Historical Setting, 626 C.E. The farm in the Vosges
The little painting, the icon, that Greg and Gaillard brought as a gift to our household is captivating. People who know the story well, children who’ve never heard it, the peasantry who have heard it all bedazzled with mystery by priests and scholars, everyone, now sees it just this way. Since the pale, frail Lazarus in the image, all wrapped in linens really looks nothing like me, even at my worst, having the image in our house seems to stifle the rumors that I am that same Lazarus. I am probably the only one seeing it who is surprised by seeing a Jesus image who looks like a man of today in Constantinople. This wardrobe of Jesus makes that common Jewish man look like a Roman ruler. And the style and detail of the burial vault is not at all what my sister provided for this, her dead brother, even though she could afford the best.
But an image is always made for the time in which it was created. We pretend to know the look of history but it’s always invented simply from a few relics and a lot of imagination. Yet this little picture speaks perfectly of the story it tells. It shows a “sign” from Jesus. Jesus did this thing of raising this dead man back to life to show something of the nature of earthbound humanity, a metaphor or sign or maybe say a visible window on the invisible heaven. “On earth as it is in heaven.” It is what signs in the Gospel of John have to say. On earth a friend of Jesus was sent back into life on earth, and in that way, the mirror to the invisible world of Spirit offers an image of resurrection. It’s a forever story and so here I am, metaphor for everyone’s Spiritual forever. If I must be a relic, let me always speak for the time we are living in now.
Maybe Jesus hadn’t a thought about a complicated earthly forever he gave to this friend. But maybe that vague, invisible reality of Spiritual life is no less overwhelming.
Whatever way the picture tells the story, it’s been an inspiration for our youngest son, Brandell, to learn this technique of art so that all the stories from our family lessons in bible can be told seemingly alive and in brilliant tones. Then others can see the stories through his eyes. Now he is preparing for this journey to find a teacher.
(Continues Tuesday, February 6)
Lazarus Ink 