Risen

I know something more deeply today than I did ten months ago, back before I helped choose a grave for my sister in a forest of tall pines.

Let me say it quietly:

We don’t have the power over life and death.

I’ve lost a beloved aunt to a very treatable cancer, while another loved one coded eight times, and miraculously survived. Pondering today on the pandemic, on September 11 and October 7, I can see that men and women of good will, valor, and great skill: doctors and first responders, intelligence and defense forces can be great gifts, but they cannot ultimately control the tide of death that, in the end, comes to all of us.

This is not just a fact that my brain knows. It is an astonishing grief.

Today at church I heard an excerpt from John 11, a story that hits a tender spot for me. Newly bereaved of her brother Lazarus, Martha meets Jesus, and exclaims, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

She continues, “But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”

“Your brother will rise again,” Jesus says.

Martha is a woman of faith. “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day,” she says.

But Jesus replies, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

Can you believe what you’ve long believed, now you’re standing beside a grave?

Even more, can you believe that Resurrection is standing beside you, your Teacher and Friend?

My mind goes to a single word: Kumi.

It means “Arise!” It’s what Solomon said to his bride, Jesus to Jairus’ dead daughter, Peter to lifeless Tabitha. In these contexts, it’s utterly compelling, filled with love, irresistible. Once in Jerusalem, I saw this word on the gravestone of a woman named Ori. Quoting from Isaiah 60:1, it read, “Arise, shine, for your light is come.” Or (as I imagine the engraver intended in this context): “Arise, Ori, for your Light is come!”

The One who was obedient unto death, the One who shattered death and rose, the One who loves and knows us through and through: He has the power of life and death. When He comes and speaks our names, nothing (not even our graves) will keep us from answering that call.