Marilynne Robinson - The Death of Adam - Essays on Modern Thought

From time to time, on the strength of the text, the minister will conclude something brave and absolute — You must forgive, or, If you think you have anything because you deserve it, you have forgotten the grace of God, or, No history or prospect of failure can excuse you from the obligation to try to do good. These are moments that do not occur in other settings, and I am so far unregenerate that they never cease to impress me deeply. And it touches me that this honorable art of preaching is carried forward when there is so little regard for it among us now. But the most persuasive and forthright explication of that text is still theology. For me, at least, the text itself always remains almost entirely elusive. So I must come back to hear it again; in the old phrase, to have it opened for me again.

The four gospels do not agree in their accounts of the discovery of the empty tomb on the morning of the resurrection. The sermon I heard with my grandfather established that fact with the forensic concern for textual detail some ministers reserve for grand occasions. This would account for the great restlessness which, as I recall, nearly overthrew my better self.

As it happens, Matthew reports that, apparently “with Mary Magdalene and the other Mary” watching, “behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.”

In Mark’s account, “Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, and Salome” came to the tomb at the rising of the sun with spices to anoint the body. “And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us the stone away from the door of the sepulchre? And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great. And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted. And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him.”

According to Luke, women who had come with Jesus from Galilee prepared spices and ointments and came to the tomb to find the stone rolled back. “And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood next to them in shining garments: And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead?” The disciples with whom, unrecognized, Jesus walks to Emmaus, tell him the women described “a vision of angels.”

In the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb early in the morning, sees the stone rolled back, and runs to tell the disciples that the body of Jesus has been removed. Peter and another disciple, presumably John himself, run to the sepulchre, and Simon Peter “went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, and the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself … But Mary stood at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre, and seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou?”

The minister who drew my attention to this mystery, a plump old man in a white vestment as I remember him, must have asked how it came about or what it could mean that this essential moment was described differently in every report of it. What I recall of the sermon would have been offered as an answer to that question. He dwelt on the other figures at the tomb, not the women or the disciples but the figures described as angels in three accounts and, in one, as a young man in a long white garment. He asked what it would mean if all the descriptions were in fact of one or two young men, followers of Jesus who had simply stayed the night by the tomb or arrived there before the women in the morning. Or if the one young man was in fact an angel. The Bible, he said, was full of proof that angels could pass for men, which must certainly mean that men could pass for angels. He concluded that, insofar as a young man is seen under the aspect of joy and kindness and holiness, he is properly seen as an angel, because that is a vision of his immortal nature. And that insofar as the joy and kindness and holiness of angels are addressed to human beings, angels are like us and at one with us, at their most beautiful when they express attributes most beautiful in us. That such a confusion could have occurred is central to the meaning of the resurrection, because it reminds us what we are. Amen, he said, having blessed my life with a lovely thing to ponder.

The families of both my parents settled and established themselves in the northern mountains, where there is a special sweetness in the light and grace in the vegetation, and as well a particular tenderness in the contact of light and vegetation. We used to hunt for wild strawberries in places in the woods where there had once been fires. These meadows, which for decades or centuries would hardly have felt more sunlight than the floor of the sea, were avid for it. Because of the altitude, or the damp, or the kind of grass that grew in such places, they were radiant, smoldering, gold with transparency, accepting light altogether. Thousands of florets for which I would never learn names, so tiny even a child had to kneel to see them at all, squandered intricacy and opulence on avid little bees, the bees cherished, the flowers cherished, the light cherished, visibly, audibly, palpably.

John Calvin says that when a seed falls into the ground it is cherished there, by which he means that everything the seed contains by way of expectation is foreseen and honored. One might as well say the earth invades the seed, seizes it as occasion to compose itself in some brief shape. Groundwater in a sleeve of tissue, flaunting improbable fragrances and iridescences as the things of this strange world are so inclined to do. So a thriving place is full of intention, a sufficiency awaiting expectation, teasing hope beyond itself.

To find in the sober woods these little Orients of delectation was like hearing a tale of opulent grace poured out on modest need or of miracle astonishing despair, a parable brilliant with strangeness, cryptic with wisdom, disturbing as a tender intention full of the frightening mercy of foreknowledge. God will wipe away all tears, the dead will rise, meant to me then, Little girl, you will mourn and you will die. Perhaps that was some great part of the difference I felt between the world and myself, that while it was a thousand ways true that it knew me as I could not know myself — my old relatives remembered people with my voice or my eyes and how they lived and how their lives ended — I hoarded the notion of this singular self in this singular moment, as if such things could exist, and shrugged away intention and anticipation and cherishing, knowing they meant that even I never was my own.

I knew my grandfather for many years, but I am not sure I ever knew him well. He seemed stern to me and I was very shy of him. I had heard sad stories about him as a boy and a young man, and when I was with him I always thought of them, and I was cautious, as if the injuries might still be tender.

It may be that I did know my grandfather very well because I thought of him as a boy and a young man, and explained his silence to myself in such terms. My memory of him allows me to interpret the dignity of his shrinking height and stooping back as an effort of composure of the kind people make when the shock of cruelty is still new to them, when resignation is still a novel labor. I interpret the memory of his polished shoes and his habit of gardening in his oldest suit and his worst necktie as evidence that I sensed in him diligent pride in the face of sadness not otherwise to be borne. Perhaps he himself could not have told me how near the truth I was.