A Homily – The Fifth Sunday of Lent (Year A)

A Homily – The Fifth Sunday of Lent (Year A)

 

First Reading – Ezekiel 37:12-14 ©

Responsorial Psalm – Psalm 129(130) ©

Second Reading – Romans 8:8-11 ©

Gospel Acclamation – John 11:25, 26

The Gospel According to John 11:1 - 45 ©

 

(NJB)

 

Listen!

 The bounds of death are no impediment to God’s salvific will. There is no threshold the divine will not cross, no barrier the divine will not remove, no darkness the divine will not penetrate in order to save God’s children.

 Know this:

 God, the creator of the universe, God is patient, God is loving and God is kind. God is merciful and God is just; in the divine, justice and mercy are inextricably intertwined, always present with the other. The wrath of God is never manifest without God’s love.

 Learn from the divine; become like God: be loving, be merciful, be patient, show kindness to all.

 Be mindful!

 Do not fall into the errors of the apostle.

 Saint Paul misses an important point in the reading for today; he makes a grievous error.

 Know this: the spirit of God lives in all people. There is no question about it. God, the creator of the universe, the God of Jesus Christ dwells in all people. Do not doubt it. We are all God’s children, and God loves every single one of us; there is no exception.

 Jesus is our brother; our relationship to him is an ontological reality that cannot be abridged or denied. We do not have the power to undo it...even in our sins. Our relationship to God and Jesus is a determinative factor in the nature of our being, as all of our relationships are, no matter how remote or distant from us, in time and space, they might be.

 Relationality is a dimension of selfhood that is just as real as anything.

 Do not forget this.

 Consider the Gospel for today and be mindful. God is not served by a false narrative such as the narrative presented in today’s reading. Therefore, we must use reason to find a different meaning than the meaning which the narrative plainly delineates.

 The story of Lazarus is pure myth, Jesus did not call a corpse from the tomb. The story is either a complete fabrication, or it is intended as a metaphor. We must find the metaphor in the text, because to read it plainly is to subscribe to a lie, which is contrary to the way.

 In John the Lazarus narrative became convoluted by politics, conditioned by the ongoing disputes John’s community had with the Jewish people they lived in proximity to, a community they were doing everything in their power to distinguish themselves from, for the purpose of politics.

 In John the narrative goes to the issue of who people believe Jesus was, Christ the Son of God, rather than who he actually was and what he actually taught.

 For John’s community it was more important to believe the Church’s dogma, than to live according to Jesus’s teachings, in this way they were no different from the hypocrites Jesus struggled with during his own ministry a hundred and fifty years earlier.

 Know this: in the end, only our conduct matters. What we believe about Jesus, or his power to raise the dead only matters insofar as it influences our actions. What matters for the follower of the way, is that we fill ourselves with a spirit that desires to see everyone filled with life and wellbeing.

 The metaphor in today’s reading is this:

 We are all Lazarus, dead to the spirit of love, but if we listen we will be able to rise from the place where our selfishness has brought us, if we listen to the call and obey it when it comes, we will emerge from that place of loneliness and alienation wherein we work contrary to the will of God. Then we may embrace the light as an active participant in God’s loving work.

  

First Reading – Ezekiel 37:12-14 ©

I Shall Put My Spirit in You, and You Will Live

The Lord says this: I am now going to open your graves; I mean to raise you from your graves, my people, and lead you back to the soil of Israel. And you will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and raise you from your graves, my people. And I shall put my spirit in you, and you will live, and I shall resettle you on your own soil; and you will know that I, the Lord, have said and done this – it is the Lord who speaks.

 

Responsorial Psalm – Psalm 129(130) ©

With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord,

  Lord, hear my voice!

O let your ears be attentive

  to the voice of my pleading.

With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.

If you, O Lord, should mark our guilt,

  Lord, who would survive?

But with you is found forgiveness:

  for this we revere you.

With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.

My soul is waiting for the Lord.

  I count on his word.

My soul is longing for the Lord

  more than watchman for daybreak.

(Let the watchman count on daybreak

  and Israel on the Lord.)

With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.

