L5 2015 BOYNES cycle A readings
One of the great privileges of being a priest is celebrating a funeral Mass for parishioners and their loved ones. It's a privilege and a joy to gather as Church and bring our message of hope in a time of darkness, of life in the face of death. The Gospel reading we just heard, the raising of Lazarus, is often chosen for funeral celebrations. While it does deal with death and loss, its focus is really on new life.
All three readings today focus on this newness of life, being alive in the Lord. The first reading says, "O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them...I will put my Spirit within you that you may live." When we hear this we probably think of the resurrection, but Ezekiel was writing long before there was really a belief in eternal life among the Chosen People.
He was writing during the darkest time in their history, the exile in Babylon. They had been defeated and taken captive - cut off from their homeland, their history, from all they held dear. So, the image of 'rising from the grave' represented a restoration of freedom and life, here and now. A restoration of hope to a people in darkness. "I will open your graves and have you rise from them...I will put my Spirit within you that you may live."
True life, fullness of life, comes only from God's Spirit dwelling within us.
St. Paul echoes the promise heard by Ezekiel, but Paul has an advantage - the experience of the resurrection. Paul says, "If the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He will give life to your mortal bodies also, through His Spirit dwelling in you."
He also says, "Those who live in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit." Notice, he's talking in the present tense, here and now. Eternal life is not just in the future. It's also a quality of life we can share in the present, if we walk with the Lord!
We need to look carefully at Paul's distinction between flesh and spirit, because it can be misleading if taken the wrong way. We do live in the flesh for now, we can't separate body and soul completely in understanding the human person. When we do it leads to all kinds of harmful behaviors. As St. John Paul II taught us, our bodies are the instrument God gave us to live ourour vocation, to love, to share the Gospel.
For Paul, to "live in the flesh" means to focus only on this life - to depend too much on earthly things; to find our security in possessions, or health, or work, or status. Nothing wrong with these things, but when we live for them we become slaves to them...we're not truly free. The Church calls us to be 'in the world, but not of the world.'
Jesus came to show us true freedom. Notice the first thing He said when Lazarus came out of the tomb, still bound in burial cloth: "Untie him and let him go."
That's what "living in the Spirit" is about - true freedom. Not license to do whatever we want, but freedom to seek what is true and good and eternal. Freedom from our animal instincts; freedom from sin which enslaves us; freedom from death itself.
Life in the Spirit "unties" so many of the things that hold us back - our fears, our grudges, our worries. It may take some time, and it definitely takes prayer, but the rewards are tremendous.
The raising of Lazarus is the climax of many signs performed by Jesus. Like all of these signs, it has a deeper meaning. Like the healing of the man born blind in last week's Gospel, it's much more than a physical healing.
Jesus could have spent all is time healing the sick, or even raising the dead. But that's not why He came.
He came to teach, to invite, to show the way:
- the way to true freedom
- the way to lasting peace
- the way to life eternal,
both now and forever!