by Tracy Johnson

(story-teller, dear friend, mother, founder of Red Tent Living, Restoration Counseling)

She stood at the window, looking out into the distance.

The sounds in the house were stifling, making it impossible to breathe. She was a swirling combination of disappointment, anger, and anticipation. Watching out the window was her defiant act, her refusal to be sucked in by the chosen posture of everyone else inside the house, her sister and the friends who were gathered to sob and grieve. She was having none of it.

Every fiber of me identifies with her, the defiant one, standing at the window. I share her disappointment, anger, and anticipation so fully I can feel them in my own body, almost as if she is right here and we are standing defiantly next to one another. The shared space affirming for both of us that what we feel is legitimate and we are not alone.

Jesus is late, and in His failure to show up, death has taken what we know He could have healed if only He had been present.

Martha runs to meet Jesus on the road when she sees Him in the distance, and I am right there with her. Running is inappropriate, undignified, and certainly garners the attention of the watchful onlookers outside the house. Their judgement is palpable, but we don’t care. The conversation we need with Jesus is our sole focus. 

“If you’d been here, He wouldn’t have died.”

            “If you’d been here, the abuse wouldn’t have happened.”

Conflicted and ambivalent inside, I know Jesus can do miracles; I’ve seen them, I’ve sat with Him and felt His life-giving presence. I know that, but death – death is different. Dead things are cold, hard, and decaying.

My body knows this. Dead things can’t be harmed any longer; there’s nothing left to kill. Death seems safer.

Jesus weeps after his conversation with Martha and her sister Mary.

Jesus tells Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live. Do you believe this?”

Grammatically, in Greek, resurrection and life are the same thing, and they are present tense. Literally, “come alive now!”  So, the one who believes in Jesus will come alive.

I started my journey of belief as a ten-year-old. Underneath a brilliant star-filled sky in the Santa Cruz mountains at the Friday night bonfire, I told Jesus I believed. That coming year brought the death of my grandmother, a difficult move to a new city, sexual abuse from my grandfather, and my family planted our roots at a conservative Bible church. On the heels of believing, death didn’t just crouch at the door, it pounced on me. 

My experiences with believing are interwoven with abuse. My body carries that complex story. Resurrection was something we celebrated on Easter and talked about in theological ways. It lived in my thoughts, but not in my body.  

I was nearly forty years old before I heard anyone talking about the resurrection in personal ways. At a conference for survivors of sexual abuse, I participated in an exercise where the story of Lazarus was acted out, and we were given the opportunity to consider who we identified with in the story. I began to wonder what it would mean to identify with Lazarus, being dead and needing resurrection.

Naming the deadness I carried in my body was difficult, at times impossibly hard. It meant facing the depth of my story and reconnecting with my body. To know what needed resurrection I had to know what was dead. 

Like most abuse survivors, I believed the abuse was my fault, and from that posture all that was available from the Lord was judgement.

I knew I was a disappointment to God. I learned early that anger worked to keep my anxiety and my shame pushed down, and it gave me a sense of power. My anger was one of the first clues pointing me in the direction of my deadness. Getting curious about my anger and what it was protecting led me back to the ten-year-old girl and the shattering she experienced in the months after the night at the campfire when she told Jesus she believed.

Coming alive to my body included feeling my anxiety, anxiety that my ten-year-old self felt. Coming alive to my body’s need for comfort, tenderness, and kindness was scary.

I sometimes think about Lazarus and his resurrection. Jesus calling out to him, “Lazarus, come forth.” I wonder if he hesitated, if it was hard to sit up. He was bound in strips of cloth. I am guessing he needed help with those, or did he shuffle out of that cave? What did his body need after having been dead for four days? I bet his joints were stiff, his skin flaking and dry. I wonder if his head ached or if he was cold. Was he dehydrated and hungry?

I imagine it took time for Lazarus for recover from his resurrection.

For me, resurrection has happened slowly, piece by piece I continue to be resurrected. Coming alive has meant I feel the story more, not less. My need for the felt presence of Jesus is greater, His love and comfort. The theological truth of what He accomplished on the cross – atonement, removing judgement – is something I now feel in my body. “His body, broken for mine,” resurrection unites my broken body with His broken body – seemingly impossible and yet true.

Resurrection is a miracle.