Defeating Godless Death: Why it could Not Happen by Divine Fiat

[[Sister, I know you might not be able to answer this until after Easter and that's okay. I can see why a lot of individual miracles would not have been enough, I think, but couldn't God have just have defeated sin and death with a word? Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead so why couldn't God not have done something similar for all of us? Thank you for your posts. I really enjoy them.]]

Thanks for your comments and questions. They are good and important ones. They arise for us especially around the Triduum. In fact, the question of what was possible for God came up in a discussion I had with a priest friend on Holy Thursday so it's pretty fresh for me. Your reference to Lazarus' being raised not only sharpens the question, but is actually also the key to answering it. You see, one of the things biblical scholars and theologians point out is that Lazarus was not resurrected in the way Jesus was. Lazarus was not raised to new or eternal life but to a mortal life in and of this world, a life which would one day end again in death. Sometimes they will point out the difference between resuscitation and resurrection in speaking of Jesus himself; the distinction works for what happened to Lazarus as well. What they are trying to point out in this is that there was something lacking in this event; the raising of Lazarus was somehow insufficient to deal definitively with death.

In Jesus' raising of Lazarus, godless death itself is not destroyed and until this happens the victory needed over sin is not accomplished in any life much less brought to completion in every life and the whole of creation. It is therefore possible to understand this particular miracle of Jesus as the climax of a history of acts of power --- healings, exorcisms, etc --- which are still insufficient to destroy godless death and death itself.  Even were Jesus to do this for every person he could have, it would simply not have been enough. Death itself must be transformed from the godless reality it is to a reality in which God is met face to face and one day, destroyed completely. This  entry into the realm of godless death (or, from another perspective, the taking up of godless death into God's own life so that it and the whole of reality is transformed and made sacramental) is the heart of what we understand as the reconciliation of the world on a cosmic level.

On a more personal but intimately related level it is important to remember that the death we die is understood theologically as a consequence of sin. There is a natural perishing which is intrinsic to the evolving, imperfect world we know. But human beings are broken and estranged by sin and this complicates the death we each will die. It is no longer a natural perishing but what I have referred to a number of times as godless death. Every time we make a choice for something other than God or for life in God, we effectively choose godless death as well. If we choose to live without God so then we choose to die without God --- and that means we choose death as emptiness without Love, without God. We not only choose it as a future reality, we build it into our lives and even into our very selves (body, etc.) so it affects every moment of our lives. Paul asks, "Who will save us from this body of death?" He is clear in his theology that the situation is more dire and intractable than a merely natural perishing. It is something from which we must  be saved.

When we are being saved from godlessness this occurs by God transforming this, and in fact the whole of historical existence with his presence. And when godlessness is a dimension of the death which dwells within us and which we ourselves loose in this world, we are speaking of a personal reality which God cannot simply destroy by fiat --- not without destroying us as well. God must be "given access" to this reality, and that access, which is achieved in a generous self-emptying motivated by love of God, must be more radical, more profound, than any sinner can manage. This is so because it can only occur through one's openness and attentiveness to God --- an openness and attentiveness which is deeper than human sinfulness, an openness to the will of God which can only be seen clearly by one whose selflessness and love are entirely uncompromised by human alienation and brokenness.

The NT word for this kind of openness is obedience; to express the radical or exhaustive quality of Jesus' own salvific obedience Paul says more;  namely, he defines it as [[obedience unto death, even death on a cross]]; Jesus' radical, exhaustive obedience, opens the way for God to enter the most godforsaken dimensions of our lives and world. But this is not a miracle he could have done "from the outside" or "without complete self-emptying" in the profoundly compassionate but still somewhat personally distanced way he healed illnesses or exorcised demons. It required he take on sinful death itself in an act of complete identification with out state and in an exhaustive helplessness and kenosis. In this way Jesus' obedience allows for "God's power [to become] perfected in weakness." In both his miracles and in his resurrection Jesus mediates the grace of God. In the miracles he has not yet relinquished the degree of agency or authority he yet possessed nor the distance from our sinful conditions or situation he entirely relinquishes on the cross.

