CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lazarus's Excellent Adventure

Somewhere over the rainbow way up high There's a land that I've heard of once in a lullaby⁵²

It has always intrigued me that in the movie The Wizard of Oz, the scenes in Kansas were shot in black and white. Those dull shades of gray stood in stark contrast to the vibrant Technicolor of Oz.

But even more fascinating was that such color, and the fantastic world from which it sprang, only became visible to Dorothy when she lost consciousness. It was her coma that gave her the eyes to see.

The implication is hard to miss. “Somewhere over the rainbow” is a land of splendor that makes our usual world pale into dusty shades. In that place of radiant color, it's not only bluebirds that can fly, but also humans. Without limits or gravity to shackle our dreams, we are able to soar as high as our imaginations can take us. Adventures untold await those who are willing to risk journeys outside the normal confines of awareness.

What makes this idea so poignant is that each of us longs to touch such a world, yet it seems so far out of reach. In lamenting our loss, our hearts ache with Dorothy as she compares her life to that of the birds soaring above and wonders, “Why then, oh why can't I?” In that moment, her song becomes ours.

It's easy to dismiss Oz as a fairy tale. One way of coping is to tell ourselves that if dull shades of gray are all that life has to offer, it's best to ignore the rainbow.

Another way of coping is to try to construct our own Oz with alcohol, drugs, or other addictions. (Ironically, Judy Garland, the singer of that beautiful song, did exactly that.)

A few of us will look, instead, in the direction the movie points us—to exploring the unconscious realm.

We are so used to discounting dreams and visions as nothing more than overactive imagination that we can overlook the fact that Dorothy came back from Oz profoundly changed.

But, even if we do discover that the doorway to Oz lies in our willingness to become conscious of our unconscious, we usually turn away. Not only do we recoil from facing the “lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” that live there, but we tremble at the thought of giving up control over our mundane world. Shades of gray may not be nearly as engaging as Technicolor, but at least we can take comfort in the familiar.

The yellow brick road, on the other hand, leads to unsettling destinations lying deep within the unknown. To embark on its path is to brave the tornado that smashes life as we've known it. That's why Jesus said:

For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?⁵³

Our “normal” state of awareness is dominated by an ego desperate to preserve its identity. Because the ego truly believes that image is everything, it'll stop at nothing to prove itself in the everyday physical world of the five senses. To lose awareness of the material world, as far as the ego is concerned, is to risk annihilation of the life we have so painstakingly assembled. The nonphysical and the unconscious, then, are fraught with danger. They hold the power to undermine everything we hold dear.

Knowing this instinctively, we gladly trade the adventure of the yellow brick road for the safety of the treadmill. While striving to “gain the whole world,” we train ourselves not to notice that we have “forfeited” our true selves.

CARPET STAINS

There are many ways to kill off the true self. My weapon of choice was the ministry.

The pastoral image is designed to give the impression that clergy are on intimate terms with the great and wonderful Oz. In the minds of our parishioners, we skip gaily along a brightly colored path that sidesteps the usual traumas endured by lesser mortals.

Newspapers know this, so they like to do stories on us around Christmastime. It's a way of reclaiming the myth of a perfect family.

I wasn't aware of this dynamic early in my career. So it was quite a surprise when, out of the blue, a reporter from the Muncie newspaper phoned, wanting to do a piece on how my family celebrated Christmas. The article was to include a full-color photo of all of us gathered around our perfectly decorated Christmas tree, dressed in our casual but neatly pressed “school clothes,” smiling contently for the camera in that “don't you wish you were us” kind of way.

It should have been a real honor.

Instead, it produced utter panic at our house. We hadn't even had time to look for a Christmas tree yet, much less decorate it. And the house itself was a disaster. The walls in the hall were covered with black smudges from hundreds of tiny, greasy handprints. Surrounding the back door was an obstacle course of mismatched boots, book bags, coats, smelly laundry, and mysterious brown bags, most likely harboring banana peels from last week's lunches.

