5th Sunday of Lent – Year A
Ezekiel 37:12-14 Romans 8:8-11 John 11:1-45
Life is the message of Easter, still two weeks away. But, the significance of reflecting on life, both the mere fact of life and on the quality of life, are necessary components of a life of Grace!
Ezekiel’s prophecy is a metaphor for how Israel’s God might restore life to a life-less and defeated people. Ezekiel ministered as a prophet before, during and after the destruction of Jerusalem (587-586 BC), its temple, and all of Judea by the Babylonian Emperor Nebuchadnezzar II. The destruction was total. The Jewish people themselves had all their zest for life beaten out of them. They were reduced to slaves which reminded them of their ancestors’ servitude in Egypt nearly a thousand years before. They we being transported from their own holy land, God’s land, to a foreign land dedicated to pagan gods and goddesses. The wondered, How could they survive there?5th Sunday of Lent – Year A How could they believe there? How could they maintain their covenant with their God there? Did their covenant still hold between God and them? It was seeming to them that their God had abandoned them to a cruel and destructive pagan power. Their collective “spirit” was gone. Their life as a political nation was ended. They were metaphorically dead, even if they still breathed and worked and existed. Mere existence was not the same thing as genuine life!
The image of resurrection (the word itself was not used, but the mental image of bodies rising out of graves gave birth to the concept) was a new one, not yet common among the Jewish body of faith. This concept was originally a collective idea, i.e., rising or restoration of life to a people, not merely to an individual person. This collective metaphor would incubate in the Jewish religious imagination over the duration of the Babylonian Captivity for nearly half a century (the captivity ended officially in 539 BC). Within a century of the initial return, rebuilding, and restoration of God’s People to the holy land, the idea of life after death would sprout and begin to grown. By the days of the Maccabees (169-165 BC) and their revolution against the Greeks, the idea of praying for the dead would be known and embraced among the Jews (cf. 2nd Maccabees 12:43-46) because of their evolving belief in life after death and resurrection from the dead. In Ezekiel, the metaphor of rising from the grave was an image of hope for the collective kingdom of Judah as a defeated and captive people. Their northern cousins in the kingdom of Israel had been subjugated by the Assyrians some 140 years before and many of them had been taken into captivity at that time. In both events, life as they knew it had come to an abrupt and violent end. They thought they had died. Only a new life could overcome such destruction and restore life’s dignity.
Jesus’ activity around the death and burial of his friend Lazarus counts as a miracle indeed, but from a theological perspective, Lazarus’ “raising” does not count as “resurrection.” He died again sometime after the narrative concluded, and likewise awaits the ultimate resurrection just as we still do today. But, the events around this story, specifically the profession of faith by Martha and Jesus’ self-witness that he himself was “the resurrection and the life,” are crucial to our theological movement through Lent to Easter. Hope that the finality and destructiveness of death can be overcome by life again was a powerful appeal to the early Christian proclamation of the Gospel as Good News. THE Good News was new life now and life everlasting yet to come. Such life is sufficiently powerful to overcome any sinfulness and to enable everyone to hear the message. That message is a universal invitation to embrace this Gospel and that life! Only God’s life is this large. Eternal life is nothing less that God’s life offered to all.
St. Paul wrestled with various aspects of what we moderns might call psychology. Paul wondered what was it about us that made us resist doing and being good so strenuously? In today’s passage from his letter to the Roman Christians, he writes using the image of “in the flesh” and in the “body” as the antitheses to being alive and “in the spirit.” When we read or hear these words, we can easily perceive that Paul has made a distinction between the physical (as a negative value) and the spiritual (as a positive value). However, that is much too simplistic and it can make us wrongly conclude that the physical universe is fundamentally evil and sinful. This would include our bodies, and even all the beautiful qualities, events, and experiences which healthy and good people treasure. In fact, the Gospel and healthy Christianity hold that the universe which has God as its creator and author, is fundamentally good! The universe is not merely a little bit “good.” Rather, the whole universe is a good creation by the Good God for good purpose. So, we must read and hear Paul’s use of “in the body” and “flesh” without condemning ourselves, reality, and all of creation. I’ve recently heard it suggested that we Christians might use the idea of our human “ego” for the “body” and “the flesh” in Paul’s letters. Indeed, the human ego is lodged deeply within the human person. But, accomplished psychologists and observers of human nature tend to agree that it is our ego – which includes one’s particular style and content of selfishness, including one’s humanly evil tendencies – which complicates our lives and seems too often to impede the very best which is in us, God’s grace!. Thus, to some of us, Paul’s words might read, “Those who’s egos are in the way cannot please God” and later, “If Christ is in you, then your ego is dead because of sin, but your spirit is alive because of [God’s] righteousness.” Thus, we can imagine that Paul is trying to help believers move beyond the destructive self-centeredness of the human ego into a profound, dynamic, and conscientious life in God’s Holy Spirit. Being made fully aware that God’s life is offered to us, that God’s power has saved us, and that we needn’t fear anything (even human death!), produces a life in the present which is truly miraculous and holy!
When God gives life, it is new life ... real life ... powerful life ... loving life ... life everlasting!
Today the Church prays the 3rd Scrutiny over the Elect among the Catechumens in preparation for their Baptism, Chrismation and Eucharistic Sharing only two weeks away. These prayers repeatedly ask God for freedom from fear and for new life for these entering the Church’s fellowship. Each of them, and each of us, must strive to be increasingly conscious and aware of our own lives which are gifted by God. We already share “in the divine life which God gives us” and so we must be heralds and examples of that life in our ordinary activities.
“... [A]nd everyone who believes in me, even if he dies, will live. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Let us live boldly, lovingly, wisely, and energetically right now!