Today is another long reading. For the Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year A the
Gospel reading is of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. This is such a deep and profound passage that
most homilies cannot do it justice. Homilists
may focus on the delay that Jesus takes to go to Bethany, or focus on Martha’s
greeting when Jesus arrives, or, of course, the raising of Lazarus. We’ll get to those in the embedded homilies. But here are a few details that seem to go
unnoticed. John tells us that “Mary was
the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and dried his feet with her
hair.” That is interesting. That happened in a different Gospel; it’s
from Lk 7:36-50. Here’s another interesting
detail. When Jesus is warned by the
apostles that the Jews will be trying to kill him, the Apostle Thomas, the same
so called “Doubting Thomas,” says, “Let us also go to die with him.” He may have been skeptical but he is willing
to die for Christ.
Here is today’s Gospel reading.
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.
~Jn:11:1-45
Dr. Brant Pitre provides a full explanation of the reading.
Dr. Pitre:
‘Martha said to him oh I know that he will rise again in the Resurrection on the last day. Jesus said to her “I am the resurrection and the life;” he who believes in me though he die yet he shall live and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this? She said to him yes Lord I believe that you are the Christ, the son of God he who is coming into the world.’ Okay pause there notice what just happened? Lazarus is dead; he's been dead 4 days. When Jesus comes Mary says, ‘you know if you'd have been here this wouldn't have happened,’ which the reader now knows isn't true because Jesus knew about Lazarus sickness and that he was going to die but he stayed longer and allowed it to happen. Why does Jesus wait two days longer to go to Judea? Well this an interesting thing. John says very specifically that Jesus did this because he loved Lazarus and Mary and Martha. That's a very mysterious thing. I mean can you imagine a situation where let's say I'm giving a lecture in class at the Seminary and my wife calls and says you know your daughter is very sick right, very, very sick, I think she might be dying and I would respond okay well I'm going to stay here at work a couple of days longer because I love her. I mean that's totally counterintuitive; it doesn't make any sense whatsoever, but this Jesus isn't an ordinary man. He doesn't have an Ordinary Love for Lazarus; he allows Lazarus his friend to suffer and die because he's going to bring him back from the grave and in the living.
What Dr. Pitre calls “counterintuitive” I would call a non sequitur. There are several what strike me as non sequiturs in this passage. For instance, when the apostles warn Jesus that the Jews will be looking to kill Him, he gives what strikes me as a non sequitur response: “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.”
What’s with the non sequiturs?
Dr. Pitre continues:
St John Chrysostom said this about this quote: “He said many are offended when they see any of those who are pleasing to God suffering anything terrible. Those who are offended by this however do not know that those who are especially dear to God have it as their lot to endure such things, as we see in the case of Lazarus who was also one of the friends of Christ but was also sick.” So what Chrysostom is pointing out here is there's a mysterious reality about the Christian life, that those who are called to a special Holiness, those who in a sense God loves in a special way, he often frequently allows to suffer in a special way; he allows to suffer in a great way.
I have called this a non sequitur, but that’s not quite accurate. What strikes as a non sequitur is identifying one of the paradoxes of Christianity and of human life. Suffering and death actually has a purpose beyond common thought. There is a mystery behind God’s logic.
I found Cardinal Blasé Cupich pastoral homily unique and insightful.
Cardinal Cupich connects Jesus’ delay in this Gospel passage with the time of World War II, a time of great tragedy.
Cardinal Cupich:
An Irish playwright by the name of Samuel Beckett wrote a play that became very famous called Waiting for Godot. It was a play on words. Waiting for God was something that he took up. How is it that these terrible atrocities could happen? What was God doing in all of this? God seemed to be out on a vacation, inattentive to the needs of humanity. Today in this gospel text, Jesus gives us an answer about what God is doing and where God is. We first of all see that Jesus finds out that Lazarus is dying and he waits until he dies. It is in that waiting period, that time between the sufferings that we have and knowing what the result is that can be so anguishing. Maybe as we wait for a diagnosis or we wait to see whether or not someone hurt in an accident is going to survive. or the waiting that comes just in therapy and healing where the end result is not certain. Jesus tells us he's there in the waiting because the life that he gives is not just a matter of continuation of our existence but rather it's the word, “Zoe,” which is the breathing of God's life in us, that God wants to reveal in the waiting that he's present to us, that God is revealing himself in those moments and then we begin to see.
In those moments of waiting, hanging on the point of a needle to see how
some tragedy turns out, God is breathing into us, revealing Himself. “He's there with us in that moment in which
the human frailty is so very present.”
Cardinal Cupich continues:
So today Jesus answers Beckett, Waiting for Godot, waiting for God is in fact exactly what we should be looking for in life. That God is present in the inbetweens of life. God is present in the smelliness, the stinkiness of life, the things that we would otherwise want to avoid. When everyone abandons us, God is present there. And finally, God is present and has to be present in the community that does its best to make sure that the bonds of oppression injustice are untied.
Sunday Meditation: “Untie him and let him go.”
Here is a wonderful hymn in the mode of a country song on this topic, “Jesus
Raised Lazarus from the Tomb.”
When he's four days
And All hope is gone
Lord we don’t
understand
Why you waited so
long.
But His way is God’s
way,
Not yours or mine.
And isn’t it great,
When He’s four days
late
But He’s still on
time.
Performed by the Frank Brownstead Choir.