And then there was The Stain.

Why is it that when children have to throw up, they can never make it to the toilet? Most adults have learned through experience that when they feel nauseated, it's best to head directly for the bathroom. Children, on the other hand, head directly for their parents’ bedroom. You're sleeping soundly, when suddenly a weak little voice shatters your bliss: “My stomach hurts…”

Your eyes blink in the twilight to make out the trembling form of a half-awake, three-foot-tall zombie dressed in Superman Underoos, holding its midsection.

“Go to the bathroom!” you cry out. Those words have been shouted out hundreds of times before, but, for some reason, a child's brain always greets them like a completely novel idea. The zombie hesitates. “Go now!” you shout, jumping out of bed.

The frail little form turns toward the bathroom then struggles, sways…and unloads on the carpet.

It's an impressive display of projectile vomiting. How the entire contents of that stomach can be unleashed in one quick burp is truly one of nature's miracles.

In our house, this place of the perennial unloading was known simply as The Stain. Nothing could get it out. It was a fermented combination of Fruity Pebbles, Count Chocula, ketchup fries, and funnel cakes. Carpet cleaners would come to our house, offer their condolences, and then leave as if in mourning.

We dreaded the thought of having to explain it to a reporter from Muncie. But fortunately, there were still a few days left before the interview. We ran out, bought a tree, borrowed decorations from neighbors, and crammed the debris by the back door into a closet. I even slapped some paint on the wall to cover up the greasy handprints.

But The Stain would not yield. Though I tried every cleaner known to humanity, it was undaunted. The harder I scrubbed, the more it grew in size and density. It mocked my efforts.

As a last resort, we boarded off that section of the house and prayed for a reporter with a strong bladder.

It worked.

And after it was all over, the reporter strung together our incoherent mutterings into a story that actually made us sound pretty good. The picture by the Christmas tree appeared in full color, and my family looked so perfect that it made me wonder who those people were and wish our family could be more like them!

And The Stain? Over the years, it continued to marinate, becoming more full-bodied with each new layer. Eventually, we began to look upon it fondly as something that added character and charm to our home. But we never spoke of it to outsiders. The myth of the pastor's picture-perfect family wouldn't allow it.

THE PERFECT PASTOR

The myth of the perfect family has its roots in the larger myth of the perfect pastor.

One never-ending duty of the pastor is to visit those facing major difficulties in their lives. For me, this was a constant source of anxiety and stress—not because I didn't want to comfort people, but because the job was never done. Whether it was keeping up with members in the hospital, tending to those in nursing homes, or staying in touch with parishioners who were recently bereaved, the demands were relentless.

Most of my older members were gracious in the extreme. A few, however, were amazingly talented in wielding the bludgeon of shame.

“So nice to see you! It's been so long that I thought you forgot all about me!”

“I can't remember the last time you were here!”

“I thought you'd forgotten where I lived!”

It's amazing how much you can sweat in a three-piece suit. What was so bizarre was that I could never respond. I was trapped in the myth. And the myth demands that the pastor be infinitely patient and kind.

Early in my career, I'd made the mistake of confronting several members in a truthful, straightforward manner. It was a way of communicating that I had learned in the construction industry. There, such straight talk was effective. In the pastoral role, however, it was disastrous. I was never forgiven, and all communication was cut off. A few parishioners left the church.

Because the pastor can never respond truthfully, those who are harboring a hidden rage can launch their darts without fear of retribution, as long as they never speak of their anger directly. Blood is spilled, but decorum is preserved.

The game cannot work, though, unless the pastor is heavily invested in a false image of perfection, which I was. I would sit through such disguised disapproval and pretend not to have heard the rage behind the words.

Make no mistake, the pastorate was my choice. I have no regrets. It was a path that was deadening and painful. But it was necessary for me, because it taught me much about myself.