This kind of relinquishment or self-emptying is only "learned" --- if it is ever "learned" or "achieved" in one's life --- through radical suffering. (Words are difficult at this point and in speaking about this "learning" and "achieving", "revealed" in the sense of  "being made real (realized) in space and time" may be the best word here.) The process is not automatic --- as though suffering alone produces the change; it does not. But through such suffering the person of faith gradually becomes entirely dependent on the grace of God; thus, self-emptying occurs. One moves from faith to deeper and deeper faith as human weakness is transformed and transfigured by Divine power. We have all experienced this process in our own lives in various ways and to various depths and degrees, but to remain open to God's presence and power even as one experiences God's complete absence (something I believe only Jesus has experienced) was necessary to destroy godless death. The bottom line in all of this is that God could not have destroyed godless or sinful death simply by fiat; human obedience (openness to God's power and presence) was necessary to allow God access to this essentially personal reality. In his exhaustive openness to God Jesus achieved this in and through his death by crucifixion; as a direct consequence he was raised from godless death to eternal life at the right hand of God.

And though this is a separate topic let me note that what remains is for us to be made sharers in THIS death of Jesus. Christians have had this happen through baptism where they are "baptized into (Christ's) death, and thus too, into his resurrection"; in this way we are literally made a new creation. Eternal life has broken into our temporal/historical world and transformed it utterly; we become a people of hope --- trusting God for the ultimate meaning of our lives and empowered to love God's creation into greater and greater  wholeness as we live this new creation here and now in a conscious and explicit way. This is at the heart of our vocations and (com)missioning to embody and proclaim the Good News with our lives.

The Desert is a Dangerous Place, Eremitical Life is a Perilous Reality

 Dear Sister, usually when you write about the silence of solitude it is a positive thing but your last piece was pretty dark. I wondered if you were okay and if this was a new discovery you had made about the power of the silence of solitude? Someone else wrote about the suffering you were experiencing. Have I missed something (I ask because I care)!

Please don't be concerned. About three months ago I wrote about doing some inner work with my director which was demanding and challenging. I have continued with that and sometimes it has been reflected in my posts --- though generally it has meant fewer posts or posts which were poorly written and kind of rambling --- probably the result of putting these up before allowing my thoughts to mature and gel. I suspect the person referring to suffering was referring to some part of that constellation of posts. The piece I wrote a couple of days ago on Eremitical silence as harrowing as well as hallowing was not a new insight, no, but I certainly know it more deeply and extensively than I did from previous work. Moreover it is an important dimension of eremitical silence I have needed and now need to treat more explicitly --- especially in light of questions I am receiving about eremitical life and candidates with serious mental illness (I am working on one of these right now), or about topics like formation, the need for careful discernment, the indispensability of competent and regular spiritual direction, the danger of eremitical solitude, and so forth.

I have written before that eremitical silence and solitude are not easy and that the vocation itself is demanding. I have quoted Merton and others, noted that this is not a vocation generally suited for those with mental illness (though when it seems possible for someone who functions well and whose illness is stable this should be determined carefully by chancery, directors, therapists, etc on a case by case basis); I have explained that eremitical solitude is not the normal way to achieve personal wholeness and holiness, and I've described instances of individuals who were clearly decompensating as the result of living in an isolation they called "eremitical". I've even written a few times about battling with demons --- usually those of one's own heart! What I may not have done clearly enough is describe the way desert silence and solitude can strip away defenses and break open one's mind and heart to deeper and deeper levels of woundedness (some would speak of deeper or more foundational levels of sinfulness and alienation here but woundedness seems the better choice to me). This has always been implicit in posts referring to inner work, spiritual direction, and the other topics I have mentioned above and it was more explicit in the posts on battling with demons -- a perennial topic for the desert Abbas and Ammas --- but it needed to be made even more explicit I think.

The Desert is a Dangerous Place:

As I approach this anniversary of my perpetual profession as a diocesan hermit (02. September) I have looked back on some of the topics I have felt passionately (and sometimes written extensively) about. What is clear to me is that most of them have at their core the fact that this vocation is a gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church (and only then to the individual) and thus requires the church to treat it with real respect for precisely the gift it is. This means (or has meant) codifying it in canon law, carefully discerning candidates for profession, demanding Rules be written only after a candidate has sufficient experience living the life under competent direction, continuing direction and regular supervision (legitimate superiors), and providing lists of or even access to resources an individual may draw from in order to get the initial formation she needs to live this life well "in the name of the Church". But the flip side to all of this, the reason the charismatic nature of the vocation must be recognized and adequate care taken in all of these ways is also precisely because solitary eremitical life in the silence of solitude is dangerous for one not truly called to it --- or for one who undertakes it without sufficient support and assistance!

