In my planning for Lent with the people of the Pakenham Uniting Church (Melbourne, Australia) I had promised them one of Leonard Cohen’s songs to parallel each Sunday’s lectionary reading. My planning was disrupted by my unexpected hospitalisation, but I continued to reflect on the gospel texts and on the music of Cohen (who happens to be one of my favourite artists).
The reading from the Fourth Gospel set down for Lent 5 (Sunday 22nd March) was the familiar and quite poignant story of Jesus and the raising of Lazarus (John 11:1-45). The writer of the Fourth Gospel has a wondrous ability to weave spirals of meaning and nuance into his carefully crafted narrative and this story is no different. It is a story of healing, clearly, but of healing and restoration and wellbeing on so many levels. Lazarus is not simply raised to life, he is unbound and set free. What powerful imagery! And as that is happening, Martha, Mary, the disciples and the crowd gathered with them are also unbound and set free – from grief, from weeping, from pain, from scepticism, from despair, from who-knows-what has been binding them in life. And there are all the usual Fourth Gospel hints that more is going on than meets the eye: the misunderstanding motif amongst the disciples, the recurring ‘come and see’ phrase, the interplay between the very human Jesus who weeps and the Divine Jesus who works miracles, the interesting parallel with the previous lectionary story of Jesus healing the man born blind (John 9:1-41) where illness/death is purposed to ‘bring glory to God’ (see my previous post What Did I Do to Deserve This), and so much more.
I have neither the time nor the inclination to expound on all these layers of meaning here, suffice to say that they are there, and that they serve to remind me of the value in ongoing reflection around the things from which I might need to be set free, around the dimensions of my life and soul that might need healing. This is not a once-off process; it is a continuing reflective practice in my quest for wellbeing and wholeness.
Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, my Lenten journey through the Fourth Gospel has offered me wisdom for the journey I am taking through my present illness. Nothing overly dramatic or miraculous, but gentle reminders that the move toward healing and wholeness is best undertaken amidst a loving, caring family/community; that healing and wholeness is a multi-layered exercise – physical, spiritual and emotional, superficially obvious yet profoundly soul-deep; that healing might have as much to do with how I respond to the situation as it does with how I am treated in the situation; that being ‘deeply present’ to the moment (place, people, feelings, etc) is more helpful than projecting too far into the future; that in some wondrous, mystical way the wounding and healing of the body offers wisdom for the ‘dark night of the soul’ and the process of return to wholeness.
These are some of the reflective pathways that this amazing story has guided me through over this past week. They may not be pathways that are real or necessary for you, but I do think the story will offer you pathways if you spend time with it in gentle reflective practice. Where do you see yourself in this story? From what might you need to be unbound and set free? What do you hear when Jesus calls your name and invites you to ‘come out’? So many prompts for reflection.
The Cohen song that seems to sit so perfectly with this text is the hauntingly beautiful Come Healing. I encourage you listen to it. It is rarely appropriate to tell anyone what a songwriter ‘means’ by their lyrics, because everyone will hear their own story somewhere in the song. So all I can do is tell you what they mean for me at this particular moment: the combination of song and Fourth Gospel text leaves me with a deep awareness of the nearness of God and an assurance that through that awareness comes a profound healing of the spirit that is ultimately more significant than any healing of the mind and body that may also flow from it. I wonder what wisdom you may discern for your particular journey as you read the text and listen to the song. Enjoy!
David Brooker (25th March 2026)
Listen to Come Healing (Leonard Cohen) HERE
OldSoul.blog 
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