Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Fifth Sunday of Lent


With gratitude to Fr. Edmund Montgomery

Mary and Martha have something to teach us about Jesus. These two women and their brother Lazarus are friends of Jesus. This word ‘friend’ is key in the Gospel for the Fifth Sunday of Lent. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus are friends of Jesus. That they are friends means that the four of them loved each other, provided companionship for each other, gave support to each other, provided consolation to each other. Indeed, all four of them – Mary, Martha, Lazarus, and Jesus – were really and truly human beings.

The loss that Jesus felt for Lazarus is a real loss. He is not just play acting. The Scripture tells us that “Jesus wept.” It should not surprise us. Did not Jesus already experience other members of his family having died? We do not know, for example, when Joseph died, but it appears from the Scripture that he was not around during the period of Jesus’ ministry. Would not Jesus have experienced the loss of his grandparents as well? We do not know much about the family structure of Jesus but he lived in a culture and society in which parents and grandparents would have been well revered. 

Lazarus is a friend, a real friend. For many of us, our friends can be closer than members of our family, and when Lazarus dies, it clearly affects Jesus very deeply. He was in ‘great distress,’ the Gospel tells us. He made that groan that only those who are mourning can make, a ‘sigh that came straight from the heart,’ and he began to weep openly. So moved were those around him, they said, ‘See how much he loved him!’ We like to speak of Jesus as Savior, as Redeemer, as Son of God, and he is all of these things, but we must never lose sight of the Jesus we see in today’s Gospel: ‘Jesus the Mourner, one who knows the depths of hurt and suffering, and the cost of death. As the Bible tells us, Jesus can sympathize with us in our weaknesses because he has been tested with suffering as we are. 

A young man was murdered on 16th Street this past week. News reports have interviewed his numerous siblings and friends. There is grief in the city over this loss. There is grief among us whenever any of us lose a friend or family member. Depending on the relationship, the grief is stronger or weaker. As I reached my 50s, I wondered what it would be like when my own parents would die. They died within three years of each other and I am here. What I know now that was not uppermost in my own mind at that time is that I will follow them sometime in the future.

Martha’s faith must have been incredible. She said to Jesus, ‘If you had been here, my brother would not have died, but I know that, even now, whatever you ask of God, he will grant you.’ She is saying that Jesus could have healed Lazarus had he arrived in time, but that even now, even though Lazarus died four days previously and was buried and sealed in a tomb, Jesus can even save this situation. 

What incredible confidence Martha had in him, and what pressure this must have put on Jesus. ‘He has to act now,’ those around him must have thought. ‘This will show whether he is who we claims to be.’ Martha accepts the reality that Lazarus is dead, but still believes Jesus can do something. And something Jesus certainly does. 

What must the crowd have thought? What was the smell as the tomb was opened? Jesus raises his voice in prayer and cries aloud for Lazarus to come out. And Lazarus walks out of the tomb! Imagine the screams of shock, the emotion, people fainting, running away, falling to the ground in horror. Wrapped in his burial shroud still, Lazarus stands there before them all. Jesus asks them to ‘Unbind him,’ and ‘let him go free’. 

In this Gospel Martha teaches us to have faith in Jesus even when the situation seems impossible. The tubes and wires connected to loved ones who are dying in hospital are like the bands of cloth that shrouded Lazarus in the tomb, and, as their life slips away, it may be that the Lord is saying the same words to us as he said after raising Lazarus, ‘Unbind him, let him go free’: don’t be afraid of letting our loved ones slip away from us in death, because it is into God’s hands we pass them. 

Poor Lazarus died, was raised and lived, only to die again! But that promise Jesus made to Martha, ‘Your brother will rise again,’ is the certainty that ought to sustain us, too when we are faced with the death of a loved one, or the certainty of our own death. Jesus’ love for his friends is real, his sense of loss at Lazarus’ death is genuine, and his promise of life without end is true, too. 

The more we come to know Jesus the more we will find ourselves fascinated by his life, and by the reality of what he promised. ‘I am the resurrection and the life. If anyone believes in me, even though he dies he will live, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.’


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