Because with the Lord there is mercy

  and fullness of redemption,

Israel indeed he will redeem

  from all its iniquity.

With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.

 

Second Reading – Romans 8:8-11 ©

The Spirit of Him who Raised Jesus from the Dead is Living in ou

People who are interested only in unspiritual things can never be pleasing to God. Your interests, however, are not in the unspiritual, but in the spiritual, since the Spirit of God has made his home in you. In fact, unless you possessed the Spirit of Christ you would not belong to him. Though your body may be dead it is because of sin, but if Christ is in you then your spirit is life itself because you have been justified; and if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, then he who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to your own mortal bodies through his Spirit living in you.

 

Gospel Acclamation – John 11:25, 26

Glory and praise to you, O Christ!

I am the resurrection and the life, says the Lord;

whoever believes in me will never die.

Glory and praise to you, O Christ!

 

The Gospel According to John 11:1 - 45 ©

I Am the Resurrection and the Life

There was a man named Lazarus who lived in the village of Bethany with the two sisters, Mary and Martha, and he was ill. It was the same Mary, the sister of the sick man Lazarus, who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair. The sisters sent this message to Jesus, ‘Lord, the man you love is ill.’ On receiving the message, Jesus said, ‘This sickness will end not in death but in God’s glory, and through it the Son of God will be glorified.’

Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, yet when he heard that Lazarus was ill he stayed where he was for two more days before saying to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judaea.’ The disciples said, ‘Rabbi, it is not long since the Jews wanted to stone you; are you going back again?’ Jesus replied:

‘Are there not twelve hours in the day?

A man can walk in the daytime without stumbling because he has the light of this world to see by; but if he walks at night he stumbles, because there is no light to guide him.’

He said that and then added, ‘Our friend Lazarus is resting, I am going to wake him.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Lord, if he is able to rest he is sure to get better.’ The phrase Jesus used referred to the death of Lazarus, but they thought that by ‘rest’ he meant ‘sleep’, so Jesus put it plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead; and for your sake I am glad I was not there because now you will believe. But let us go to him.’ Then Thomas – known as the Twin – said to the other disciples, ‘Let us go too, and die with him.’

On arriving, Jesus found that Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days already. Bethany is only about two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to sympathise with them over their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus had come she went to meet him. Mary remained sitting in the house. Martha said to Jesus, ‘If you had been here, my brother would not have died, but I know that, even now, whatever you ask of God, he will grant you.’ ‘Your brother’ said Jesus to her ‘will rise again.’ Martha said, ‘I know he will rise again at the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said:

‘I am the resurrection and the life. If anyone believes in me, even though he dies he will live, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ she said ‘I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who was to come into this world.’

When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in a low voice, ‘The Master is here and wants to see you.’ Hearing this, Mary got up quickly and went to him. Jesus had not yet come into the village; he was still at the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who were in the house sympathising with Mary saw her get up so quickly and go out, they followed her, thinking that she was going to the tomb to weep there.

Mary went to Jesus, and as soon as she saw him she threw herself at his feet, saying, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ At the sight of her tears, and those of the Jews who followed her, Jesus said in great distress, with a sigh that came straight from the heart, ‘Where have you put him?’ They said, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus wept; and the Jews said, ‘See how much he loved him!’ But there were some who remarked, ‘He opened the eyes of the blind man, could he not have prevented this man’s death?’ Still sighing, Jesus reached the tomb: it was a cave with a stone to close the opening. Jesus said, ‘Take the stone away.’ Martha said to him, ‘Lord, by now he will smell; this is the fourth day.’ Jesus replied, ‘Have I not told you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?’ So they took away the stone. Then Jesus lifted up his eyes and said:

‘Father, I thank you for hearing my prayer. I knew indeed that you always hear me, but I speak for the sake of all these who stand round me, so that they may believe it was you who sent me.’ When he had said this, he cried in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, here! Come out!’ The dead man came out, his feet and hands bound with bands of stuff and a cloth round his face. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, let him go free.’

Many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary and had seen what he did believed in him.

 

A Homily – The Fifth Sunday of Lent (Year A)