After all, one vows to listen in silence and solitude to the voice of God dwelling in one's heart. Moreover, one vows to give that entire heart over to God to love into wholeness and holiness; in this way one comes to know and reflect the silence OF solitude. That is what obedience is all about. But at the same time, the journey into the depths of one's own heart, as I wrote in the last post, can be a harrowing experience, for though one's heart is meant to belong to God alone, very much more dwells and often has dominance there than God alone. Similarly, while God never abandons us, there are times when God's presence takes the form of darkness and distance precisely so we can come to know those parts of our hearts which war against (him) --- against love and life itself --- and which divide us as persons so that quite often we stand diminished, fragmented and at war with ourselves. I wrote recently that the Holy Spirit maintained (was!) the bond of communion between Father and Son, but that additionally it was the Holy Spirit that maintained distance between them as well --- especially during Jesus' descent into hell, for instance. And so it is in the hermit's sometimes dark silence of solitude. God is experienced as absence or remoteness but it is still God's presence we know in these challenging ways.

Journeying With a Competent Director:

The listening (hearkening, obedience) one does involves a breaking open of the hardened and well-defended heart or false "self", and leads to a kind of stripping away of the false and distorted as well as to a revelation of the fearful, fragile, and (thanks be to God) the rich potential living at the core of ourselves. The result is a vulnerability which is excruciatingly painful and which absolutely requires the assistance of a competent director who knows not only how to do this kind of spiritual or "inner" work, but also when it is time to do it as well as when the hermit is strong enough (in her inner covenantal life with God or Selfhood) to attempt it. At these times some parts of the hermit's Rule may be suspended and other changes made to accommodate differing needs for rest, prayer, food, recreation, direction or contact with one's delegate, etc.

Though one's director need not (and probably will not) be a hermit, it takes someone knowledgeable and personally experienced in the same kind of inner journey to assist and accompany the hermit in all of this. Otherwise one will have the equivalent of the blind leading the blind into the pit and tragedy will ensue. (It should go without saying that a "hermit" attempting to live in the desert without the assistance of a competent director with whom they meet regularly is, from my perspective, perhaps the greatest fool I could name. Unfortunately it happens.) In any case, it is also at this time that the hermit's own knowledge, experience and faith, all tested over time, prove their greatest worth.

On my Anniversary:

Despite all I have said here and in a few recent posts which may have seemed uncharacteristically "dark", let me also reiterate that I could not be happier in my vocation as a diocesan hermit. While the inner work in which I have recently been engaged has been difficult and rending (harrowing) it has simultaneously been a clear source of abundant life (hallowing) as well. There is no doubt in my mind that the temporary suffering of this work itself is a grace of God, not simply a source of grace as much suffering is and can be, but a wounding and profoundly life-giving touch of God (him)self and one that I might never have known but for this vocation and those who assist me in it.

Deep healing and growth in holiness is clearly something God is calling me to "in the silence of solitude" and apart from canonical eremitical life I would have neither the time nor the space and discipline for prayer, the access to sufficient direction or supervision, the commitment of profession which empowers and sustains the work, nor would I have the motivation or have been able to grow as sufficiently as I have needed in the commitment which make perseverance in this specific journey possible. God has truly blessed me in this and though there is pain and a sense of great fragility right now, I approach this anniversary with even more life, strength, and gratitude than I have known in the past. The promise of the future, though still being worked out "in fear and trembling" as Paul might put it, is very full indeed.

Adequately honoring this Gift of the Holy Spirit:

Dioceses that fail to pay attention to the reality and perhaps the inevitability of this experience of God in the darkness and abject suffering of the silence of solitude will be unable to assist hermits they profess. Even more problematically they are apt to profess "hermits" who can neither negotiate nor thrive (come to the abundant life Jesus promises) in the desert of eremitical life. Outright illness or a lack of integrity marked by mediocrity and "vocations" which are thus disedifying and even scandalous to all involved will be the result.

To summarize, the desert is a dangerous place. Eremitical silence and solitude are perilous realities and dioceses professing hermits need to be keenly aware of these facts. Especially they must never believe they are merely entrusting individuals to some sort of prayer-filled life of mere peace and quiet! The eremitical contemplative life of prayer in the silence of solitude is wonderful, yes, but it is also a source of real and deep anguish. Becoming God's own prayer in this world is both hallowing and harrowing, often at the very same time. When Jesus said, "I did not come to bring peace but a sword!" he might very well have been speaking, for those called to it, of the significantly growth-full moments of eremitical life! Again, this is something of which dioceses and candidates to canon 603 eremitical life must be aware if they are to truly and adequately honor this rare, valuable, and mysterious gift of the Holy Spirit.

