Fifth Sunday of Lent - Hearts Burning Within

The Season of Lent

Lent is intended to be a joyful walk toward Easter, a progression of the Church toward the summit of the liturgical year. The focus is on uncovering and rejecting everything that tarnishes or warps Christ’s image within us, all that keeps us from being closer to Christ. In this time, we are all focused inward but it is very much a communal journey.

The purpose of Lent is to prepare the people of God for the Paschal feast. So of every reading we might legitimately ask: how does this prepare me for the Paschal feast?

Lent is a time for the fiery love of the Holy Spirit to burn away what we do not need, releasing new energy for growth. It’s not about becoming a better person but rather becoming more and more consumed by the love of Christ.

Lent is a time we naturally begin to think of the things we have done wrong and the ways we have separated ourself from God. This is important and we must root these things out of our lives. But we must also balance this with God’s love. There is nothing we can do to make God love us any more just as there is nothing we can do to make God love us any less. We must be secure in that love, have faith in it. Lent motivates us to draw ever closer to a God who loves us.

Lent, The Lectionary and Scripture Interpretation

Today’s Readings

The setting for the Ezekiel and John readings is a graveyard – the ultimate place of death and decay. God walks in to this setting and works in surprising new ways to show us the possibility of what it’s like to live in the Spirit.

Resurrection is a metaphor for Ezekiel – it demonstrates how a nation returning from exile will “come alive” again.

Resurrection is also a metaphor for Paul – it demonstrates how we die to all the things that keep us apart from God and are raised up again into a new life in the Spirit in union with God.

Resurrection is also a metaphor in John’s gospel – it demonstrates how Jesus will overcome the power of death. This is not to say that Jesus’ resurrection did not happen! An event can be a historical fact and still serve as a metaphor for other things. Our theological language and understanding often calls us to hold things as “both/and” rather than “either/or.”

This Sunday is also the third RCIA Scrutiny Rite.

Ezekiel 37:12-14

Ezekiel is a challenging book as it combines prophecy, legal reflections, prose, poetry, extremely detailed historical descriptions, highly imaginative mythological allusions, judgements, wild visions, sermonizing, and vivid drama. In case you got lost in that description, I am talking about a book of the Bible, not the nightly news!

Ezekiel’s ministry was consumed with helping the people make sense of how they were completely removed from the promised land and now find themselves in exile. Ezekiel proposed a strong concept of Israel as a community faithful in its religious observance and obedience to YHWH whether politically independent or not. Religious observance did not mean business as usual – the temple, which was the center of religious observance, was completely destroyed. They had to find new ways to worship.

Almost every prophetic oracle ends in “so that they (or you) will know that I am YWHW.” Divine activity reveals that God takes seriously the punishment of sin while at the same time never forgetting his lasting promise of care and love toward Israel. (both/and)

The beginning of this chapter is Ezekiel’s vision of a valley of dry bones that miraculously revive. The bones symbolize the nation of Israel in captivity and the vision is seeing a dead nation restored to life. It’s the promise of eventual return from exile.

A primary reason that the metaphor of resurrection “works” here in Ezekiel is the very improbability of it. The Israelites of the exile were only just beginning to express a belief in life after death but it is a very tentative belief held mostly on the margins at this point. To the average Jew hearing Ezekiel, the idea that there might be life after death sounded ludicrously impossible. Knowing this context helps us begin to appreciate the metaphor more deeply: God is doing something absolutely incredible and utterly impossible! New life is pure grace, an unbelievable gift from God.

God says in verse 13 we will know him when he opens our graves and makes us come out of them. What graves has God opened in your life – places where you were dead to his presence? Are there areas today that need to be opened so that you can come forth out of the grave?

Verse 14 says “I have spoken and I will do it.” God continually invites us to trust him. Where is God inviting you to a deeper trust of him? Where do you need to remind yourself that God has promised and will do it?

Romans 8:8-11

Romans is not a compendium of Christian doctrine nor is it Paul’s last will and testament. Romans is a letter to try and make Paul look good to a group of people he doesn’t know but from whom he wants to obtain help to get to Spain to do missionary work there. He also wants to show them that he is doctrinally sound.

Romans chps 1-8 says that God has already acted faithfully to include Gentiles in the community of salvation. Chapters 1-4 have a Jewish audience while 5-8 are to a Gentile audience. Bringing the Gentiles in was always part of God’s plan. Paul is always sounding the reminder: this isn’t something new and out of the blue. The hints of it are all over the Old Testament if we look.

Chp 8 brings a shift in tone. We can now rejoice because we live in the Spirit! Romans 8:1-13 should be read in negative contrast against 7:7-25.

Verses 1-13: Through Christ’s work, the paschal mystery, there are two responses – live according to the flesh or according to the Spirit. Paul also gives us a picture of Christian life empowered by the Spirit.