In the end, I found out why Carl Jung said of his father, who was a pastor, “He did a great deal of good—far too much—and as a result was usually irritable.”⁵⁴ When I first read that as a young man, it seemed absurd. How could anyone do “far too much” good? Wasn't that the whole goal of life—to be good and to do good?

It would take years for me to understand that devoting my life to only doing good could be fatal in more ways than one. Not only did it slowly wear me out, but it also perpetuated a false image, leaving no time for my true self to emerge. As I would eventually discover, the true self is made up of both light and darkness.

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE

As a rabbi, Jesus too had a pastoral role to fill. But, for some reason, he wasn't driven to play a false role by the unrealistic expectations of others. There was the case of his good friend Lazarus.

Lazarus had been clinging to life for days. Martha and Mary had sent word to Jesus that their brother was near death.

Now, most pastors, upon hearing the urgency of this message, would have left immediately to help—if for no other reason than to be spared being gored in the bullring of public opinion. Jesus, instead, waited two more days.

Clearly he was wasting precious time. It was incomprehensible to everyone around him. Didn't he care? Was he afraid he wouldn't have the power? Had he become too important in his own eyes to remember the little people? Was he afraid he'd be arrested?

Finally, after two days, Jesus announced that he was going to see his friend. Some were glad for the news. But others were terrified, knowing that this trip would take them deep into enemy territory. That Thomas knew it was suicidal was evident as he announced, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”⁵⁵

But the danger to Jesus didn't matter to Mary and Martha. All they wanted was for their brother to be well. However, because of the delay, it was too late. By the time Jesus was spotted coming over the crest of a hill, Lazarus had already been placed in the grave.

Martha ran out to meet him. Suddenly, all of her pent-up emotions poured forth as she screamed in her rage and grief, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died!”⁵⁶ Then, remembering the need for decorum when speaking to members of the clergy, she gathered herself and smoothed over her anger. “But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”⁵⁷

Jesus replied tersely, “Your brother will rise again.”⁵⁸ It was a simple statement, very matter of fact, but clearly impossible.

DEALING WITH THE IMPOSSIBLE

There is a powerful bias in the human psyche against anything that is impossible. While we say we long for the miraculous, in fact, we avoid it at all costs. To be confronted with the unexplainable is to be ripped out of the comfort of the familiar and to be cast into the terror of uncertainty. It's to embark on the yellow brick road, with all of its twists, turns, and unwelcome surprises.

One of the great tools we've developed for avoiding the miraculous is theology. This is thinking about God, which is radically different from enduring the trauma of a personal encounter. Theology allows us to calm our nerves and to retreat into the safety of our own heads. It trades the awesome confrontational power of divinity for intellectual propositions over which we can argue.

Why would we want to be so thoroughly known? To be revealed in this way is to have our carefully constructed personas shattered. Such shattering is worse than physical death.

THE TRAUMA OF SEEING GOD

In the Hindu sacred text the Bhagavad Gita, the hero, Arjuna, is being taught by Lord Krishna the secrets of transcendence. In order to accommodate Arjuna's frailty, Krishna has been appearing to him in a form that is able to shield his supernatural splendor.

Realizing this, Arjuna asks to see the Lord in all his glory. To do this, Krishna must first give to Arjuna a supernatural eye that is capable of withstanding the shock of what he's about to witness, for Arjuna has no idea of the magnitude of his request. After giving this gift of higher sight, Krishna then reveals himself

The vision is too much to bear. So Arjuna cries out:

Seeing thy great form, of thy many mouths and eyes, O Mighty-armed, of many arms, thighs and feet, of many bellies, terrible with many tusks, the worlds tremble and so do I.

When I see Thee touching the sky, blazing with many hues, with Thy mouth opened wide, and large glowing eyes, my inmost soul trembles in fear and I find neither steadiness nor peace, O Vishnu!