Abba John Colobos and the Fruit of Obedience

In the apothegmata (sayings) of the Desert Mothers and Fathers, the story is told of Desert Abba John Colobos' elder (mentor) having taken a dry stick and planted it in the ground. He told Abba John to go every day and irrigate the stick. John did so even though water was a long way away and it meant John had to travel to the spring each evening only to return hours later at dawn. For three years John made this trip every day. At the end of this time, we are told the stick turned green and flowered. John took the flowers to the Church, and shared them with his brethren saying, "Behold the fruit of obedience!" We hear in this story a clear lesson on the importance and the fruitfulness of persisting in obedience, not merely in the sense of doing what one is told, but in the very much richer and more challenging terms of entrusting oneself to the wisdom and loving mentoring of an elder in a way which, over time, produces astonishing fruit despite the evident impossibility and apparent absurdity of the project undertaken.

Variations on the Original Story:

Unfortunately, today few are familiar with the original story but many have heard scaled-down and skewed variations in which religious superiors demand something similar, usually in order to humiliate and bring to heel novices having difficulty submitting themselves to their superior's commands. In such stories, obedience is less about entrusting oneself to the love of an elder as a necessary part of long-term formation in life than it is about a blind "faith" which demands a subject check their intellect at the door or about breaking another's spirit and causing them to submit to one's will. It is less about opening oneself to a God one can trust to be present even in the darkness and more about simply saying yes to the absurd. It is far less about entrusting oneself to the wisdom of one who knows how to live eremitical life and who is immensely savvy in the ways of the human heart and far more about buying into a narrowly authoritarian notion of obedience.

It is not hard to see why believers and unbelievers alike ridicule the notion of religious obedience, and sometimes faith itself. We can hear them scoff: "Imagine someone persisting in the belief that a dead stick will one day flower! Imagine someone wasting their time, and even their entire lives in subjection to superiors (or a "gospel") that command such absurdities! Imagine such blind and entirely senseless 'faith' where someone submits to the punitive or at best, misguided commands of a superior moved by cruelty, ignorance, and even outright superstition!" We believers have not always done well with our foundational stories.

Desert Apothegm as Analogy of the Story of the Cross

I doubt that many of us today could imagine planting a wooden stick in the ground, watering it daily for years, and having anything fruitful at all come from such a project. Fewer still might listen to the story of Abba John Colobos and adopt such a stick as a symbol of profound hope, true wisdom, or supremely Good News. But it occurs to me that right at the heart of our faith is the story of a wooden stake planted in the ground and watered with blood and tears to bring forth astonishing, even measureless fruitfulness.  God takes the very symbol of barrenness, gratuitous suffering, senseless cruelty, hopelessness, and the despair of godless death and through the faithful obedience (the trusting, persevering, openness, and responsiveness) of his Son, he redeems and transforms reality. Through this event, God destroys sin and death, brings about the reconciliation of all creation, transfigures it into a new creation that shares intimately in his own divine life, and prefigures the day of fulfillment when God will be all in all. In other words, it is through Jesus' own obedience that a barren stake of death is transformed by God into what Christians call today The Tree of Life.

And yet, we have not always done well in conveying this rock-bottom foundational story of our faith either. As with Abba John's response to his desert elder, Jesus' obedience was not simply a matter of doing what he was told; it was a matter of faithfully entrusting his entire life --- every moment and mood of it --- to the One whose wisdom was greater than his own and whose powerful and kenotic love he would, over time, come to embody or incarnate exhaustively. Obedience here would mean becoming the actual counterpart of the One he called Abba just as it would mean Jesus' committing his whole self to the service of all those whom this One loved and yet loves with an everlasting love. I am sure there were many times when such openness to his Father's will tempted Jesus to see his mission as marked and marred with futility. I am positive that working with his disciples and with the religious leadership of his day felt like trying to teach brainless and heartless chunks of wood to explode in cascades of flowers and fruit. Perhaps this is part of the reason Jesus was so upset by the barren fig tree.

