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Reflection for April 23 2006

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The Gospel writers rarely include anything in their accounts of Jesus that doesn't have some special significance. Therefore we never read of Jesus brushing his teeth or consulting a road map before starting out on a journey. Yet there are two details in the Gospels the significance of which leaves scholars stymied. First there is the passing mention of a young man in Mark's account who follows the police after Jesus' arrest and when the police try to nab him, all they can catch is the linen sheet he's wearing, while the fellow runs off naked. Then there's the mention, after Peter and John arrive at Jesus' empty tomb, of Jesus' linen grave clothes lying about and his face veil nicely rolled up and set aside. Why these isolated details, which seem so insignificant, even distracting in the context of the larger drama going on? I've read many attempts to find their meaning, their symbolic intent, but the scholars always doubt their own conjectures.

However, reading the liturgical meditations of that early 20th century expert Pius Parsch the other day, an idea came to me relative to the detail about the linen grave wrappings and face veil. He mentions how (in the pre-Vatican II Missal) the Gospel reading for the Saturday after Easter is the very one that tells of Peter and John running to the empty tomb and noticing these items lying around. And the question arises: why on earth would the Roman Church, a full week after Easter, reread a Gospel that was more appropriately read on Easter Sunday itself. The answer is: on the Saturday after Easter all the people who were baptized the week before - having worn their white baptismal gowns all week long - were now allowed to lay them aside and go back to their normal garb and occupations - still bearing, of course, the glow of their Easter initiation into the Church. And so what better Gospel to read at that Saturday Eucharist than the one about Jesus himself having left his own linen grave clothes behind as he left his tomb to appear like a new man to his disciples! So if the Church could parlay that seemingly insignificant mention of Christ's garments scattered about his empty tomb into something meaningful, may we not also play with it to make it relevant to our own spiritual lives?

In my old religious order we always referred to the brown robe we wore as a habit. We wore it over an ordinary shirt and trousers, which could be as patched or casual as you could wish - which led to jokes like "the habit covers a multitude of sins". But the word habit also means "any constant, often unconscious inclination to perform some act acquired through its frequent repetition." An addiction would be a habit gone out of control. So may we not find in those scattered and abandoned grave clothes a plausible reminder that if we are ever to emerge from the rut we're in, rise from the stale tomb we've built around ourselves, we're going to have to leave our habits (i.e. our pet peeves, our rigid appraisals of other people, our relentless criticism) behind - well folded, of course, and nicely laid aside because, after all, they've have been such a precious, intimate part of our lives - like our morning coffee?

Which then carries over to that otherwise insignificant young man whose linen garment was snatched by the Temple police after Jesus' arrest. Proximity to Jesus meant for him risking the loss of his outer garment, leaving himself as naked as a newborn babe. So also proximity to Jesus can do the same to us: free us from the habits that conceal the brand new you and me who's ready at last to live deliberately instead of habitually. Which then calls to mind old Lazarus himself exiting his grave as Jesus says, "Unbind him and let him go."

This doesn't mean that you should literally clean out your current wardrobe. It's just a way of telling you to change what you've been wearing and "put on the Lord Jesus Christ".

-- Geoff Wood