Catholic Contextual urban Theology, Mimetic Theory, Contemplative Prayer. And other random ramblings.

Sunday 6 April 2014

Sermon at Parish Mass, Lent 5 2014



Ezekiel 37.1-14
Romans 8:6-11
John 11:1-44
The later career of Lazarus, after his resurrection, is sadly not mentioned in the Bible. But Holy Tradition is usually quick to fill in such gaps, and Lazarus is no exception.
According to the Eastern Church, he had to flee a plot to kill him a second time in Judea and went to Cyprus, where St Paul and St Barnabas ordained him first Bishop of Kition. His episcopal stole was presented to him by no less than the Virgin Mary, who had woven it herself. When he died there after a thirty year extension of life, he was buried in a tomb over which the Cathedral of Larnaka was eventually built.
But according to a rival Western tradition, Lazarus, Mary and Martha were expelled from Judea for preaching Christianity, and put into a boat without sails or oars. A miraculous wind blew them to Provence where Lazarus became the first Bishop of Marseille, and founded an order of knighthood. There he was eventually beheaded by the Emperor Domitian and buried in a cave, though his body was later taken to Autun, or, possibly, to Vézelay.
But, whether Lazarus ended his second career in Cyprus or in France, he died again. His return to life from death in today’s gospel story is temporary.
But we read about it because it is a sign. John’s Gospel is big on signs. The miracles that Jesus works, in John, are described as ‘signs’. Now signs always point beyond themselves to something greater. We are not meant to become fixated on the sign, but to realise what it signifies. So, the first sign given by Jesus in John’s Gospel was the changing of water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana. And the point of that was not the wine, which was temporary: when it was all drunk it was gone. That miracle was a sign of the new wine of God’s life in the wedding feast of the Kingdom, the richness of life in the Spirit, something that will not end.
So, today, the raising of Lazarus, who will die again, is a sign of something greater. It points to the resurrection of Jesus, who will not die again, because he has passed into the eternal life of God. Death has no more dominion over him. The description of the tomb and burial of Lazarus, bound with cloths in a cave with a stone over the entrance, just like Jesus, call this to mind.
But more than this, Jesus himself tells Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life”. The resurrection that the raising of Lazarus points to is not just something that happens to Jesus, it is Jesus himself.
The “I am” sayings are another big feature of John’s Gospel – those sayings where Jesus says “I am” – the Good Shepherd for example, or the True Vine, or, today, the Resurrection and the Life. There are seven “I am” sayings in John, just as there are seven signs, and they are part of the message.
The “I am” sayings recall the name of God disclosed to Moses from the burning bush: “I am who I am”, or possibly, “I will be who I will be”. Moses had asked the name of God, and that was the answer he got. Which is not really a name, not even a noun, but more like a verb. This is a profound mystery. This God is not like the gods of the nations, who can be understood, depicted or defined. This God exists of himself, without a cause, without explanation, beyond names and forms. God is pure act, said St Thomas Aquinas. God is not so much a thing that exists, as the act of existence in itself.
So when Jesus says, “I am”, we hear the self-existent God who revealed himself to Moses speaking also in Jesus. God spoke once from a bush that was on fire but not consumed, a sign of God’s limitless life, life that does not destroy or use up. Now God speaks in Jesus of that same life.
God, speaking in Jesus, is revealed as Resurrection and Life. God is not just life, but resurrection, continually pouring out, continually creating and making new. According to St Paul in Romans, God “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist”.
Only God can do this. Only God, the self-existent continual creator, can call into existence things that do not exist. And raising the dead is the supreme example of this.
And in today’s story God in Jesus speaks this word of resurrection right here and now. Martha says, “I know that my brother will rise again in the resurrection on the last day”. This is true, and it is still true, wherever Lazarus was buried the second time, he will rise again. This reading has comforted many people at the funerals of their loved ones, and offers a sure and certain hope, as the prayer book puts it. Martha is looking forward, in faith and hope, to a future in which she is not yet present.
But Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life”. I am. Present tense. Here and now, God is present, God is doing a new thing, God is calling the dead into life. And the raising of Lazarus is a sign of that.
Jesus tells us that it is in the nature of God that God is resurrection and life. And this same God is acting and speaking in Jesus. The Act of existence in itself, on which the universe rests, is resurrection and life. There is no death in God, no destruction. The bush that Moses saw was on fire but not consumed. And God in Jesus is united with our human nature without our humanity being overwhelmed or destroyed.
In Jesus humanity is raised to God, to union with the Divine, without ceasing to be human. The resurrection of Lazarus is a sign of this spiritual resurrection: humanity, body and soul, raised into God who is Spirit. In the resurrection of Jesus we see this completed, as Jesus in body and soul is taken into the Divine. But it is a truth that begins to be present even now, even in our own lives.
The reading we heard from Ezekiel speaks of this figuratively. The prophecy of the dry bones was addressed to the Jewish people in exile in Babylon, and its literal meaning is about them being restored to the land of Israel. But in the spiritual sense it speaks of an interior reality: “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.”
Our own soil, our own ground, is the ground of our being, the mysterious depth where God speaks the word of our existence and calls us into being, as only God can. Our deepest self is the point where the human person opens to God who is Spirit, and the two are one.
When Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life”, he is saying that in him this is fully present and realised. He is the human person who is entirely open to God. He is entirely filled with the Act that is resurrection and life. So that Jesus says and does what the Father says and does. He and the Father are one.
But by the gift of the Spirit, this truth and this hope are opened to all humanity. Jesus speaks what is the Father’s will for all people: resurrection and life. Not just on the last day, though that is true, but here and now, in this present moment. God gives his Spirit to well up in our hearts like a spring of living water, the source of resurrection and life pouring out within us.
How can we drink of this water? How can we know resurrection and life? Jesus says, believe in me. That is, open your heart to a living relationship with Jesus, the source of life, the Word of our being. Cultivate that relationship in prayer and sacrament and through loving service to those in need. Cultivate it by repentance, that is, by turning away from everything that would hold us back from receiving that gift.
Believe in Jesus, and God will be glorified in you, for that is what God wills, to pour himself out in love and life and generosity. For the “I am” of our own existence is the “I am” that only God can speak in us. And, speaking in us, he fills us with his glory without overwhelming or destroying us, for he is resurrection and life, and in him is no death or darkness at all.

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