Homilies

March 9, 2008
Fifth Sunday of Lent
Ez. 37:12-14; Rom. 8:8-11; Jn. 11:1-45
Fr. Justin Sheehan

It is said that a good teacher first tells you what he's going to do, then he does it, and then he tells you what he's done. That's what the Lord does in the readings this morning. First, he says in the prophet Ezekiel, "You will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and raise you from your graves, my people. And I shall put my spirit in you, and you will live". Then in the Gospel he opens the grave of Lazarus and raises him from his grave, and Lazarus lives. Then he tells us what we can know from" what he's done: "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".

Actually, Jesus teaches us not one but two things when he says, "I am the resurrection and the life". One is that resurrection and life are not just for the future; they are in the present. And the other is that resurrection and life become ours by union with Christ.

The first point in Jesus' lesson plan for us this morning is that resurrection and life are not just future blessings; they are present. When Jesus said to Martha, "Your brother will rise again", she answered, "I know he will rise again at the resurrection on the last day. As if to say, "Thank you very much. Lord, but I already knew that there will be a last day when everybody will rise again, including my brother Lazarus. But that's a pretty long way off: how am I supposed to live in the meantime?" Jesus tells Martha that he's not talking about some far-off event. He's talking about his own living Person, whom she knew, and saw, and trusted: "Rising again, and life? That's Me"; and everyone who belongs to him is uninjured by death, and has in Christ a present and continuous life, now.

Christ, then, doesn't think of immortality as we do. For him, the idea of immortality is bound up with the idea of life. Life is a present thing,happening now, and its continuation is a matter of course just as God continues to exist. When life is full and abundant, the present is enough, and past and future are unthought of. It is life therefore, rather than immortality that Christ is talking about; a present blessing, not a future one; an expansion of the nature now, and one which necessarily carries with it the idea of permanence. He thinks of eternal life not as a future continuation to be measured by ages, but as a present life, to be measured by its depth. He's talking about quality of life, not length of life. A life which is prolonged without being deepened by union with the living God is not a blessing. Life with God, and in God, is immortal by definition; life without God, Christ does not call life at all.

As evidence of this present continued life, Lazarus was raised from the grave, and shown to be still alive. No doubt Lazarus, like everyone else, will undergo that change which we call death. He will become disconnected from this present earthly scene, but his life in Christ will not be interrupted. Worms may destroy his body, but not his life. His life is hidden with Christ in God. It is united to the unfailing source of all existence.

The other lesson for this morning is that that's the kind of life, now abundant and evermore abiding, that Christ gives to all who believe in him. St Paul expresses the mind of Christ in the reading from Romans this morning: "If Christ is in you then your spirit is life itself" and "he who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to your own mortal bodies through his Spirit living in you". Those who have learned to obey Christ's voice in life will most quickly hear it, and recognize its authority, when they sleep in death. Those who have discovered its power to raise them out of spiritual death will not doubt its power to raise them from bodily death to a more abundant life than this world can give. They once felt as if nothing could deliver them. They were dead, deaf to Christ's commands, bound by bonds which they thought would hold them till they rotted away. They were buried out of sight of all that could give spiritual life. But Christ's love sought them out and called them into life. Since they know that they are alive with a life given by Christ, they know that the grave will be a temporary resting place. Nothing in the present, nor anything still to come, can ever separate us from a love which has already shown that it is stronger than death.