April 10, 2011 — Fifth Sunday of Lent
First Reading – Ezekiel 37: 12-14
Thus says the Lord GOD: O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them, and bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and have you rise from them, O my people! I will put my spirit in you that you may live, and I will settle you upon your land; thus you shall know that I am the LORD. I have promised, and I will do it, says the LORD.
Responsorial Psalm - Psalm 130: 1—8
R. (7) With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.
Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD; LORD, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive to my voice in supplication.
With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.
If you, O LORD, mark iniquities, LORD, who can stand?
But with you is forgiveness, that you may be revered.
R. With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.
I trust in the LORD; my soul trusts in his word.
More than sentinels wait for the dawn, let Israel wait for the LORD.
R. With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.
For with the LORD is kindness and with him is plenteous redemption;
And he will redeem Israel from all their iniquities.
R. With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.
Second Reading — Romans 8: 8—11
Brothers and sisters:
Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh; on the contrary, you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness. If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit dwelling in you.
Gospel – John 11: 1-45
Now a man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and dried his feet with her hair; it was her brother Lazarus who was ill.So the sisters sent word to him saying,
“Master, the one you love is ill.” When Jesus heard this he said, “This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was ill, he remained for two days in the place where he was. Then after this he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”
The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you, and you want to go back there?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in a day? If one walks during the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if one walks at night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” He said this, and then told them, “Our friend Lazarus is asleep, but I am going to awaken him.”
So the disciples said to him, “Master, if he is asleep, he will be saved.”
But Jesus was talking about his death, while they thought that he meant ordinary sleep.
So then Jesus said to them clearly, “Lazarus has died. And I am glad for you that I was not there, that you may believe. Let us go to him.”
So Thomas, called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go to die with him.”
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.
Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, only about two miles away. And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him; but Mary sat at home. Martha said to Jesus,
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.”
Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha said to him, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.”
Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”
When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary secretly, saying, “The teacher is here and is asking for you.” As soon as she heard this, she rose quickly and went to him.
For Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still where Martha had met him.
So when the Jews who were with her in the house comforting her saw Mary get up quickly and go out, they followed her, presuming that she was going to the tomb to weep there.
When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him,
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping, he became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Sir, come and see.” And Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.”
But some of them said, “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?”
So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it.
Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to him,
“Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days.”
Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?”
So they took away the stone. And Jesus raised his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you for hearing me. I know that you always hear me; but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that you sent me.”
And when he had said this, He cried out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.” Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what he had done began to believe in him.
Reflection
The story of the raising of Lazarus is one of the most powerful and well-known in all of Scripture. Every single part of the passage, from the reactions of the individual characters, to the words Jesus speaks, holds immense theological significance and could well serve as the basis for an entire doctoral dissertation. But for us, what is most important is the fact that the experience of losing a loved one and crying out to God in anguish is an experience we all, at some point in our lives, can relate to. Very few of us will ever experience possession by a demon or encounter multiplication of fish and loaves, but all of us will undergo the loss of a loved one. It is worth probing the various dimensions of this scene to find out more about what Jesus’ response means for us when we, too, face a situation of this sort.
The first thing to note is that Jesus has formed a relationship with Martha and Mary;
remember, these two are the sisters who, in the Gospel of Luke, host Jesus at their home. In that instance, Martha has complained to Jesus that she is doing all of the work while Mary is simply sitting at the feet of Jesus doing nothing at all. Jesus reproaches Martha for her resentment and affirms Mary for her stillness. It would appear as though Martha is a person who feels as though she must be in a constant state of activity. As though she needs to be in control of all of the relevant factors at all times. Making sure nothing goes wrong.
Jesus chides her for this and points to Mary’s ability to simply… be… in his presence. It is a direct challenge to us not to try and be rushing about all the time, trying to account for all possible contingencies. Instead, we are invited, when in the presence of Jesus, to allow ourselves just to be completely consumed by that encounter. To put aside our worrying and just to absorb our interaction with Jesus himself.
Here in this scene, Martha stays true to form. When she hears that Jesus is coming, she rushes out to meet him, and she immediately begins to express her frustration and anger that Jesus had not come sooner, while Mary stays back at the house. Once again, Martha wanted things her way; she had sent word to Jesus that Lazarus was sick, and if Jesus had come sooner, Lazarus would not have died. If only he had listened to Martha, Jesus could have saved his friend. Martha tries to exercise control over all aspects of her life—indeed, over not simply life, but over life AND death—even to the point of telling Jesus himself what he should have done.
Mary, for her part, eventually comes out to meet Jesus, and even she is upset that Jesus did not come sooner. Mary seems to have been the one who had an easier time trusting Jesus, so it cannot be incidental that, when Jesus sees her weeping, the Gospel author reports that he, too, began to weep.
And what about the disciples in all of this? When Jesus had first received word that Lazarus was ill, the disciples immediately warned him against returning to that region, for the Jews were likely to kill him if they caught him there. One can imagine the anxiety in their voices and the exasperation in their spirit when Jesus announced his intention to go visit the sisters. To their ears, returning to Judea at this particular moment amounted to nothing less than a suicide mission, and Jesus seems blithely unperturbed by this reality. His enigmatic answer about how a day has twelve hours and how one stumbles if one walks at night probably left them even more confounded. Jesus does not address their very valid concerns; he simply answers them with some indecipherable riddle about stumbling in the darkness.