Over the past 40 some days we have heard a number of similar stories rooted in the power and model of Jesus. Paul's own story is one of a man converted to what must have seemed like a futile project and who persevered in his own obedience nonetheless. Certainly, some of the original Apostles in Jerusalem thought his mission to the Gentiles made as much sense as John Colobos' apparently absurd stick-watering --- especially since they lacked the roots of the Jewish Law and covenant to build on. And yet, Paul and his pastoral assistants brought incredible fruit from what was considered to be Gentile's religious rootlessness and barrenness. Paul in particular entrusted himself to the crucified Christ, rethought Judaism in light of the cross and resurrection, and forever changed the face of Christianity from a sect of Judaism to a worldwide faith with a mission to proclaim the Gospel to everyone without limits or boundaries. Every story of martyrdom, every witness to the Gospel, every call to forgive and be forgiven, every commission to minister to others in the power of the cross, reminds us that what we proclaim is a scandal to religious folks and foolishness to the wise of this world. It is our own revealed version of the stick-watering story of Abba John Colobos.

Applying the Story of Abba John Colobos Today:

In today's readings, both Paul and Jesus entrust the story of the barren-stick-turned-fruitful-bough to us. This is the proclamation or kerygma we are entrusted with by God, a bit of Christian foolishness many will simply deride, the proclamation we call Gospel. This Friday we will hear the story of Peter's "rehabilitation" by the risen Christ and his call to "feed Christ's lambs, feed Christ's sheep." Because he entrusted himself to Christ's reconciling love we have a Church whose highest leadership is summoned to be a model of obedient love and servanthood.

The mission we are given, the obedience to which we are called -- a responsive commission ratified and empowered at Pentecost ---requires perseverance and trust in a love and wisdom greater than our own.  It means being asked to do great things in our world but often it means saying a trusting yes to small, ordinary acts of faithfulness which -- at least in the short term -- seem to be worthless and of no great moment at all. Especially it means opening ourselves daily so that the Holy Spirit of both the Father and Son together may empower a responsiveness that brings life out of death, hope out of despair, and an often pervasively barren world to flower in faith and new life.

Like Paul and Peter, like John Colobos and armies of Desert Abbas and Ammas, like Christians of every age and culture we are each called to labor daily to water all of these tasks and many others with ourselves, with our tears of love, joy, grief, and sometimes even with our very blood; more, we are asked to embrace and persevere in our commitments of self-gift so that the scandal and foolishness of the Cross may continue to cause the whole creation to sing in joy, "Behold the New Creation, behold the fruit of obedience!"

The Crucified God, Emmanuel Fully Revealed

Three months ago I did a reflection for my parish. I noted that all through Advent we sing Veni, Veni, Emmanuel and pray that God will really reveal Godself as Emmanuel, the God who is with us. I also noted that we may not always realize the depth of meaning captured in the name Emmanuel. We may not realize the degree of solidarity with us and the whole of creation it points to. There are several reasons here. First we tend to use Emmanuel only during Advent and Christmastide so we stop reflecting on the meaning or theological implications of the name. Secondly, we are used to thinking of a relatively impersonal God borrowed from Greek philosophy; he is omnipresent rather like air is present in our lives. He seems already to be "Emmanuel". And thirdly, we tend to forget that the word "reveal" does not only mean "to make known," but also "to make real in space and time." The God who is revealed in space and time as Emmanuel is the God who enters exhaustively into the circumstances and lives of his Creation and makes these part of his own life.

Thus, just as the Incarnation of the Word of God happens over the whole of Jesus' life and death and not merely with Jesus' conception or nativity, so too does God require the entire life and death of Jesus to achieve the degree of solidarity with us that makes him the Emmanuel he wills to be. There is a double "movement" involved here, the movement of descent and ascent, kenosis and theosis. Not only does God in Christ become implicated in the whole of human experience but in that same Christ God takes the whole of the human situation and experience into Godself. We talk about this by saying that through the Christ Event heaven and earth interpenetrate one another and one day will be all in all or, again, that "the Kingdom of God is at hand." John the Evangelist says it again and again with the language of mutual indwelling and union: "I am in him and he is in me," "he who sees me sees the one who sent me", "the Father and I are One." Paul affirms it in Romans 8 when he exults, "Nothing [at all in heaven or on earth] can separate us from the Love of God."

