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Homily: 5th Sunday of Lent – Cycle C (Scrutinies)
I would guess that most of us here have had one of those “where was God” moments already in our lives. It seems like it is one of those inevitable experiences in life. Mom’s sudden diagnosis with stage four breast cancer or grandpa’s sudden stroke. The best friend who was killed in a car accident or the child lost to miscarriage. Or perhaps even the loss of a beloved pet. All of which often leave us wanting to say, like Martha and Mary in our Gospel today, “Jesus, if only you had been here…”
My own family had a moment like that. Almost twenty years ago now, my brother Douglas was killed during an armed robbery at the place where he worked. He was 20 years old at the time and my sisters and I were all in our teens. Needless to say, in the middle of what is already a tumultuous time in the life of a family—the time when all of the children are in that teen age range—this event greatly unsettled our world.
Now my mom is a pretty strong woman. Like any good Catholic mother, she made sure that all of her children grew up practicing the Catholic faith. The sudden, seemingly meaningless death of one of her children, however, deeply shook her faith. (You know when Jesus says in the Gospel “Tonight all of you will have your faith shaken…” and Peter says “Lord, maybe all the rest of them, but me never…” well, my mom is kind of like Peter in that way and the death of my brother was that “faith-shaking” event.)
For a long time my mother was unable to forgive God for what happened. She, like Martha, blamed God for my brother’s death. In the process, she had to confront (we all had to confront it, really) the fact that the reality that she was facing brought into question everything that she had believed to be true about God: namely that God was loving, caring, and protecting to those who remain true to his laws and commands. “I’ve done my part,” I could hear her say, “but where were you!?!?”
Martha and Mary, even though they had the distinct advantage of being able to vent their emotions directly to Jesus, face to face, nonetheless experienced a very similar moment. A sudden illness had come upon their brother Lazarus and, although they had sent word to Jesus, he didn’t come quickly enough and their brother died. Jesus, of course, knew what he was going to do and so, as Martha expressed her frustration that Jesus seemingly didn’t try hard enough to come and save her brother, Jesus calmly and warmly invites her to a new understanding of death. After Martha expresses her faith that her brother will rise again in the final judgment, Jesus, in turn, invites her to see who it is that is standing before her: “I am the resurrection and the life,” he tells her. What he seems to be saying is, “You don’t have to wait for the resurrection at the end of time, because the one who is the resurrection is standing right here before you.
What Christ was doing was calling Martha to a radical hope in the face of despair: which was a hope that she already hinted at having when she said, “But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” And why do we have to be reminded of this? Well, it’s because sometimes we need a reminder that God didn’t promise that he would shield us from all that could hurt us. Rather, he promised us that he would never abandon us in our woundedness. Thus, we hear in the prophecy of Ezekiel that God doesn’t say “Don’t worry, I’ll never let you die,” but rather, “I will open your graves and have you rise from them.” In other words, “Although you may feel like you’ve died, not even death will stop me from restoring you to the life that I have promised to you.” It is this promise, then, that calls us to a radical kind of hope: radical, because hope that comes in the face of despair is the most pure kind of hope that one can have.
I would guess that just about all of us, however, have never experienced the second half of Martha and Mary’s experience: that is, we’ve probably never experienced God actually intervening to bring our loved one back to life, regardless of how much we’ve actually pleaded him for it. Thus, the challenge for us is to find a way to take hold of this radical kind of hope in the midst of our unresolved despair. This is a very personal challenge, for it is something that we have to resolve within ourselves. First, we have to acknowledge our disappointment with God that he did not live up to our expectations (regardless of whether or not they were realistic expectations to have of God, because the fact of the matter is that they were our expectations and, thus, they were real). Then, we have to find a way to open ourselves back up to him to allow him the chance to show us that he has not abandoned us. This takes a lot of humility and vulnerability on our part, which, quite frankly, can be scary.
As I mentioned, my mom is a strong woman. And so, let’s just say that she doesn’t do “vulnerable” very well. Her faith, however, had been so strong—and so deeply imbedded in her understanding of who she was—that she knew that she had to find a way to get a hold of that hope in the face of this unresolved despair. So she turned back to prayer. Through it, and by staying close to the sacraments, she has been able to find a way to open herself back up to God so as to give him the chance to show her the hope that still exists even though the hurt from the loss still remains. I suspect that she is still finding it, just as all of us in the family are still finding it, each in our own way, even now, nearly 20 years after his death.
My brothers and sisters, Lent isn’t just about “getting right with the laws of the Church.” Rather, Lent is really about reconciling ourselves with God and with one another. Unfortunately, just maintaining our Lenten fasts isn’t going to be enough to make that reconciliation happen. At best, it can make us open to it, but that’s as far as it can take us. The hard work of Lent is, rather, is this opening of ourselves to God: first acknowledging our disappointment with him and then being open to discovering a new, more meaningful way to be in relationship with him.
With the help of his grace, however, which is found in prayer and in the sacraments, we, too can come to believe, as Martha and Mary did, in the promise God has made to us—that he would open our graves and raise us from them—and, thus, we can find the peace that will allow us to move forward, trusting in the promise of joy that awaits us on Easter morning.
Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – March 17th, 2013
Love it DP. I'm giving a similar talk tomorrow... say a prayer for me ;)
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