When I see Thy mouths, terrible with their tusks, like Time's devouring flames, I lose sense of the directions, and find no peace. Be gracious, O Lord of gods, Refuge of the worlds!⁵⁹

In the end, Arjuna can't sustain the vision and pleads that Krishna morph into a form that is less threatening:

I wish to see thee even as before with thy crown, mace, and disc in thy hand. Assume thy four-armed shape, O Thou of a thousand arms and of universal form.⁶⁰

Complying with Arjuna's request, Krishna returns to a more accommodating appearance.

In the book of Isaiah, the author too suffered the same terror as Arjuna when he was transported into ethereal realms:

The pivots of the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the Lord of Hosts!”⁶¹

We live with a suspicion that, in viewing the majesty of the godhead, we'll be undone. So we run for the shelter of a mind that will distract us from truly seeing. We retreat from perception and run to interpretation.

Interpretation is the domain of the mind. It brings us comfort, but, being the mind, it also splits the world and even the very nature of God. The Creator becomes not Lord of the Universe, but a weapon to be used against those of other faiths. Suddenly, we no longer have a God who fashions outrageous variety in the world, yet has no favorites, but instead one who creates winners at the expense of losers.

We argue about the correctness of our theology. We insist that our interpretation is closer to the deity. The words provide refuge from the direct encounter.

MARTHA'S HEAD GAMES

When Jesus said, “Your brother will rise again,” Martha couldn't take it in. Like all of us, Martha was so good at thinking about God that she couldn't experience the divine in front of her. Her mind jumped to what she'd been taught: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”⁶²

What Martha was alluding to was the common belief that the Messiah would come sometime in the future. At this event, all history, even time itself, would come to an end. The Messiah would call the dead out of their graves. Those who had died in martyrdom would be given back their lost wholeness.

Martha had already pushed down her anger and grief for the sake of decorum. Now she was distancing herself from the miracle by playing head games. Looking to the future, she could perhaps find relief from the intolerable present.

Lest we be too hard on Martha, it's vital to understand that hers was a tactic sadly familiar to us all. From the bright glare of grief, we all crave shelter. We deny what we're feeling because we fear the pain. We stuff our emotions, because we're terrified of their raw power. While we would like to think that we identify mostly with her sister Mary, it's Martha who is most like us.

Jesus, recognizing her unconscious ploy, brought her back into the present. “I am the resurrection and the life.”⁶³ No more words needed to be spoken.

AUTHENTIC GRIEF

Martha went to call Mary. In the midst of her mourning, Mary quickly gathered up her robes and hurried to Jesus. When their eyes met, she fell down on her knees and cried. Hers were the same words as Martha: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”⁶⁴

But for Mary there was no retreat from the grief. There was no debate. She knelt before Jesus in the vulnerability of her shattered life. Mary had the courage not to go numb to the pain. She dared to feel al that was surging through her, and yet not turn away. Seeing this moved Jesus deeply. The two of them wept together. In their grief, Jesus and Mary shared a deep communion.

Even as they embraced, the onlookers were whispering their disgust. “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”⁶⁵

Turning toward the tomb, Jesus commanded that the stone at the mouth of the cave be rolled away. Martha was dismayed. She tried to remind him that the body, now dead for four days, was already emitting a terrible stench.

But the stone was removed anyway. Peering into the depths of the darkness, he called out, “Lazarus, come forth!”⁶⁶

To the shock of everyone there, the dead man came stumbling out, his eyes blinking from the piercing brightness of the sun.

“Unbind him and let him go,”⁶⁷ Jesus commanded.

Because of this unusual event, many who had previously been skeptical began to believe. Others were threatened by this display of power, and sought all the more to destroy him.

But what of Lazarus? What would he have said about his extraordinary journey? Did he have tales to tell about traversing beyond the bounds of the material world? Would he have returned, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, deeply changed?

Sadly, we'll never know. However, the journey must have convinced him that the dividing line between life and death is far more permeable than most think. In itself, that would have had a great impact on his life.