And so in Jesus' active ministry he companions us and heals us; he exorcises our demons, teaches, feeds, forgives and sanctifies us. He is mentor and brother and Lord. He bears our stupidities and fear, our misunderstandings, resistance, and even our hostility and betrayals. But the revelation of God as Emmanuel means much more besides; as we move into the Triduum we begin to celebrate the exhaustive revelation, the exhaustive realization of an eternally-willed solidarity with us whose extent we can hardly imagine. In Christ and especially in his passion and death God comes to us in the unexpected and even the unacceptable place. Three dimensions of the cross especially allow us to see the depth of solidarity with us our God embraces in Christ: failure, suffering unto death, and lostness or godforsakenness. Together they reveal our God as Emmanuel --- the one who is with us as the one from whom nothing can ever ultimately separate us because in Christ those things become part of God's own life.

Jesus comes to the cross having failed in his mission. Had he succeeded there would have been no betrayal, no trial, no torture and no crucifixion. But Jesus remains open to God and trusts in his capacity to redeem any failure; thus even failure can serve the Kingdom of God. Jesus suffers to the point of death and suffers more profoundly than any person in history we can name --- not because he hurt more profoundly than others but because he was more vulnerable to it and chose to embrace that vulnerability without mitigation. Suffering per se is not salvific, but Jesus' openness and responsiveness to God in the face of suffering is. Thus, suffering even unto death is transformed into a potential sacrament of God's presence. Finally, Jesus suffers the lostness of godforsakenness or abandonment by God --- the ultimate separation from God due to sin. This is the meaning of not just death but death on a cross. In this death Jesus again remains open to the God who reveals himself most exhaustively as Emmanuel and takes even the lostness of sin into himself and makes it his own. After all, as the NT reminds us, it is the sick and lost for whom God in Christ comes.

As I noted back in January, John C. Dwyer, my major Theology professor for BA and MA work back in the 1970's described God's revelation of self on the cross (God's making himself known and personally present even in those places from whence we exclude him) --- the exhaustive coming of God as Emmanuel --- in this way:

[[Through Jesus, the broken being of the world enters the personal life of the everlasting God, and this God shares in the broken being of the world. God is eternally committed to this world, and this commitment becomes full and final in his personal presence within this weak and broken man on the cross. In him the eternal one takes our destiny upon himself --- a destiny of estrangement, separation, meaninglessness, and despair. But at this moment the emptiness and alienation that mar and mark the human situation become once and for all, in time and eternity, the ways of God. God is with this broken man in suffering and in failure, in darkness and at the edge of despair, and for this reason suffering and failure, darkness and hopelessness will never again be signs of the separation of man from God. God identifies himself with the man on the cross, and for this reason everything we think of as manifesting the absence of God will, for the rest of time, be capable of manifesting his presence --- up to and including death itself.]]

He continues,

[[Jesus is rejected and his mission fails, but God participates in this failure, so that failure itself can become a vehicle of his presence, his being here for us. Jesus is weak, but his weakness is God's own, and so weakness itself can be something to glory in. Jesus' death exposes the weakness and insecurity of our situation, but God made them his own; at the end of the road, where abandonment is total and all the props are gone, he is there. At the moment when an abyss yawns beneath the shaken foundations of the world and self, God is there in the depths, and the abyss becomes a ground. Because God was in this broken man who died on the cross, although our hold on existence is fragile, and although we walk in the shadow of death all the days of our lives, and although we live under the spell of a nameless dread against which we can do nothing, the message of the cross is good news indeed: rejoice in your fragility and weakness; rejoice even in that nameless dread because God has been there and nothing can separate you from him. It has all been conquered, not by any power in the world or in yourself, but by God. When God takes death into himself it means not the end of God but the end of death.]] Dwyer, John C., Son of Man Son of God, a New Language for Faith, p 182-183.

What is the Real Sign Jesus Does?

[[Now there was a royal official whose son was ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, who was near death. Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.” The royal official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” Jesus said to him, “You may go; your son will live.” The man believed what Jesus said to him and left. While the man was on his way back, his slaves met him and told him that his boy would live. He asked them when he began to recover. They told him, “The fever left him yesterday, about one in the afternoon.” The father realized that just at that time Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live,” and he and his whole household came to believe. Now this was the second sign Jesus did when he came to Galilee from Judea.]]