Paul contrasts flesh and Spirit in this reading. A long history of interpretation of this passage (and Paul’s use of these terms in general) will lead to a very dualistic understanding: our physical bodies are bad and anything having to do with the Spirit or spiritual is good. And yet we know that there was an Incarnation – Jesus took on our human flesh. How can flesh inhabited by God be bad? And we also know that the realm of the spiritual world is made up of evil spirits in addition to good ones. Life is rarely as black and white as we would like to make it.

Rather than reading Paul’s use of the word “flesh” in this passage as our physical, mortal bodies, read it instead as the entirety of a human world stained by sin and under the yoke of death. And read the “spiritual realm” as the divine world that Jesus invites us into where he has already won the battle against sin and death. Flesh is a life enclosed upon itself, trapped under the weight of sin. Spirit is a life lived in the freedom of God’s love. Both play out in a physical body rooted in a material world.

Verse 8 answers the question “what is the goal of human life?”: to please God. Paul will say this is a goal which can only be attained by living in the Spirit.

In verse 9 Paul interchanges Spirit of God and Spirit of Christ – this reflects the multifaceted reality of the Christian experience of a Trinitarian God even though that language won’t develop until centuries later.

Also in verse 9 Paul says “If only the Spirit of God dwells in you.” The Greek grammar implies that this is a fact: the Spirit of God is indeed dwelling in you!

What evidence in your life shows that you are living in the Spirit?

John 11:1-45

Last week was the healing of the man born blind, showing that Jesus is the light of the world. This week is the raising of Lazarus, showing that Jesus is also the life of the world.

Lazarus is a nick-name for the name Eleazar which means “God helps.”

Imagine a conversation with Jesus where you begin with “Lord, if you had been here….” When have you struggled with what feels like the absence of God? Can you talk honestly to Jesus about this, sharing with him all that you feel?

This story ends with Lazarus coming out of the grave and Jesus’ command to untie him. Then “many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what he had done began to believe in him.” I often wonder about the aftermath of this story. Mary and Martha both took Jesus to task for not being there and now, here is Lazarus alive. What did they say to him? How did they react? The disciples were completely oblivious about what Jesus was going to do. What did they say to him? And what about Lazarus himself – what did he say to Jesus?

Like last week’s long reading, this one can benefit from being read in chunks:
Verses 1-16 has Jesus waiting to go to Lazarus to make it clear that Lazarus is indeed dead.
Verses 17-27 Jesus has a conversation with Martha. In verse 25 he uses the Greek translation of God’s Old Testament name YWHW: ego emi, I AM.
Verses 28-37 make it clear that Jesus loved Lazarus
Verses 38-44 recount Lazarus’ coming back from the dead; not a “resurrection” like Jesus’ since Lazarus will rise again but a coming back from the dead nevertheless.
Verse 45 gives us the after effect of the resurrection on at least one group of people.

Verse 3 says that the sisters sent word that Lazarus was ill. Jesus was less than a day’s journey away from them.

It’s all too easy from our vantage point to criticize the reactions of Martha and Mary and the weeping friends. We know the end of the story – we know who Jesus is. But consider Martha and Mary. What they know of Jesus is that he is a healer. He has done amazing miracles to open the eyes of the blind, cure the lame, restore hearing to the deaf. But raising a dead person – one who has been in the tomb for 3 days?? They can’t imagine that happening because they have no reference point for it – nothing like that had ever been done. Their reaction is similar to that of the Pharisees in last week’s story who concentrate on how the miracle happened because they couldn’t even imagine it as a possibility.

God is always showing up in surprising new ways, doing things we could never imagine. Sometimes we limit God’s work because we try to fit it into our existing categories. Many times, faith calls for us to suspend belief and watch God do something amazing and awe-filled – something we would never have imagined possible.

In verse 16 Thomas makes the cryptic statement “Let us also go to die with him.” The disciples knew that going back into the area of Jerusalem would expose Jesus and themselves to arrest. Later on Thomas may become known for his doubts, but here he should be lauded for his loyalty: he is willing to accompany Jesus even though it will court disaster and possibly death.

Why does Jesus weep at the tomb? Perhaps he was sad at the grief caused by his needing to delay in order to teach a message. Perhaps he was grieving for all those who did not have the benefit of being called from the grave. Or maybe he grieved over the power of death and the effect of it on our relationship with him. Can you imagine other reasons why Jesus wept at the tomb?

Is there something in your life that you can’t imagine Jesus bringing new life to?

What does it mean in your own life that Jesus is the resurrection and the life?

What part of you needs to be awakened to new life today?

Questions to ponder

What graves has God opened in your life – places where you were dead to his presence? Are there areas today that need to be opened so that you can come forth out of the grave?

Where is God inviting you to a deeper trust of him? Where do you need to remind yourself that God has promised and will do it?

What evidence in your life shows that you are living in the Spirit?

When have you struggled with what feels like the absence of God? Can you talk honestly to Jesus about this, sharing with him all that you feel?

Why does Jesus weep at the tomb? Can you imagine other reasons why Jesus wept at the tomb?