Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
About sin: I am sitting here on the wall of the steps to the monastery offering the monks a Q and A. I thought they would be asking about my friend Jesus, but I find they are most concerned about sin and holy retribution.
I intended to tell them about the seven signs, (not miracles,) that Jesus used to illustrate the gracious nature of God on earth as it is in heaven: here in the physical mortal life as it is in the eternal, holy, spiritual life.
Maybe that message isn’t as suited to these times of human wars and games of wins and losses. Or maybe God’s grace just doesn’t seem to belong in this place of winds and rocks and brute survival. Or maybe the obsession of people with sins appears to empower humankind to take control of the divine by requiring God to dole out punishments and rewards. Like the precocious child, bored in a classroom, humankind finds power over the whole of God’s love by behaving badly, always searching and sometimes creating “sin.” Even though the abundant power of the love of God surrounds us like air does for breath, constant and invisible, our personal thoughts of God only seem to gravitate to the exhale.
Jesus took issue with the human need for judgement. In John 9, the whole chapter is about the sixth sign in which Jesus gave sight to a man who was born blind. He uses the mud of earth and spit to make the healing potion and he assigns the healing power from the traditions of healing by washing in a particular pool, using physical tools already known and present. But all the time, all around, the disciples, and then the keepers of the law, those religious leaders ever present make the discussion about sin. Jesus comes as a brilliant beam of gracious light into this eternal human search for the roots of darkness.
So. the next question from the young monks is much easier to answer because it is simply about order and sequence, not actual practicable theology.
“So, is the raising of Lazarus the seventh sign, or is it actually part of the fifth declaration of ‘I am’ [John 10:14]?”
This young scholar perceives the gospel as a numerical puzzle to be solved with seven of these and seven of those. He is seeking a hidden code as though it is a game with a win.
I say, “However you come to it, it always ends the same. God is all-love, always welcoming us home. John 15:4.”
(Continues Tuesday, September 1)
Lazarus Ink 