Nevertheless, their worries still unresolved and their master seemingly indifferent to the danger, they shrug their shoulders and, led by Thomas, who says almost sarcastically, “Let us go to die with him,” they all follow. (Thomas sounds like a stock character from a modern-day action film who finishes reciting the impossible odds, smiles, chomps on a cigar, and giddily declares his intention to undertake the mission anyway.) If ever we are too quick to give Thomas a hard time for “doubting” the stories of the Resurrection, we would do well to remember that he was also the first to declare his willingness to die alongside Jesus, should that be the outcome of their ministry. Indeed, as we enter Holy Week, it can be tempting to focus on the fact that the disciples deserted Jesus during his moment of most excruciating agony and went into hiding following the death, we should first read this passage and acknowledge that these same disciples all appeared ready to follow Jesus to what they were convinced was certain death on this mission to visit Martha and Mary.
Turning to Jesus, we see here, one of the most poignant portraits of God-made-flesh in all of Scripture. Nowhere are Jesus’ emotions more prominently on display, nor anywhere else do they seem to figure so centrally to the outcome of the story.
When Jesus hears word that Lazarus is ill, he does not stop what he is doing to intervene. A commentator notes that, John, for the author of the story, this serves as yet one more instantiation of a theme permeating the Gospel, namely, that Jesus does not ever do anything because of outside pressure. Jesus only ever acts from an interior decision, fully of his own accord, when he has determined that the time is right and the reason on point. All that Jesus is reported to do in the Gospel of John comports with Jesus’ mission of glorifying God, namely by way of subjecting himself to the horrors of the Cross.
Jesus does not go to Judea because that is what his followers expect him to do, nor even does he go because the sisters have asked. Instead, he goes for two reasons alone:
1) because of his great love for the family, and 2) because his actions there will, to a greater degree, glorify God who has sent him and fulfill his mission on earth.
The word “perturbed” that is used by the New American Bible to describe Jesus’ emotional response to seeing Mary weep leaves us perhaps a bit dissatisfied. (One is perturbed when the copier runs out of toner or the bus to North Campus departs a minute early, leaving us to wait for the next one. One generally feels a stronger, more visceral emotional reaction to seeing a beloved friend break into hysterical tears over the death of her brother, who was likewise beloved of the person.)
Biblical scholar William Barclay has studied the original Greek word that here gets transcribed as “perturbed,” and which in the RSV and NIV comes out as, “disturbed,” and he offers a more vivid description of what the author most likely sought to convey. The Greek word here, embrimasthai, originally referred to the way a horse would neigh and snort, and its entire body would shake. Barclay therefore has suggested that the evangelist sought really to communicate that Jesus was so upset by this interaction, that, “he was deeply moved in spirit so that an involuntary groan burst forth from him, and he trembled with deep emotion.” Now THAT is the reaction we might have to coming face to face with the death of a best friend, while that friend’s sister weeps uncontrollably in front of our eyes.
In his decision to raise Lazarus from the dead, Jesus may well have acted primarily out of a motivation to glorify God, but he unquestionably acted also out of a deeply felt anguish in his own spirit. If we are to believe that God became fully human and underwent all that it is to know our human condition, then we must also believe that the experience of losing a best friend would have been every bit as indescribably painful for him as it is for us. We may, in our academic understanding of God, articulate a belief that God knows our pain, but in this passage from Scripture, we see quite lucidly that, insofar as God also walked as one of us on this earth, God literally knows exactly how soul-shatteringly terrible it is to experience this sort of loss.
And so we once again ask ourselves: how does this pertain to our own experience in the 21st century? How do we grieve our loved ones, how do we come to God with our petitions, how do we heal from loss, knowing that God himself has experienced it with us?
First of note is that Jesus does not respond immediately to Martha and Mary’s initial news that Lazarus is ill. We too, can relate to that, as it may seem to us as though we have told God about a very great problem in our lives, and we wish for him to intervene to prevent some greater evil, but we get no response.
Too, we should be able to empathize with the sisters’ expression of angst to Jesus for his failure to respond sooner. Whatever range of emotions that they were feeling—rage,
disappointment, anger, frustration, betrayal—they felt comfortable communicating it right to Jesus’ face. Clearly, those who were beloved of Jesus had an intimacy with him that they were invited to be raw and honest, even when it meant shouting in anger. The question might be raised: do we, who claim to know Jesus, who claim to have a relationship with him, feel likewise comfortable expressing this level of raw honesty to his face about things we feel are unjust or incomprehensible?
But, too, the sisters move on from this expression of emotion to articulate a great hope in Jesus ability, even now, to bring healing to the situation. Do we, also, feel able to put together such a statement of trust, of hope, even amidst our worst pain?
We may go on to consider the experience of the disciples. Are there times when what Jesus appears to be asking us to do seems imprudent or even downright illogical? Have we ever felt like being a follower of Christ compelled us to trust that something seemingly counter-intuitive would actually work out? And did we, like Thomas, shrug our shoulders and trust that it would?
Further, we must consider how this depiction of Jesus invites us into a radically intimate relationship with him moving forward. Jesus wept. Jesus shaked uncontrollably at the pain of death. And he did something about it. The same offer of friendship that he extended to the sisters in Judea remains available to us some 2000 years later. The willingness to come to us, and to bring comfort and healing in the wake of unspeakable tragedy is every bit as necessary and pertinent today as it was back then. The question is: do we allow ourselves to cultivate the friendship, as Mary, Martha, and Lazarus indubitably did over the course of several years prior to this scene, so that, when we ARE in pain, we can feel empowered to send word to Jesus that his presence is desired?
Finally, we should highlight the fact that, in doing this, Jesus was, effectively, signing his own death warrant. He recognized that it would add to the greater glory of God, that it was what God was asking him to do as part of his vocation here on earth, but he was under no delusion that the consequences would be anything other than unpleasant. Sometimes, when we accept God’s call to be used as part of his mission here on earth, we are acknowledging right at the outset that it will be difficult, that it may cost us a great deal. Do we, like Jesus, trust that, even if this is the case, God’s plan that may include suffering along the way will also result in the joy of the Resurrection?
