[“Why?” Why, since you loved this man, did you not come to save him from death? Why is it that God seems absent when bad things happen to good people? Why doesn’t God rescue his loved ones and save them from pain and death?
Jesus doesn’t offer any apology or theoretical response. Instead, he asks where they have laid the body, lets them take him there,]
(Audio recording starts here) - sees the burial site, weeps in sorrow, and then raises his dead friend back to life. So why didn’t Jesus rush down to save Lazarus since he loved him?
The answer to that question teaches a very important lesson about Jesus, God, and faith, namely, that God is not a God who ordinarily rescues us, but is rather a God who redeems us. God doesn’t ordinarily intervene to save us from humiliation, pain, and death; rather God redeems humiliation, pain, and death after the fact.
Simply put, Jesus treats Lazarus exactly the same way as God, the Father, treats Jesus: Jesus is deeply and intimately loved by his Father and yet his Father does not rescue him from humiliation, pain, and death. God raises him up only after his death.
This is one of the key revelations inside the resurrection: We have a redeeming, not a rescuing, God.
It took the early Christians some time to grasp that Jesus doesn’t ordinarily give special exemptions to his friends, no more than God gave special exemptions to Jesus. So, like us, they struggled with the fact that someone can have a deep, genuine faith, be deeply loved by God, and still have to suffer humiliation, pain, and death like everyone else. God didn’t spare Jesus from suffering and death, and Jesus doesn’t spare us from them… but He is with us through them.
The Gospel of John, according to scripture scholars was probably written around 90 A.D. – after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem around 66-70 A.D., when Jerusalem fell and was destroyed by the Romans because of the Jewish Revolt
Christians were being persecuted and the people for whom John’s Gospel was written were in essence saying: “Where is the Lord?”
So, to help his audience realize that God’s ways were not their ways and that the risen Christ was in their midst, John, in his Gospel, then tells the story of the raising of Lazarus – which is not only about Jesus’ presence to Martha, Mary and Lazarus, but it is also about the presence of the risen Christ to John’s audience and to us today.
Of all the miracles Jesus did, the raising of Lazarus was the most astonishing to the people of his time. The Jews traditionally believed that the soul of a dead person somehow remains with the body for three days. After three days the soul departs finally from the body, and that is when corruption sets in.
When Martha objected to the opening of the tomb and said, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days" (John 11:39), she was expressing the common view that it was already a hopeless situation. For the Jews - bringing back to life a person who was dead for four days and decaying was just unthinkable.
In a way, we can say that that was why Jesus delayed his coming, to let the situation become "impossible"… before acting on it.
Jesus said that Lazarus’sickness would not end in death, but was for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.
The most important message of the Gospel is that our sickness does not end in death, nor does our death end in death, because Jesus Christ has conquered death.
Jesus said to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, though he should die, will come to life; and whoever is alive and believes in me will never die.”
Jesus is referring not to physical death, but to spiritual death. Lazarus died again physically later. But Jesus raising Lazarus meant that Jesus has the power over death and that he has power to give life.
With Jesus in our lives, resurrection begins in the here and now, in our life of faith here on earth. For us - Christians, eternal life begins now – in Christ. That belief affects the quality of our life, our perspective in life, our perspective of life – how we see all of creation, how we see ourselves, how we see others.
The great Easter truth is not that we are to live newly after death - - that is not the great thing - - but the great Easter truth is that we are to be new here and now by the power of the resurrection.” With Christ, everything is new. Resurrection is not “everlasting life”. It is not an endless quantity of life. Resurrection is a quality of life that begins in the present… in the here and now.
Our faith tells us that Christ dwells in every member of His body, the Church, that we can find him in the people who gather with us here every Sunday. That is the deepest reason why we need to be hospitable to one another as we assemble for the Eucharist. Having a welcoming attitude towards one another, greeting one another, can help us to connect with one another as One Body, One Spirit in Christ.
As we gather around the table - we encounter Jesus and each other. You see, our Eucharistic table – like our dining tables at home - is the place of intimacy - where all who belong to the household gather – saints and sinners alike – rich and poor – male and female – no distinction - where family, community, friendship, hospitality, and true generosity can be expressed and made real.
When we come to receive Communion, we say “Amen” to the words “The Body of Christ” – which means we believe that we receive Christ himself – body, soul and divinity - the perfect being of Christ….That is true, but our Amen also means we accept the imperfect Body of Christ – we accept each one of us – as sinful as we are - the Body of Believers, the Church – we accept one another – with each others’ faults.
That is why – before Communion - we give or offer each other the sign of peace.
-That is why it is called Holy Communion – Holy = we are set apart – consecrated to be Christs in the World, but not of it - being One with Christ and with one another as the Body of Christ. It was said that at Mass, heaven touches the earth and that we experience a foretaste of the heavenly banquet.
If only people can grasp that. You will be in awe. You will not be bored. You will not leave early.
As one of my favorite song goes – “Surely, the presence of the Lord is in this place. I can feel His mighty power and His grace. I can hear the brush of angels’ wings, I see glory on each face…Surely, the presence of the Lord is in this place.”
As we continue with our celebration, we pray -
“Ever-present Lord, God of life and love – please bless our gathering. Pour out your Spirit on us. Open our eyes to your presence in each one of us; in each and every event of our lives. We ask this as we ask all things, through Jesus Christ, Our Lord, Our Savior. Amen.
Cycle A – Fifth Sunday of Lent 2022
