“Lazarus, come out!”1 Today, my dear Elect, Christ addresses these words to you. You see, the scriptures cannot be read merely as tales of incredible things that happened a long time ago. If the inspired words of the Bible aren’t somehow addressed to us, then what good are they?
Take our first reading from Ezekiel. Contextually, it is addressed to ancient Israel. God promises to bring them back from exile. Just as Israel experienced God in their exodus from Egypt, by their return from exile, they will come to know, yet again, that the LORD is God.
To a degree, scriptures must transcend context. Exile is life apart from God. Perhaps the main effect of exile is alienation. The hallmark of what we might call “existential alienation,” a state of being all too familiar in our day, is meaninglessness. Returning to God, which, Saint Augustine tells us, is also a return to oneself, ends alienation.2 You don’t so much return to God as God gently pulls you to Himself.
This is why the apostle, in our reading from Romans, insists that it is necessary for the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead, to dwell in you: to give you life. This life in the Spirit is what Saint Augustine, in his letter to Roman widow Proba, called the life that is truly life. To Proba, who was wealthy and influential, Augustine wrote:
It becomes you, therefore, out of love to this true life, to account yourself desolate in this world, however great the prosperity of your lot may be. For as that is the true life, in comparison with which the present life, which is much loved, is not worthy to be called life, however happy and prolonged it be…3The “true life” is life in the Spirit, which is a gift from God, a gift you, our Elect, are preparing to receive through the life-giving Easter sacraments. As you emerge from baptism, Jesus says,
Chastin, come out! Ty, come out! Emily, come out!But as you move toward baptism be aware of something Friedrich Nietzsche noted: “only where there are graves are there resurrections.”4
Seth, come out! Brianna, come out! Austin, come out! Sharon, come out!
This insight of Nietzsche’s draws our attention to a part of our lengthy Gospel reading that is normally overlooked. After being notified of the illness of His good friend, Lazarus, and after delaying two days, Jesus says to His disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”5 Why Judea? Judea is where Bethany is, where Lazarus lives with his sisters Martha and Mary. They must go because Lazarus has died.
Jesus’ disciples make a reasonable objection: “Rabbi,” they say to Him, “the Jews were just trying to stone you, and you want to go back there?”6 His answer is a prolonged “Yes.”7
The Raising of Lazarus, by Léon Bonnat, 1857 (photo: Public Domain)
Doubting Thomas gets a bad rap for his refusal to believe that Jesus was resurrected based on the say-so of his fellow disciples. Let’s be real, if someone, even someone you trusted, told you that someone who you knew was dead had come back to life, how likely would you be to believe it? It’s incredible.
What happens next in today’s Gospel, I think, redeems Thomas from his bad rap and his unbelieving rep. In response to Jesus’ determination to return to Judea where he and his followers would be in danger, it is Thomas who says, “Let us also go to die with him.”8
The cross is the doorway to eternal life. To be called forth, you must first die. Thomas certainly seems to grasp the latter half of this. The main paradox of being a Christian is that to truly live you must die.
Especially in our time and in our culture, it’s quite common to leap to the happy conclusion. But just as between today and Easter lies our commemoration the Lord’s Passion and death, so between now and resurrection lies death and not merely physical death. As we sing in a verse of a popular Lenten hymn:
As you did hunger bear and thirst,While it is important, like Thomas, to know what it means to die with Christ, it is more important to learn what it means to live in Him, which is to live for Him, which means letting Him live through you. As Saint Paul wrote to the Galatians:
So teach us, gracious Lord,
To die to self, and so to live
By your most holy word9
I have been crucified with Christ;Not just to our Elect, but for all Christians: your new life should be different from your old one. For those of us already baptized, confirmed, and communed, Lent is a time during which we prepare to renew our own baptismal promises, to renounce sin and so live in the freedom of the children of God.
yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me10
Do you think Lazarus lived the same way after being raised from the dead?
1 John 11:43.↩
2 Saint Augustine. Confessions, Book VIII, Chap X.↩
3 Saint Augustine. Letter 130 (AD 412), Chapter 2.↩
4 Frederich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra. Second Part, XXXIII, “The Grave Song.”↩
5 John 11:7.↩
6 John 11:8.↩
7 John 11:9-15.↩
8 John 11:16.↩
9 "Lord, Who Throughout These Forty Days."↩
10 Galatians 2:19b-20.↩
