Tuesday of Holy Week, April 15, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Night
Where I am going, you cannot follow.
But Peter said, “Master why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.”
Traditionally on this third day of Holy Week, Jesus curses a barren fig tree and those religious leaders he compares to it. Judas visits the scribes and pharisees and offers to betray Jesus. Jesus visits his friends in Bethany.
Jesus’ intimate friendship with Mary, Martha and Lazarus took on a whole new level when Lazarus got sick and died. Listen to Brother Jeremiah Tobin as he listens in on this story of Jesus and his farming friends:
The dirt was caked on my hands, under the fingernails, stinging the blisters. In the evening dark, the black of the earth and the red of my own blood were indistinguishable. Taking a few deep breaths, I wiped my forehead, the dirt and the sweat of my brow mixing into a kind of mud. But not like when he spit on the clay—or so I heard.
How cruel night is, the darkness, driving man from the field. Driving him from his daily wage. From his worth. Driving me from the land I’ve always kept, on these three small acres outside the city, downhill from our home. To keep me from what I earn. I no longer feel the rest that comes with night.
The illness took more than my strength. It took my hope. I sought him, but found him not; I called him, but he gave no answer. He knew I loved him. When he’d come round, our table was perfect joy. To part ways at dusk was sad, but knowing he’d be back soon satisfied me. Now I could hardly remember his voice. Even when I fell sick, he was nowhere to be found. Was I hiding my sickness from him? There were other sick ones, too, I supposed.
I’ve been asleep at this plow for four days. I reek of earth. The house sits just a little ways away on the hill’s crest; I see its tiny light, but the night is thick with the monotonous drone of the cicada and screech of a bat.
Now another noise echoes. It is drowning out the sounds of darkness. Trumpets? I am going to leave the plow. I am leaving my work belt, my hammer, my tools of existence, leaving my unmoving toil. And I took a step. The light from that one small opening, that door, I saw as if it were piercing through my eyelids. Like trees walking about like men. Sweet memories poured in of laughter and when we once reclined at table deep into the night.
I reached the porch, and then I realized: what was inside was not inside at all, but the light of radiant day—not fire’s imitation glow. The black night sky above was rock. Inside was out, and outside in. This field, this dust, this dirt, was death caked in and blood run dry.
Could I see the color now? Shapes of light, like men as springtime trees, fluttered in my sight.
Still I could not see clearly—but
Then, I heard his words, a shout,
that deep and trembling voice
shot through with love for me.
“LAZARUS, COME OUT!”
(Isaiah 49, Psalm 71, John 13)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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