Behold a man raised up by Christ!
The rest remaineth unreveal'd;
He told it not; or something seal'd
The lips of that Evangelist.

During Lent a member of our church family, Richard Storer, offered a series of memorable reflections on the work of three nineteenth century poets. The broad theme of these reflections was 'Resurrection', but it was a theme that Richard approached through the doubts about orthodox Christian faith that many poets of the period expressed, often with much poignancy, in their work.

Tennyson's In Memoriam, or rather a small part of it, was the focus of one of the reflections. As he muses on the account of the raising of Lazarus in St. John's Gospel, the poet expresses his unease that the evangelist does not record any words of the 'man raised up by Christ.' Either Lazarus chose to keep silent about what death was like, or St. John chose not to report what he said.

I am struck by how closely Tennyson's comments on St. John's (or Lazarus') reticence mirror the reaction of many Christians to the silence of St. Mark's Gospel about the resurrection of Jesus. In the Gospel's original ending the women who have come to anoint Jesus' body are told by a young man in the empty tomb that Jesus has been raised, and that they are to give this news to Peter and the rest of the disciples. The women's initial reaction is not one of joy, but of distress and terror: they run, fearful, from the tomb and say nothing. But the unease we might feel about the silence of the women is misplaced, for in the light of the subsequent experiences of the early Christian community this silence may be likened to the eternal silence into which God spoke when he created the world; for into the silence of those women at the empty tomb is spoken, to them and to us, God's Good News of creation renewed: Christ is risen! Alleluia!