Humankind unbound

 

The constant question that St Paul poignantly asked persists hauntingly about who will deliver us from this body of death (cf. Rom 7:24). This question can perhaps be detected as implied in Martha’s words to Jesus that if he had been there her brother wouldn’t have died. The dialogue that follows, however, leads beyond Jesus offering the distraught sister only words of consolation and comfort of sympathy, for he shares her grief expressed in the fact that he wept, as this passage of the Gospel records. The significance of this, while certainly indicating that he was no stranger to human feelings for his close friends at Bethany, must, nevertheless, also be seen in relation to that other occasion when he wept over the city of Jerusalem because of its lack of faith in him (cf. Lk 19:41). The New Testament also states that he offered prayers with tears because of the destructive evil in which the world is held bound (cf. Heb 5:7f.).

Jesus’ sharing the grief of the two sisters over the death of his friend Lazarus, thus, was not merely out of sentimental pity. While it is true that the great tragic dramas of the ancient Greeks celebrated an awareness of pity for the desolate state of human beings, Simone Weil pointed out that a seeking for mercy arises from God, not the sufferer, and it is an offence to God to neglect or ignore the sufferer (cf. Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks, London: Routledge, 1998, p.71). The crux of Tolkien’s great work may be seen in Bilbo Baggins sparing the life of the wretch Gollum through pity. On the other hand, the sentiment of pity may sometimes easily slide into a loathsome standoffish posture of self-congratulatory complacency rather than in reality wanting to or fearing to get involved in another’s suffering. Jesus, however, showed something far higher than the sentiment of pity. His was genuine empathy, that most noble attitude of compassion akin to the godly virtue of merciful caring.

In sharing utterly that soul-anguish in the depth of every person – namely, that of facing up to the inevitable condition of death - Jesus came as the Wounded Healer to be God’s suffering-Servant to liberate all humankind as foretold by the prophet Isaiah (cf. Is 53:3). As the Messiah, God’s anointed one or Christ, he alone can declare: “I AM the Resurrection and the Life.” By this statement Jesus proclaims his identity with Yahweh the unique Life-Giver. As on other instances, this self-affirmation is the heart of the Christological teaching of the Gospel of John (e.g. Jn 6:35; 8:12; 8:58; 10:9; 10:11; 14:6; 15:5). In virtue of being the unique revealer of the New Humankind, Jesus issues the command to release Lazarus from the bands of death: “Unbind him; let him go free.”

Because spoken with authentic divine authority, by this command Jesus proclaimed the effectiveness of the entirely new order of humankind – something that could never be introduced despite the beauty of language such as the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley endeavoured to articulate in his drama Prometheus Unbound, which was a work composed in the aftermath of and inspired by the slogan of the French Revolution, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” The last two lines of this poem may be taken as summing up the ideals celebrated throughout the whole work:

Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;

This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

 

     Pope Francis has on many occasions pointed out abstract ideologies get us nowhere; ultimately the Gospel is not a theoretical refuge from the pain of living amidst people, but plummets us into the realistic task of encountering Christ in our neighbour as brothers and sisters, children of the one God and Father of all humankind. To employ a phrase like “human race” or even “masses” misses the point, dodges the crucial issue of looking into individual person’s faces and eyes.

    “Humankind” is a word on the other hand that encapsulates far better the relational reality entailed, ‘kind’ suggesting the significance both of being kindred and also the befitting attitude of kindness. Beyond this and above all, however, a civilization of love stands or falls unless it is inspired and guided by our Lord’s great challenge about showing a ray of God’s loving mercy: “Whatever you do for one of these my little ones, you do unto me.” In expressing this we become enabled to share already and truly in the abundance of eternal Life revealed by Jesus, whose dominion as the Risen Lord is foreshadowed in calling Lazarus out from the tomb and, moreover, commanding that he be released from being bound in what seem like swaddling clothes restricting the movement of an infant’s limbs from expressing the new life of freedom in grace. The commemoration of this event on the fifth Sunday of Lent is a prelude preparing us already to enter more deeply into the communion of joy and freedom and fraternity of humankind unbound in the Paschal Mystery of Easter.

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