Friday, Day 34: Fish and Honeycomb

In "Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell," Denise Levertov, the great poet I associate with the peace movement, describes the Orthodox icon of the Resurrection. In the Orthodox tradition, there is no Limbo now, but there was that place of waiting between the beginning of humanity and Jesus’ resurrection—and in the icon’s image, Jesus is pulling Adam and Eve from the depths. 

Here is how Levertov describes it:

Down through the tomb's inward arch
He has shouldered out into Limbo
to gather them, dazed, from dreamless slumber:
the merciful dead, the prophets,
the innocents just His own age and those
unnumbered others waiting here
unaware, in an endless void He is ending
now, stooping to tug at their hands,
to pull them from their sarcophagi,
dazzled, almost unwilling.

We are all stuck in one way or another, often because we don’t know how to move from where we are. Buddhist wisdom tells us to ask ourselves, gently, “Have I ever done this before?” and laugh at ourselves—then work toward changing. But sometimes we’re desperately stuck, and even a hand in ours, even when we’re being pulled up by forces much more powerful than our own will, we don’t know how to comply.  

But then the poem gets more specific, turns to the last person to receive Jesus’ forgiveness and promise of paradise. Levertov goes on:   

                                         Didmas,
neighbor in death, Golgotha dust
still streaked on the dried sweat of his body
no one had washed and anointed, is here,
for sequence is not known in Limbo;
the promise, given from cross to cross
at noon, arches beyond sunset and dawn.
All these He will swiftly lead
to the Paradise road: they are safe.

The poem focuses in on Didmas’ dust-streaked body, reminds us that no one cared for the bodies of the crucified, reminds us that Jesus’ body, too, was untouched. By the time he was to be anointed, he’s already moved on. And then the lens pans out, and we remember that Didmas is one of many, all of them safe.

But what did this mean for Jesus? That part of the story we rarely consider. We are told Jesus died for our sins, that he was the Lamb of God, and we are asked to pay close attention to the details of his suffering before death. But what about after? Levertov writes,

That done, there must take place that struggle
no human presumes to picture:
living, dying, descending to rescue the just
from shadow, were lesser travails
than this: to break
through earth and stone of the faithless world
back to the cold sepulchre, tearstained
stifling shroud; to break from them
back into breath and heartbeat, and walk
the world again,

And so we see how he broke free from death only to return to it—only to fall deep into the hell where his predecessors were waiting, and then, only to return to the world that had been, in so  many ways at the end of his life, a different kind of hell. Levertov continues,

closed into days and weeks again,
wounds of His anguish open, and Spirit
streaming through every cell of flesh
so that if mortal sight could bear
to perceive it, it would be seen
His mortal flesh was lit from within, now,
and aching for home.

Aching for home, as we all do, even when we don’t have a good sense of where home is.

And then, she ends the poem with this brilliant turn to the ordinary details of those days between Resurrection and Ascension:

                                 He must return,
first, in Divine patience, and know
hunger again, and give
to humble friends the joy
of giving Him food—fish and a honeycomb.

And we see for the first time, or are reminded, that the act of receiving food from a friend is a sacred act, a sacrificial act, done as much for the friend as for oneself. 

And we begin to question our own giving, and receiving. We ask, “Have we done this before?” and of course the answer is yes, yes, yes, but never with complete consciousness, never with total attention. 

We have offered the fish and the honeycomb, thinking we were generous, thinking we were blessing the receiver, when really, we were blessed in the giving. Really, we were offering up something that was already theirs, already all of ours.

And so we slow down, patient, humble. We see that nothing is ours—not Jesus’ broken body, not the empty tomb, not the fish, not the honeycomb. And, paradoxically, we see that everything is ours. Jesus’ wounds. The Angel, the light, the women’s fear and joy, the fish, the honeycomb. All of it.