Friday in the Fifth Week in Lent: Chiseled in Stone

 

Lessons: Psalm 22; Jeremiah 29:1, 4-13; Romans 11:13-24; John 11:1-27

I had heard that Michelangelo approached a stone of marble with a feeling for it. It was to him as if there was a statue or relief waiting to be set free. His task was to assist its emergence.

This winter when we visited Florence, I was determined to see the David which I had missed seeing thirty years before.  The David was freed from an old abandoned piece of marble, one with a defect, which other artists had discarded.  It had been abandoned for decades and Michelangelo took it up as a personal challenge.

David is housed in the Accademia, in a beautiful setting now out of the elements.

As breathtaking as the David is, what held my attention was the approach. Lining the .corridor that leads into Michelangelo’s David are the four, incredible, Unfinished Slaves. Pope Julius commissioned thirty such figures as part of his tomb in 1505.  Julius soon died, and the huge project was diminished several times over many years. The plans stopped and started. Michelangelo worked on the project intermittently, and produced only six figures, four here and two in the Louvre in Paris.

It was the Awakening Slave that most held my attention.  Here is an unfinished slave, massive in muscle structure, straining to be set free from the marble.  The chisel marks are rough and invite one to imagine Michelangelo at work.  I did not know whether to be disappointed it was unfinished until we got to the last, the Bearded Slave.  Much closer to completion, it is less impressive for being more complete.  It was not that Michelangelo’s work lost ground, it lost mystery. I felt I had been given a tutorial in the artist’s work and imagination.  I so wanted to touch the forbidden work.

The raising of Lazarus from John’s gospel is not a metaphor but just the same I see one within it.  Here is John’s intimate story of hope and friendship.  But what forever puzzles is Jesus' choice to remain two days where he is.  And John means for it to puzzle us. Why if you love someone do you not just jump to and fix the situation?

By the time Jesus shows up, four days later, Lazarus is well dead. Mary hearing of Jesus' arrival, races to meet him and laments, "If only you had been here my brother would not have died. And even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you."
Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."
Martha said to him, "I know he will rise in the resurrection at the last day."
Here she shows herself to be a faithful and studied Jew influenced by the pharisaic party.

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" 

She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."

Here for me is the metaphor. We are all like a precious piece of marble designed to hold a work of beauty as God sees beauty. It is our original beauty designed into each of us at the beginning of created time. For us, Jesus is the artisan. His chisel is offered to those who choose to trust and yield to his teaching and being. His process is patient and slow, not to force a shape but reveal a shape.  The chisel is willing to slowly free us of our casing.  Martha and Lazarus both have known this and have allowed this intimate relationship to help them grow and become.  From time to time the chisel hits hard, “Martha, Martha, you are worried about many things.”  And sometimes gently, “Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be denied her.”

Most oddly it is in Lazarus’ death, Martha’s grief, Mary’s attentiveness that the greatest realization will come. In a few verses Lazarus will rise and create a foretaste of Jesus own resurrection.  For the author of John, this story readies us for the message of Jesus' trial, death and resurrection.  Perhaps it readies us for our own.

But here is what I learned as I approached the David.  While I may want to be this thing of extraordinary beauty in my eyes and those of God, there is much beauty in the Unfinished Slaves. In the rough chisel marks is so much imagination about what might be.  Our rough unfinished selves perhaps tell more of a story than our full arrival. Knowing what we have been chiseled from, tells others far more than some polished end product. 

I am not yet that end product. Few, if any are.  Perhaps I will treasure my chisel marks…and yours more often now.