There is a serious challenge present in today's (Monday's) gospel reading. It is rooted in what seems to be a sincere desire on Jesus' part that people believe him and the word of promise he embodies and speaks and that they do so without prior "signs and wonders". In Mark's Gospel Jesus is the one who speaks with a unique authority and it is the challenge to hear that and embrace it that stands at the heart of every Christian vocation. More, it is a share in this same authority we are each called to embody in our own lives --- something we tend to do without miraculous signs and wonders. That is the very nature of an obedient faith, that we hear and trust Jesus, that in response to the authoritative Word he is and speaks we entrust our lives to him and to the promise he represents and that we do so without first demanding "signs and wonders." But John's reference to the miracle at Cana along with his statement, [[Now this was the second sign Jesus did when he came to Galilee from Judea,]] seems to shift our entire attention to Jesus as a wonder worker and to the signs and wonders he did.

 Critical as it is to understand the theological perspective of the gospel writer, sometimes an author's helpful introduction as well as their interpretive summary, their theologoumenon (θεολογούμενον), can actually prevent us from grappling with and hearing the text. In this case it can cause us to assume that the point of the whole reading is that Jesus does miracles despite some initial reluctance on his part. But we must not allow it to do that. Instead it must drive us back to the text, to the task of reading it carefully. Only then might we see that John's focus on wonder working, especially in light of Jesus' objection that people will not believe unless they see signs and wonders, is more ambiguous than we might have assumed, and that his understanding of Jesus and the miracles that stem from our encounters with him are more complex than we might have suspected.

This morning when I read the text I focused only on the critical section (pericope) from [[Jesus said to him]] to [[he and his whole household came to believe.]] I was looking at the dynamics of the exchange between Jesus and the royal official who had clearly traveled some distance seeking Jesus out. I was not reading the story in light of either John's reference to the miracle at Cana or the final interpretive statement which establishes Jesus as a wonder worker. Apart from these statements the passage reads very differently; the focus is drawn away from Jesus having healed the son and instead placed on the official's act of "believing into" Jesus' authority, his word of promise, and what may be the fruits of that "faithing" --- despite being rather unfairly and offensively rebuffed by Jesus for "needing to see miracles to believe" and well before any healing takes place: [[Jesus said, "You may go. Your Son will live." The man believed what Jesus said to him and left.]]

Only the next day does the official discover the fever has left his son and he is recovering. He realizes the fever left his son about the same time he was asking Jesus to intervene. His "believing into" this man Jesus and the Word of Promise he is and speaks is a growing, maturing reality. The son's recovery confirms the truth Jesus spoke and as a result his faith in Jesus grew and in fact, his entire household also came to faith. Jesus' initial rebuff, [[Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe]] challenges the Herodian official to a more authentic faith and he meets the challenge. This entire story is sandwiched between the reference to the conversion of water to wine in Cana, Jesus 1st great "sign", and John's interpretive reminder that this was Jesus' 2nd sign. We assume that when John refers to the second sign it is the act of healing. That may be true but the statement seems ambiguous to me. It follows not only the account of the healing, but more immediately, the fact that the official comes to greater faith and his household also comes to participate in what John describes as "believing into" Jesus and the revelation of God he is.

The question John's summary does not clarify and in fact sharpens, is "What is the real "sign" Jesus did?" Was it a healing of the child or speaking the Word in a way which leads first a Herodian (and thus possibly a Gentile) official and then an entire household to belief? Or was it both together?

I believe we are supposed to see these two things as inextricably wed. Both lead us to see Jesus as the authoritative and authoring Word of God; both lead us to understand faith in Jesus as the most fundamental challenge of our lives. Jesus is both Word and Sign. When he speaks reality is changed and God is made real in an exhaustive way in human history. In Cana Mary believed and instructed others to do whatever Jesus told them. The conversion of water into wine followed this. In today's gospel lection the official may well have known something of Jesus' miracle at Cana but it is the fact that he trusts everything, especially what is most dear to him, to Jesus and what he promises that is the center of today's Lenten Gospel.

It is also, therefore, the center of the call God speaks to us. Jesus' great signs are always linked to people entrusting themselves to the Word of challenge and promise he incarnates; genuine faith involves exactly this kind of trust. Those who root their faith in extraordinary events and manifestations have missed the point. Faith for John is often spoken of as something we mature in. It can begin with an approach to the One who intrigues us and promises miracles as it does for the official. But it grows only as we learn to hear and entrust ourselves to him and his Word. Signs may accompany such faith and validate our trust in the power of the One we are learning more and more to believe in. But the critical act of faith must be a foundational trust in the word that comes to us even without "signs and wonders." In some ways this 'bringing to faith' is always the greatest wonder Jesus empowers.