? He lost it all in eternity.
While far too late for the rich man, his fate brought new perspective on the ways he and his still-living brothers lived their lives. His flourishing in the absence of others’ flourishing may have been comfortable; but spiritually they were the walking dead.
Only in death does the rich man, who ignored Lazarus in his lifetime, find a use for him. He pleads with God to resurrect Lazarus and send him as a messenger to warn his brothers.
A resurrection changes nothing, God tells him, if the people who witness it cannot believe.
By contrast, let’s talk about the faith of Mary and Martha in John 11. The sisters send word that their brother is very ill in Bethany. Jesus loved Lazarus, but he did not leave immediately. And by the time he arrived, Lazarus has been dead for four days. To complicate matters, Bethany is a dangerous place for Jesus. He has already made people in power uncomfortable. There was a plot to silence him with arrest and crucifixion; and Bethany was the last place the Jews tried to stone Jesus. It is so dangerous that the disciples first resist the trip. Then they concede, accepting that the journey may result in their own deaths.
The urgency of Mary and Martha’s message is as much out of love for Lazarus as it is their belief that Jesus’ connection to God is so great, it is worth the risk.
By introducing Mary as the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair, the passage foreshadows the different ways the two sisters will worship Jesus after Lazarus’s resurrection. The ways they wait for Jesus’ arrival after Lazarus’ death also reveal the different ways the women grieve.
Martha takes action, meeting Jesus at the edge of the village. She is upright, direct and prophetic about how God will move as Jesus shares their suffering.
Mary is consoled at home by other Jews. She comes quickly; but Martha has to go and get her. She speaks to Jesus from her knees. She brings a crowd of others in mourning.
The water falling from their eyes was so overwhelming, the passage says Jesus was both disturbed and moved. Moved for the love their tears express. Disturbed, perhaps, in how they suggest he is too late for the miracle they had hoped.
The sisters’ words to Jesus are not dissimilar. “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” There is no disagreement that the sisters believe Jesus is a catalyst for God’s power over death.
While Martha does something about her belief, Mary sits with it; and her belief is strengthened as she witnesses her brother’s resurrection.
Through Lazarus, God helps both of them draw closer to God and one another.
The raising of Lazarus was not just a literal activity—it was a counter-cultural expression of a God that redefines our suffering. Before Christ, suffering was an outcome. Not only did Christ make it possible for God to share our suffering; he also gave us someone who showed us how to bear the burdens of one another. As Paul says to the Romans:
If we think we can prevent suffering, we will be frustrated.
If we think we can fix suffering, we will be disappointed.
But if we embrace suffering, we join God in what God is already doing in the world. Even if it takes a long time to get there…the Spirit moves and hope prevails.
I recently read about a ministry called Open Door in Atlanta. Every year during Holy Week, they have a tradition called “via dolorosa of the homeless poor.” It involves spending a week on the streets, in 24-hour blocks, alongside unhoused neighbors in their community. The practice began in the 1980s in a year when Palm Sunday fell immediately after the closing of most shelters in Atlanta. The experience gives the housed community an embodied understanding of homelessness and increases their capacity for lament.
Similarly to the via dolorosa—the way of sorrow—that Jesus walked, the founder of this practice, Murphy Davis says, “homelessness is like a slow execution, [since] the monotony of the day, the exhaustion, the punishment your body takes from the weather, the lack of healthy food, the slavery of labor pools—all lead to death.”
Our community’s winter shelter closed for the season this past Friday. It was also the birthday and funeral date for Mike, a man whom Micah cared for many years.
His daughter, her mother and the man’s two grandchildren joined the Micah community at city dock to remember him and scatter his ashes.
We remembered how he liked to dance. That he convinced his case manager to give country music a try. How he worked with Tree Fredericksburg for a good while, planting trees and beautifying our city. The gift he had for woodworking, and that he handmade a baby crib for his daughter when she was born. The recent years, when he finally made peace with himself, his apartment, and his family.
This was a man who had been to jail so many times that society had given up on him. No landlord would rent to him. No employer would give him a job. He was very much alive the many years we cared for him; but his personal sufferings had deprived him of the same right to exist.
But in that Friday moment at City Dock, life was breathed into all the ways this community joined God to set Mike free from the tomb the world had put him in.
Mike’s 7-year-old granddaughter walked to her mother’s side as the ashes were sprinkled into the river. With a little encouragement she reached her hand into the bag and grasped a fist full of ashes. She opened her hand on that windy afternoon, and the wind carried them away into the water.
When they were gone, she promptly brushed her hand across the front of her pants leg, leaving a perfect handprint.
“Look, your grandpa’s fingerprints are all over you,” said someone gathered there.
Indeed, Mike had left his fingerprints on all of us, as have the hundreds of other unhoused neighbors who have gone before him. Their stories are painful, sometimes devastating and often hopeless. But sharing in their lament, prepares us to receive the Lord.
Perhaps, the miracle in God’s story was not that a man rose from the dead. It was that the people believed when they had no reason to do so.
It’s never too late for a miracle. And resurrection changes everything, when the people who witness it believe.
– Meghann Cotter
Executive Servant-Leader
Micah Ecumenical Ministries