Fifth Sunday of Lent
Most of you know that I rushed home to India last week to see my father. This is the the third time in five months that I have travelled nine thousand miles. Behind my frequent visits is a fear - the fear that this might be the last time I get to see my father. It is a crippling fear. It is not that I do not believe in eternity or that I lack hope in the face of death. My fear has got to do with the utter grief that death bring brings. My fear has got to do with the physical absence of the person I love. In so many ways, death changes things permanently.
As Lent begins to come toward the end, the readings gradually draw our attention to the events of Holy Week and Easter – the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus. However, we do not reflect on Christ’s death and resurrection for its own sake. The readings also communicate to us that our destinies are closely tied to the death and resurrection of Jesus. In fact, Jesus becomes the reason for our hope.
All the three readings today talk about death and life. Death, however is a multi-layered reality. There are different kinds of death and death has multiple meanings. Let me talk about the three kinds of death against which God is offering us hope.
1. Physical Death. Physical death is the most helpless of human experiences. There is no escaping the grip of death. The inevitability of death along with the pain of separation from our loves ones is the most saddening part of death. Mary, Martha and Jesus experience the pain of death in today’s gospel reading. And they all wept. Jesus too wept for Lazarus and with Mary and Martha.
That day, Jesus offered Martha and Mary a way out the pain of death. Jesus asked them to believe in him. Very soon, he would takes the agony of death and nail it to the cross. He would take his own tears and the tears of the entire world and nail it to the cross. Not only that, but then he unites all those who believe in him into his death. And to those who unite themselves into his death, he also unites into his risen life. In that unity we move from death to life.
I have officiated at hundreds of funerals over the twenty-three years of priesthood. In the midst of all the tears and grief there was also hope. None of the funerals ended with despair and hopelessness. Rather people generally leave the church knowing that one day we will be with our loved ones again. It is Christ who has accomplished this for us. It is because of Christ that when we experience death, we can also experience hope.
2. Sin as Living Death. The second reading refers to another kind of death – sin. Paul in today’s second reading captures the truth of the matter - that sin is a little death because every sin is separation from God who is life. That is why he says, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” Sin, if not forgiven and healed, has the potential to lead us to eternal death. But Paul rejoices in the fact that God has found a way to liberate the entire world from the death of sin. As Paul says, “If Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness.” In other words, along with our tears, Christ also nailed our sin to the cross. Christ’s death is the beginning of the freedom from bondage of sin. Paul invites us to unite ourselves with the death of sin on the cross.
This Lent we are invited to enter into a very conscious process – that we recognize the seriousness of sin; that sin can destroy our body and spirit; that our freedom from the death of sin is at the foot of the cross; that as we become aware of the death and resurrection of Christ, we consciously unite ourselves to the redeeming death and resurrection of Christ. “If Christ is in you…” Paul says. Let us unite ourselves with Christ who sets us free.
3. Offering Hope to the Living Who Feel Dead. Ezekiel’s prophecy in today’s first reading was given in the context of Israel’s exile in Babylon. For these people, exile was like a death. Deprived of freedom, of worship, of the Temple, of the presence of God they think of themselves as dead. When Ezekiel proclaimed “I will open your graves and have you rise from them,” and “I will put my spirit in you that you may live,” he was not talking about a literal resurrection from the dead. The belief in the resurrection from the dead the way Jesus did was a later development. Ezekiel was drawing an analogy, providing a symbolic way of talking about liberation and restoration from exile. When the people of exile heard these words and their dead spirits were raised.
Everyday we meet people who are alive but feel dead, don’t we? Those who experience chronic depression, despair, hopelessness, acute addictions know what it means to feel that deprived of life. Today, we are invited to be like Christ. Just as Jesus brought hope and liberation from the death of the body and the spirit, perhaps, we could bring hope to those who feed dead from the burdens of life. In fact, like Jesus, it is in giving life to others that we ourselves overcome death and come to life.
Today’s Eucharist is a celebration of life. Like Mary and Martha, let us allow Christ to save us, heal us, and bring us to life.
- Fr. Satish Joseph