Martha and Mary lived at Bethany, really near Jerusalem.
It sounds like they and their brother Lazarus are really good friends with Jesus.
They had meals with him.
And when Lazarus is ill the sisters call on Jesus,
they send for him,
and they expect him to come.
We too are loved by Jesus.
We too are his friends.
We too share meals with him.
We too call on him in our need.
The gospel writer wants us to make this connection.
He chose what to write to show
who Jesus is
and what it means to have Jesus as a friend.
He calls events like that in today’s gospel ‘signs’,
These events, these signs,
point to deep truths about God and Jesus.
And the people in the events all represent facets of Christian life.
What is the deep truth at the heart of this gospel passage?
What does this sign point to?
What is it really about?
When Martha goes to Jesus,
to talk to him about the death of her brother,
she speaks wonderful, faith-filled words:
I know he will rise again at the resurrection on the last day
Martha speaks with firm assurance,
a grace, a blessing she receives in her tragedy:
a grace to hope and pray for
when we are faced with the death of one we love.
Martha doesn’t need a sign to bolster this faith.
Jesus’ response to her
takes us to the deep truth
that the sign will exemplify.
‘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?’
Knowing Jesus,
really knowing him,
trusting in him,
recognising him for who he is –
this is the deepest meaning of resurrection,
from which all others flow.
The more we are aligned with Jesus,
drawing life from him,
the less important our physical death is.
In response, Martha expresses a whole-hearted faith in Jesus:
Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God,
the one who was to come into this world
But this doesn’t show that she fully understands what Jesus just said.
A sign is needed.
And so Lazarus, who was really, really dead, is restored to life
through the prayer and the command of Jesus, the Lord of Life.
Jesus shouts:
‘Lazarus, here! Come out!’
Lazarus comes out,
and Jesus tells those around him to
let him go free.
Lazarus resumes his relationship with Jesus:
It is this,
not the business of breathing, eating and walking about,
but Lazarus’ relationship with Jesus
that is real life,
that makes Lazarus fully alive.
This is a sign for all time:
Jesus is
who he is
always.
In the Easter ceremonies, starting next Sunday,
we will celebrate that Jesus died to save us,
living out the boundless forgiveness of God.
That forgiveness is not abstract and general,
it is particular and personal.
The question laid before me today,
as Lent draws to a close,
is
over what aspects of my life can I hear Jesus shouting
‘John, here! Come out!’?
This is very personal:
it is a question for each of us to ask about ourselves.
Where in my life do I hear Jesus shouting:
enough;
leave that behind;
stop that;
come back to me;
come out?
Jesus prompts our consciences,
he is shouting
but we are often nearly deaf.
When we hear him
we know that we need to come out
we need to respond to his power to restore life.
We have a place of privileged encounter with this power.
We have a sacrament of unbinding,
a sacrament for restoring freedom,
for restoring life.
It goes under a variety of names:
confession, penance, reconciliation –
but the right one is certainly ‘reconciliation’.
In it we are set free:
the smelly rags of sin are removed from us
and we, like Lazarus,
are restored in our relationship with the Lord of Life.
[As the preface of today’s Mass says:
In his love for us all,
Christ gives us the sacraments
to lift us up to everlasting life.]
A week on Tuesday
we will have our Lenten penitential service here at 7.30.
In it we will join together in acknowledging our sinfulness
thereby expressing our thanks for the restoration Jesus brings.
It provides an opportunity to respond to
Jesus calling us out,
an opportunity to rejoice in being unbound.