Homily: 5th Sunday in Lent – Cycle A
My brothers and sisters, today’s
gospel reading provides us with a little “Lenten reality check”, of sorts. Perhaps we’ve been doing well in our Lenten
practices—and perhaps we feel that we have made great progress in restoring our
relationship with God in preparation for celebrating Easter. If so, that’s great! God created us to be in relationship with him
so that he might share his life of unity, peace, and joy with his creation and
so your work to restore your relationship with him—especially if that has
already taken the form of making a good confession sometime in the last four
weeks—is surely in conformance with his will for your life. The “reality check” that today’s Gospel
reading provides us, however, is a reminder that friendship with God is no
guarantee of protection from calamity, suffering, or pain.
Martha, Mary, and Lazarus were close
friends of Jesus. The Gospel tells us
that “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus”. Because of this close friendship, the three
of them had come to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah and they put their faith
in his ability to heal even mortal sicknesses.
And so, when Lazarus fell ill, Martha quickly sent word to Jesus, hoping
that he’d come to save her brother from this illness. Jesus didn’t come right away, however, and
Lazarus died. In fact, by the time Jesus
had arrived, Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.
Because of this, Martha and Mary both
confront Jesus, saying: “If you had been here, my brother would not have
died!” They are hurt because Jesus did
not appear to respond as quickly as they, because of their friendship, expected
that he would. Jesus, in spite of already
knowing what he was going to do, nonetheless displays the fullness of his
humanity when, confronted by the sorrow being experienced by these sisters whom
he dearly loved, he himself weeps. It’s
a touching moment that we would do well to consider any time that we experience
a loss in our own lives. But let’s
imagine for a moment that the story ended there: Jesus weeping while Lazarus
remains dead in the grave. If that were
the case, he’d be a great teacher, prophet, consoler, and even, perhaps, friend,
but he wouldn’t be God.
Thus, when we hear Jesus tell Martha
plainly, “I am the resurrection and the life”, we hear something
different. With these words, Jesus is
telling her that it isn’t just his belief
that Lazarus will rise, but rather it is his concrete knowledge of who he is
and of what he is capable. Friendship
with God, she discovers, is not divine protection from pain, suffering, or even
death, but rather a guarantee that, in that pain, suffering, and even death,
God will be with us. When Jesus weeps,
we see the most touching, but telling evidence that he, indeed, is with us, in
the fullness of our humanity. When he
calls Lazarus from the grave, however, we see the still greater evidence that
not only is Jesus with us—the great teacher, prophet, consoler, and friend—but
that Jesus is, indeed, God: and that, in Jesus, God himself is truly with us.
Thus, in Jesus, the words of the
prophet Ezekiel have been fulfilled.
When Jesus called Lazarus from the grave he brought new light to the
rebirth foreshadowed in his promise to bring back his chosen people from
exile. Those people thought themselves
dead because they had lost the land from which they took their identity. Thus, when the Lord “brought them back to the
land of Israel”, they truly felt reborn.
Little did they know, however, that one day God himself would take on
human nature and walk among them and would, literally, open the graves of the
dead and have the dead rise from them.
Notice that the ancient Israelites were not prevented from experiencing
exile because of their friendship with him.
Rather, it was because of their friendship that they were eventually
restored to their land and given “new life”.
So it is now that our friendship with God will be no guarantee that we
will not experience sadness, difficulty, or pain, but rather a promise that God
will lift us from that sadness, difficulty, or pain, if we remain faithful to our
friendship with him.
This is the promise that those who are
preparing to receive the Easter Sacraments are hoping to receive. They acknowledge that they have been dead in
their sin and they acknowledge that it is only through friendship with God,
obtained by making a definitive act of faith in Jesus, that they will be freed
from this death to walk in newness of life.
This final scrutiny invites them to acknowledge this truth and to pray
for the grace to persevere in their commitment to leave sin in the past. Finally, it invites us to support them with
our prayers.
My brothers and sisters, the scrutiny
is a reminder to each of us that sin, especially mortal sin, separates us from
God and our friendship with him. If we
have not yet turned from our sin this Lent, then we must begin this necessary
work today because God—even though he never gives up on us—will not save us from
death—that is, eternal death—if we do not first seek to be reconciled to
him. It also reminds us, however, that friendship
with him is no guarantee that we will be spared pain, suffering, or even death
in this world. It is, rather, a
guarantee that we will never be abandoned to eternal death: a promise which the
raising of Lazarus—and, more poignantly, Jesus’ own resurrection—demonstrates
for us.
And so, as we draw close to the Lord
around this altar, let us ask for the strength of faith to trust in the victory
over death won for us by Jesus—and, thus, to place all of our hope in him, like
Martha and Mary did—so that we, too, along with our elect, will be ready to
receive the grace of new life: the new and glorious life in Jesus that we
receive under sacramental signs, here in this Holy Eucharist.
Given
at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – April 1st & 2nd,
2017
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