Going, Returning, Remaining

A final word on today’s Gospel, the raising of Lazarus.  In the final line of the scene, with Lazarus having emerged from the tomb wrapped in his burial shroud, Jesus says, “Unbind him and let him go.”  When I was perhaps eight years old, a friend of my parents gave us a dog, which my brother and I named Poochie.  It is only vaguely that I remember his physical characteristics - a lean white shorthaired mutt; what I recall viscerally, even after more than 50 years, is that he would run away if we let him go.  I suspected then, as I do now, that it was my mother’s severe punishment of him when he eventually returned that reinforced his bolting when he could.  But I do remember how he would bolt as soon as he could break free from his leash.   

I felt akin to Poochie, weeping with him as he shivered after a beating.  The same strap or hairbrush that had been used on him had been used on my brother and me, and the same frustrated shrieks of anger had come from our mother as she had swung it with her wiry, muscular arm.  I would hear the train whistle from the track a half mile away at night and wonder what it would be like to bolt.

So somehow this closing line seems odd to me, that Lazarus, so loved that he would be brought back to life would be let…GO; I imagine him bolting, pulling himself from the restraints of their loving arms. When Poochie came back, he looked like hell.  He was filthy, thin, and cold.  While the Prodigal Son returned in hope of being forgiven or at least fed, this poor beast came back knowing he’d be beaten.  What was it, I wondered (and wonder still) that made him come back all those times until he eventually did not return at all? I think of Peter’s words when Jesus asked him if he would leave.  “Lord”, he said in John 6:68, “to whom would we go?”

I’ve found an image that brings harmonizes this bolting escape of Lazarus with Peter’s truth that lets me accept Jesus’ words, “Let him go.”  A vehicle stops by an open field or a beach and a dog and its master emerge.  The master puts the dog on a leash and walks with it to the field or the beach.  The dog’s feet dancing, the master bends down to disconnect the leash, and off the dog runs, free, free, free!  It runs back and forth, away from and back toward (but not to) the master again and again, until it tires and trots back, wagging its tail.

Perhaps the most precious freedom is to freely follow, even in our animal nature, is the instinct to return, to remain. 

My mother was not an ogress, but a woman beyond her capacity to bear gracefully the demands of that period of her life.  Unlike Poochie, she could not run away from us.  I am consoled that as the demands of poverty and childrearing eased, she mellowed.  She often asked for forgiveness from us for those times when she acted out of anger.  I hope that as she died she felt the forgiveness.  I hope that she knew that when she returned to her God, there would be no belt or hairbrush in sight, but a nice dry towel, and a dish with fresh water, and another with her favorite food.  Oh, my, I hope she is OK with this image of her as Poochie in heaven! 

Here we are in this Lenten season, asked again to return, to remain.