DOCTOR GREEN EYES

In my work as a pastor, I learned over time that what people needed from me was simpler than I knew. They just needed me to be present. Listening to their story was a healing act. This was true especially for the dying.

I met Sally only once. Yet, during the short time we were together, she confided in me this remarkable experience.

Years before, while still in her early twenties, Sally had been struggling with the direction of her life. Every job she landed turned out badly. One after another, her employers found reasons to let her go. The more jobs she lost, the more difficult she found it to get hired. She began to feel severely depressed, as the prospects for her future seemed to close off.

Throughout most of her life, she had struggled with a heart condition that severely reduced her stamina. Many employers were reluctant to take on someone with a preexisting condition. It seemed as if everything was against her.

One evening, she collapsed in a restaurant with a massive coronary. The ambulance rushed her to the emergency room. After stabilizing her in the emergency room, she was taken to I CU. Once there, she suffered yet another heart attack.

A code red was called, but it was too late. They tried several times to shock her, but her heart refused to restart. The monitor showed nothing but a flat green line. Her breathing stopped. The last few nurses began cleaning up and putting away the crash cart. One stopped to raise the sheet over the corpse's face. A doctor from another floor came into the room almost unnoticed.

By this time, Sally remembers hovering above her body. There was no sense of anguish. In fact, the feeling was euphoric. At last, she was freed from all the pain of her heart. Finally, she was released from the constant worry of making a living. She felt herself drifting toward a path that wound its way into the distance.

She followed it until she came to some kind of a border. On the other side was a green pasture stretching to foothills. In the distance was a snowcapped mountain range. There was a sense of peace and calm unlike anything she had ever experienced. With every fiber of her being, she longed to move toward something in the distance.

Looking down, she realized that the border was actually a white fence with a gate. Feeling a great surge of energy and joy, she started to move toward the gate. No sooner did she approach it than a hand reached out and prevented her entry.

For some reason, she couldn't turn around to see the person whose hand was blocking her way. No words were exchanged, but she was made to understand that there would come a day when she could pass through this gate, but not now. There was still work she had to accomplish back in her body.

With this, she broke down into tears; torrents of grief swept over her. The news was crushing. She fought going back with everything she had, but it was useless. With a painful snap, she was back in her body.

Opening her eyes to the agony of the ICU, Sally looked up to see the face of a doctor she had never met before standing over her. His eyes were ablaze with an emerald green color. She could feel his strength as he held her hand, as if he were infusing her with a strange form of energy.

Slowly, she calmed down, and he began speaking to her. For three hours, he sat by her bedside and began to tell her all that would happen in her lifetime to come.

When he was finished, he said, “You won't consciously remember any of the details that I have spoken to you, but you will recall the fact that we conversed. Just know that some part of you has understood all that I've said.” With that, the doctor got up and left the room.

After he went out, a nurse came in and said, rather nonchalantly, “You're number forty.”

“What do you mean by number forty?”

“This is the fortieth time I've seen this happen. If you see that doctor again, he won't have any remembrance of your conversation with him. He'll look at you as if you had never met.”

Sure enough, several days later, Sally chanced to see the doctor passing by in the corridor. He was the same person, only this time his eyes were radically different. Gone was the brilliant emerald color. Sally stopped him and asked about what he had told her. He seemed quite perplexed and embarrassed, saying that she must be mistaking him for someone else.

Sally told me that the experience of her own death radically changed her life. No longer could she get excited about the trivial things. No longer did she carry the same debilitating fear that had kept her back for so long. Her heart condition had improved dramatically.

“Once you've seen for yourself that there is a life beyond, you can never look at this world in the same way. I now know that every person is of infinite worth. I know that my life matters and that I am not alone.”

Dorothy could not have said it better herself. No one can visit Oz without being profoundly changed.

Death can be the greatest of teachers. And great teachers use the time of death to communicate their most life-giving lessons.