‘I am the resurrection and the life.’
David’s words boomed down the church.
David’s words? Jesus’ words?
‘I am the resurrection and the life.’
His powerful voice seemed to fill every corner of the building, rising to the medieval doom painting above us, echoing round the massive stone pillars, projecting up to the towering spire and forward to the far east window, where a stained glass Jesus hung on a stained glass cross. The author of those words hanging, lifeless before us.
He only said the words once, and yet they reverberated round and round, floating over the heads of the motionless, shimmering blur of people who filled the pews; drumming through me so that I didn’t hear the other words that followed as we followed David down the aisle.
‘I am the resurrection and the life.’
I had heard those words so many times before. As a child in Sunday School, hearing the wonderful tale of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Sitting in so many services as the words of the gospel were read. ‘This is the gospel of Christ.’ ‘Thanks be to God.’ Even at funerals – of friends and family members. But never like this. As a teenager I had sung those words, thoughtlessly clapping an inane beat after each line of one of our favourite youth group songs: ‘I am the resurrection’ (clap) ‘I am the life’ (clap-clap, clap-clap) ‘he who believes in me shall never-er die’ (clap, clap-clap). Oh how we’d loved those Saturday evenings, full of fun, untouched by the reality of this world’s pain. Joining in, keen to be part of the crowd, inspired with the youthful enthusiasm of a shared faith that would carry us through thick and thin. Oblivious to the real impact of those seven words.
‘I am the resurrection and the life.’
Words of hope. Words of immense, grave-shattering power.
Words of utter despair.
~
Those words weren’t being spoken now as a benign, fun Sunday School story, with a cardboard cut-out Lazarus joyously unwrapped from his toilet-paper grave clothes; or a bland, monotonal gospel reading by some anonymous Sunday worshipper.
They were being proclaimed to a silent, dumb-struck congregation as a flower-braided sea-grass coffin was carried silently down the aisle.
Helen’s coffin.
And I followed behind, Esther and Joe on either side of me. My black shoes effortlessly conveying me up towards the first pew, just as the black shoes of the pall-bearers effortlessly conveyed Helen up to the waiting trestles. Past the packed pews. Packed with my family and friends. With our family and friends. Helen’s family and friends. There for Helen. There for me, and for Esther and Joe. There to hear, uncomprehending, those fateful words.
‘I am the resurrection and the life.’
~
Over the months that followed I would keep coming back to those words. Hearing David say them again and again as that funeral procession, caught on replay, made its way repeatedly up the aisle of Holy Trinity. I would ponder the words. Did I really believe them? What sense could they make in the reality of Helen’s death? What could they possibly mean for me? For our children? For all those who knew and loved Helen? I would struggle with the harsh confidence they conveyed in the face of bitter suffering. A suffering that went far beyond the transient grief that I felt so acutely over those early months. A suffering that screamed out from parents who had lost their children in unexpected deaths; a suffering that moaned in the whimpering cries of abused children; a suffering that pounded in the guns and missile attacks of Gaza, Afghanistan, the Arab Spring; a suffering that repeatedly broke out around the world in countless acts of violence, terrorism, and in those even more incomprehensible acts of an omnipresent, omnipotent God.
I never doubted God’s presence, nor his goodness; but reconciling that with the reality of life isn’t always easy. And over those early months I found myself struggling with the harsh triumphalism of the resurrection. I, too, have sung with gusto those victorious words of the Easter hymn: ‘Thine be the glory, risen, conquering son.’ But for now I couldn’t. The words fell flat and didn’t ring true. And right then, as I walked up the aisle and sat in the pew, with Esther and Joe beside me, I didn’t feel triumphant. I didn’t feel angry either, nor anguished. Far too much of that had been spent already. I just felt numb. Accepting.
Ultimately I would come to experience something new in those words: a fresh gentleness to the resurrection that I had never before known. A gentleness that brought peace, calm and an unforced rhythm to life. A gentleness that stemmed from a deep, pervasive awareness of my own belovedness. A gentleness that, in a strange way, brought me closer to Helen and to the God in whose arms she now rested. Perhaps that gentleness was the heart of Helen’s gift to me.
Written February, 2013