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5th Sunday Lent |
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Dear Preachers:
The final prayers are said, each mourner takes a flower from the nearby floral arrangements, bids farewell to the deceased and places it on the coffin before they leave. But no matter how antiseptic the grave site and how orderly the process, we know what we are looking at – it’s a grave to which we are assigning one we have loved, perhaps all of our lives. Those nearby grave diggers will soon be placing our loved one into the earth and we will see them no more.
Of course, I know I am describing American first-world funeral practices. In the poorest lands the body is wrapped in a simple cloth or placed in a wooden coffin made by a family member, a grave is scratched out of rocky soil by friends, and perhaps a flower or two is left on the earth that has been scrapped back into the grave. But in our culture, most of us leave before we get to see the casket lowered into the earth. We can’t watch the final triumph of the grave as it claims our beloved dead. We also have our ways of camouflaging death with cosmetics and euphemisms. But no matter where and how we bury the dead, the grave finds us at our most vulnerable and seems to have its triumphant moments over us.
Hold this burial scene, the one you are most familiar with, in your imagination. Then look at the scriptures for today and see the graves in the first and third readings and hear the life-assuring words of the Romans passage. The scriptures assure us we are not alone at our most desolate moments. They don’t avoid recognizing our pain and voicing our questions and even our disappointment in God. “If you had only been here....” But while they acknowledge our grief and feelings of impotency, as we stare at death’s handiwork, the grave – they also tell us something unimaginable. The scriptures say that, in our most vulnerable moments, God stands with us at the grave and makes a promise of life that seems to mock the evidence before us. Death, by all logical conclusions, has defeated us. But God says, “NO!!!!”–in capital letters with a few exclamation points. As Ezekiel puts it, “Then you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and have you rise from them, O my people!” (Check out the text, it has an exclamation point and should have a few more to emphasize the impact of those words!) Only God can speak with such authority and certainty, for we are in no place to make such a promise on our own.
Ezekiel is not writing to console a family or a few friends over the death of a loved one. Ezekiel is writing for an entire people over the death of their nation and the destruction of their religious holy places. The prophet is speaking to the Jewish exiles in Babylon who have seen their beloved Jerusalem destroyed and their Temple desecrated. (587 B.C.E.) Using the vivid dead-bones vision (37: 1-10) Ezekiel evokes the hope that God can raise these people, these “dry bones,” by means of God’s Spirit and Word. The prophet is God’s instrument for proclaiming this promise. Ezekiel’s vision isn’t addressing a final resurrection, but today’s reading suggests God will raise up the people who feel cut off, not only from their homeland, but also from God, as they languish in foreign captivity. Can God do the impossible and restore Israel, take the people home to Jerusalem and help them rebuild the Temple? Yes—God is that powerful, promises Ezekiel. “I will put my spirit in you that you may live, and I will settle you upon your land.”
Hearing Ezekiel address the people we wonder: can people leaving a loved one behind for burial rebuild their lives? Can a family hold together as a family when its mother or father dies young? When a sibling is tragically killed in a random act of violence or an overdose? When a war causes civilian upheaval and displacement? Death has so many co-workers dealing out death in so many forms. What will happen to the survivors? Hear what God has to say: “I will settle you upon you land; thus, you will know that I am God.” Let’s see how else the promise is made and to whom. We turn to the gospel.
The story gets more personal in the gospel for in it we get: a sick person who dies, a reprimand, an expression of faith in the impossible, weeping, disbelief, seeing the impossible and then coming to belief. In addition, Jesus will have to pay personally and dearly for this miracle, for it will intensify opposition to him and begin the scheming that leads to his own grave. While God doesn’t stand helplessly by Lazarus’ grave; this miracle of life will cost God dearly as well. Lazarus is Jesus’ friend and as we hear this story we are encouraged to believe that we are friends as well. As Jesus said earlier in John, “...an hour is coming in which all those in their tombs shall hear his [the Son of Man’s] voice and come forth.” (5: 28) We friends of Jesus trust these words as we stand by the open graves of so many loved ones and anticipate that a similar grave awaits us as well.
Jesus is very much in charge here. No one can rush him, not even the urgent pleas of the dying Lazarus’ sisters. He risks the appearance of not being their true friend, of seeming unconcerned. Why does he wait so long? (And why are we also left with questions and doubts when a word from him could raise us from our death beds?) One thing is for sure--- after the delay we know Lazarus is really dead! Practical Martha names the reality, “Lord, by now there will be a stench, he has been dead four days.”
What a scene; the dead man emerging from the dark, dank tomb with his burial cloths dangling from his resuscitated body! Soon Jesus will suffer a violent death. They will also wrap him, as was their custom, in burial cloths and place him in a tomb. Another group of family and friends will stand by yet one more grave and peer into its coldness. They too will feel helpless as they huddle to comfort one another. But all is not totally lost. God will visit this grave and speak a word of life over Jesus and God’s Spirit will raise him up to a completely new life. Who could have imagined? With his resurrection all of us who suffer death will be given the gift of hope and respond, “We too will rise.”
