TWO different Gospels are options for this Sunday. If All Saints’ Sunday is kept, the Gospel tells of the raising of Lazarus. If the Fourth Sunday before Advent is observed, Mark’s account of the Lord’s summary of the law is heard as an alternative.
Some people tasked with planning worship are opposed in principle to observing feasts on the closest Sunday as an alternative of on the right day. No one would dream of moving Christmas Day to a Sunday; so why do it for All Saints’ Day? The precise day matters.
Others take a practical approach. A weekday celebration of All Saints may attract a handful of worshippers, whereas on the Sunday the good vision of heaven may be shared more widely. It is a festival of sunshine and hope, at a time when darkness is deepening. The attraction of sharing that vision is a strong one.
The Gospel options each reflect their proper themes: one, the hope of glory; the opposite, the knowledge that — if we live as God wills — the Kingdom of heaven is ours. Each also has its harder message. We don’t get up one morning and stroll into the Kingdom. If life is a journey, its end is sort of a mountain looming before us that’s the only route to succeed in the plains beyond.
The raising of Lazarus is a story often related to Easter and regarded as a forerunner of the resurrection. For that reason, it is typically chosen for funerals. Not that Lazarus himself is “resurrected”; for Christ, not he, is the “first-fruits” of the resurrection, and none may precede him in that role (1 Corinthians 15.23). Lazarus is “merely” revived, and he’ll die again — which is fairly tough on him, though perhaps more years of life outweighed the disadvantages of double dying.
Jesus doesn’t perform this sign to prove that death is of no significance to those that consider. If that were so, his own death on the cross could be emptied of meaning. His grief at Lazarus’s death, furthermore, confirms that death is a component of the curse of Adam (Genesis 3.19). Though not actually an evil in itself, it’s fraught with dangers, driving the fearful and faithless to struggle against it as pointlessly as butterflies batting themselves against a window within the hope of reaching the air outside.
Perhaps even the means of bodily decomposition, which has already begun, plays its part in crystallising Jesus’s sorrow. Certainly, Martha is sensitive concerning the breakdown of Lazarus’s body. Probably, she is struggling to reconcile her reflex of disgust together with her love for her brother, and her hope that Jesus can by some means undo what her sense of smell tells her is occurring. By raising Lazarus, Jesus demonstrates his power over life and death — which helps us to see that he didn’t die on the cross because he needed to, but because he selected to.
For all its message of hope, appropriate to the sunshine and glory of All Saints’ Day, Lazarus is a tough Gospel; for it highlights much of what makes death a dark abyss for us. The Marcan Gospel, in contrast, is easy and positive in its message. You must love, it says. You must love God first. And you have to love your neighbour, too. Four Sundays before Advent, before the judgement, we remember our faith’s foundations. Christ is our cornerstone. God is love. If we live by this faith, Advent can hold no terrors.
When Jesus tells the scribe who questioned him, “You aren’t removed from the Kingdom of God,” he encouraged all of us who follow on the Way. Two easy command-ments offer reassurance to anyone who embraces their teaching: by living life positively, with warmth and openness to others, we are able to find our technique to God and his salvation. We could also be preparing for Advent judgement, but we see glimpses of the Kingdom throughout us.
The good splendour of All Saints’ Day doesn’t undo the realities of our humanity — not on this side of eternity. Nor do forebodings of ultimate judgement quench the “light of the fantastic gospel of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4.4) or overshadow the brightness of “the everlasting gospel” (Revelation 14.6).
Either Gospel option for this Sunday can speak to each liturgical themes. That shouldn’t surprise us; for this breadth of meaning is a component of what makes the Gospel scripture in the primary place.
