One Hand Clapping

He stands before Pilate with his hands bound.  

Mashad* sees the irony, and says to Lazarus, “See who is bound now, even as he unbound you.”  

Atashaah* hears his silence, this man of words, this man of truth, and wonders why he does not speak up.  “It is as if those cords that bind his hands strangle his throat too.”  

Lazarus remarks, “One is unbound within the bindings.”

Hands that cannot be loosed to heal, words that cannot be set free to teach; in my aging, I think of the restraints put on us in age.  But I can remember being a tongue-tied little boy with my hands in my pockets too; restraints have no limitation in time.

I find in this image of a silent, immobile Jesus a koan – the sound of one hand clapping.  A koan is a Zen technique that is akin to Jesus’ parables, meant to release us from thought and its traps.  What is the sound of one hand clapping?  It is silence. 

Christians often look at the Passion as Jesus teaching us not to fear death.  But even as the Passion begins with his being placed in restraints, he begins to teach us that helpless is a condition, not an identity.  He prepares us not merely for death, but for a life in which constraints are part of being human.

Who are Mashad and Atashaah? See previous posts.

Please Release Me

This last day before we hear the story of the Raising of Lazarus (John 11:1-45)  in church, come with me to the scene as Lazarus emerges from the tomb.  He’s not wearing his Sunday clothes.  John says he came out “tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth.” I got a call from a reader in Santa Fe last night, bringing my attention to the wrapping, and the last command of Jesus.  I went to sleep with that command in my mind, and awakened convicted and sentenced to life unbound.

In my scene, I find myself as Lazarus, and as I stumble out blinking through the bands of cloth that wrap me, Martha and Mary are running to me to do as Jesus told them: “Untie him and let him go.”  They embrace me, weeping, the three of us born of the same salty water now confluence of the same salty tears.  And as Martha’s fingers begin to feel for the beginnings of the strips of cloth that bind me and Mary studies my face, I hear myself say, “Never mind, I’ll get it myself.”  

I am there now, even as I type, and I feel Jesus’ hand on my shoulder, and hear his gentle voice say to me, “Let them help you.  It’s impossible to unbind yourself.”  I’ve shared the story of the young man appealing to the great Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner, asking him in the middle of some deep, esoteric treatise, “But Fr. Rahner, how does one pray?”  Even as the audience responded to his seemingly childish question with laughter and derision, Rahner smiled at him and said, “Lassen sie das es in sie anbaten.”  “Let the it in you pray.”  I wept over the word “Let…”.  And so when I hear Jesus say that same word to me, I know it is the deepest truth I need to hear. 

Today I will consider this self-sufficiency of mine; if you suffer the same need to try to heal yourself, perhaps you can place yourself in the story as Lazarus, and feel the coolness of the damp cloth on your cheeks, having soaked up your tears, and the warmth of your exhaled breath on the cloth over your nose, and the probing hands of your sisters.  Where does the story take you?  What are your feelings?  Who are the people unwrapping you?

Tomorrow: “Let him go.”