As we interpret this passage, note this about John’s gospel. For John, the life God promises in Jesus is already present to the baptized. Our new life does not begin after we have breathed our last breath or when our bodies are surrendered to the grave—it begins now. To call upon another verse from John, “I solemnly assure you, an hour is coming, has indeed come, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who have heeded it shall live. (5:25) We have new life in us even as we stare at the many grave sites in the course of our lives.
There are the deaths of family and friends, of course. But we also face death if we; lose our jobs; flunk out of college; get a crippling disease; lose our physical or mental strengths in old age; give up plans of being married and having children; have our last child go off to school or get married; etc. Is new life possible beyond these and other graves? In this life? The believer, hearing today’s scriptures, is encouraged to believe that God has not abandoned us at our graves and will call out our names, utter a life-giving Word and breathe into us a resurrecting Spirit. “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he/she dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believers in me will never die. Do you believe this?” And we respond with Martha, “Yes, Lord, I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”
Click here for a link to this Sunday's readings. https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/032226.cfm
ONE GOOD BOOK FOR THE PREACHER:
(A review submitted by Kris Bruun) PREACHING TO EVERY PEW: CROSS-CULTURAL STRATEGIES, by James R. Nieman and Thomas G. Rogers. Fortress Press, 2001.
This highly readable book analyzes and offers helpful strategies for dealing with cross-cultural preaching - when the preacher and the congregation are of a different race, class, ethnic background, or even different religious backgrounds. Nieman and Rogers use theology, the tools of the social sciences, and well-chosen anecdotes to develop their points. They offer the preacher methods of reflection on the differences which he or she is called to face. The book is extremely practical yet does not lose sight of the work of the Holy Spirit.
--Ezekiel 37: 14
I recently re-read the following from Pope Benedict XVI and quoted by Pope Francis in his encyclical letter, Laudato Si: “The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast” (217). Pope Francis uses the quote to call for a profound interior conversion regarding the environment, but I wonder if the metaphor does not also call us to a profound interior awareness that God’s spirit resides in each of us. What does that mean to my life if I take Ezekiel’s words (37:14) to heart? If the spirit of love, humility, merciful forgiveness, peace, and joy became truly manifest through everyone into our world, would not the dryness of the world disappear? There is no doubt that Pope Francis saw everything as connected. Mahatma Gandhi also believed in this inward-outward connection: “We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”
Lent is the time for introspection through prayer, fasting and almsgiving. But if all we do is go through the motions of unexamined prayer, required fasting, and dutiful almsgiving, we will not experience the interior, life-altering conversion that these wise men extol. Lent is a journey. Where are we going if not to our innermost being? If you find this journey difficult to begin, I offer this suggestion. What has God placed on your heart as something that needs your attention? What plight in the world speaks to you? Take a look at the works of mercy ministries listed on the Cathedral webpage and see if any of them could be a place to start. Almsgiving traditionally means giving money but giving time and talent and walking with people who are other than you opens “new lenses of thoughts and emotions” as Gandhi states. God changed the trajectory of my life when I opened myself to the situation of so many people who lack decent, affordable housing. Not only did my worldview change but so did my interior life. I wish this for you, also, my fellow travelers.
Barbara Molinari Quinby, MPS, Director Office of Human Life, Dignity, and Justice Ministries Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral, Raleigh, NC
POSTCARDS TO DEATH ROW INMATES
“Can you imagine what it’s like to have your boy on death row? Can you imagine what it’s like to visit him there every Saturday and tell him, ‘I love you. I’ll see you next week,’ when you never know if they’re going to call and say, ‘He’s up next—it’s time for his execution.”’
----Jeanetter Johnson, Mother of Alan Gell, who was retried and found innocent because prosecutors withheld evidence that might have cleared him of first-degree murder.
Inmates on death row are the most forgotten people in the prison system. Each week I am posting in this space several inmates’ names and locations. I invite you to write a postcard to one or more of them to let them know that: we have not forgotten them; are praying for them and their families; or whatever personal encouragement you might like to give them. If you like, tell them you heard about them through North Carolina’s, “People of Faith Against the Death Penalty.”
Thanks, Jude Siciliano, OP
Please write to:........................................
Henry L. Mc Collum #0265106 (On death row since 11/22/91) Clinton R. Rose #0351933 (12/19/91) Edward E. Davis #0100579 (3/12/92)
-----Central Prison 1300 Western Blvd. Raleigh, NC 27606
If you would like to support this ministry, please send tax deductible contributions to Jude Siciliano, OP, whose address is listed below. Make checks to: Dominican Friars of Raleigh.
Or go to our webpage to make an online donation: https://PreacherExchange.com/donations.htm
Thank you. "Blessings on your preaching", Jude Siciliano, OP, Promoter of Preaching, Southern Dominican Province, USA Email: judeop@juno.com
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I will put my spirit in you that you may live. . .
