NO IFS ANDS OR BUTS WITH JESUS

THE RESURRECTION OF LAZARUS IS GOD'S PROMISE TO US....PROVEN BY JESUS

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:59

The Lord be with you. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. The sisters of Lazarus sent word to Jesus saying, Master, the one you love is ill. When Jesus heard this, he said, This illness is not to end in death, but it is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it. Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was ill, he remained for two more days in the place where he was. Then after this he said to his disciples, let us go back to Judea. When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him. But Mary sat at home. Martha said, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you. Jesus said, Your brother will rise. Martha said, I know he will rise in the resurrection on the last day, Jesus told her, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe? She said to Jesus, Yes, I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world. He became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said, Where have you laid him? She said to him, Sir, come and see. And Jesus wept. So the Jews said, See how he loved him? But some said, Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died? So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it. Jesus said, Take away the stone. Martha said, the dead man's sister to Jesus, Lord, by now there'll be a stench. He's been dead for four days. Jesus said, Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God? So they took away the stone, and Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said, Father, I thank you for hearing me. I know that you always hear me, but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that you sent me. And when he said this, he said in a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands. His face was wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus said to the crowds, Untie him and let him go. Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what he had done now began to believe in him. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. This homily, this gospel, these readings are a challenge to all of us. All of us have intentions on the altar or in our hearts, or people we pray for and are praying for, some of whom are ill, some of whom have died. And we come here with our own agenda, our own prayer list, and we hear this Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Might challenge us, I don't know. Might disappoint us, I don't know. But we're not looking at us, we're looking at Jesus today. We're not looking at how we pray, but the answer to our prayers, Jesus. We were prepared for this reading by the first two readings. One, that beautiful, mystical reading from Ezekiel. People of Israel were returning home from Babylon after generations of persecution and abandonment, and they had no faith, they had no hope. And the prophet Ezekiel, inspired by God, says, Oh my people, I will open your graves and bring you back to the land of Israel, that you may know I am your God. Centuries before Jesus did this, Ezekiel is inspired by God to tell us that God will open our graves. Now all of us have ancestors who are engraves in tombs or in urns, their mortal remains. And we don't expect the resurrection of those people, but we do expect it at one point because God said it will happen. I will open your graves and you'll come back. From Ezekiel to Jesus, it never happened until Jesus comes on the scene. We're also inspired today to understand these special readings from Paul's letter to the Romans because he's explaining what our conditions on earth are like. Traditionally, we say we are made body and soul in the image of God. But Paul's reminding us if you're in the flesh, you cannot please God. It's the spirit that pleases God. We could update that idea with not only our spirit, but our personality, our souls pleasing God. And that's the mechanism that moves us. Our conscience, all within our spirit, can get us motivated to please God. But all of us line up. I mean, we just had the sacrament of confession. Every week we have it. And it's not just words, it's us preparing for this, that our flesh be cleansed, so that our spirits can give praise to God. So we go by our will and we ask the Lord to forgive us. By our conscience, we evaluate what we've done. We've evaluated our sins. We remove prejudice and hate and greed. But our spirit does that to our flesh. So although we are one, we are body and soul. In our tradition as Catholics, we believe that when our body dies, our spirit rests somewhere. I'm not going to say where, traditionally, rests in God. But if you're going to hell, you ain't resting in God. But we can all get ready for that. If we were animals, not full-legged animals, if we treated people like animals and we were animals while we're here on earth, that's our flesh taking hold. If we disrespected our own bodies or the bodies of others, that's our flesh taking hold. Be clear on this. When we do that, sin, we call it, it's our spirit working with our flesh. And our spirit gives in. So the conscience, the soul, the spirit is important that we nourish it and nurture it as Paul encourages us today. The Lord fills us with his spirit. And the Holy Spirit must dwell within us. We can cast out the Holy Spirit very easily through sin. We can tell God, basically, go to hell, get out of my life. And there are many who have done that, and people throughout the world who have done that. But each person is judged individually, not by society. So we are here today encouraged to realize what Paul is telling us, that our spirits must work with our flesh. Our attitude, our conscience, our souls must work with our flesh. Because eventually they'll be separated. The greatest example, the greatest is the resurrection of Jesus, which we celebrate in a few weeks. But today we have a friend of Jesus, Lazarus, who died, and we don't know his sin or his state of grace, but he did die. So God, through Jesus, is fulfilling the scripture of Ezekiel. That didn't happen until Lazarus, and of course, with Jesus. So today we have the fulfillment of this scripture from Ezekiel that Jesus will raise us up. And it's not a deal, it's not a bargain, it's not a contract. Jesus shows up at the tomb. Then later on Mary will say the same thing. If you have been there. No, there's no ifs, ands, or buts with Jesus. He doesn't heal us if, if, if this is not a bargain. This is not a flea market. This is not a lottery. Jesus doesn't wait for your or my if. He reads our hearts. He knows our intentions. He shows up at the tomb. And he says something very interesting, recorded by John, and John is such a wonderful scripture, scholar, and writer. He stops before he speaks out to Lazarus or his family and speaks to God his Father. He says, Father, thank you for bringing me to this moment. Now you realize Lazarus is a buddy of Jesus. Jesus hung out with Lazarus, ate at his house. Mary and Martha are buddies with Jesus. So this is family. Jesus ate with them. Mary's the one who washed Jesus' feet. And he speaks to God the Father and says, if you wish, thank you for bringing me to this moment. And this is for your glory. And what I'm saying, I'm saying so they hear. So everyone witnesses to what's going on and what I say and my relationship with you, God the Father. And then he does something very odd. I've been to the catacombs in Rome. They're clean, but originally they were not meant to be clean. They held the corpse of dead people. Some have mud over their locations. They're like in little shelves, you might say, loculi. Some of them are in cubiculums, which are larger areas, but even those are covered over with a piece of marble or stone. And nearby the tombs are little holes in the wall that would have held perfumed oil or flowers. Because they were tombs. They stunk of dead people. Yeah, there were martyrs, yeah, there were saints, yeah, there were early Christians, but their bodies rotted and they stunk. So when Jesus says, pull back the stone, Lazarus' sister says, Oh, Jesus, there'll be a stench. He's been dead four days. So Jesus knew the truth. We eventually learned the truth with dead people. Sometimes we get reports, people in a neighborhood notice a stench coming from a particular apartment. They call the police and they find someone dead days. So Jesus knew the truth. There's gonna be a stink when that door opens. But yeah, Jesus is acting on behalf of God the Father. And he uses his conscience and his soul and his spiritual relationship. And he says something in a few seconds. But as he's standing there, he reminds all of us how tender a moment this was. Wept. So important for us. He's one of us. Yes, he's God, but he's one of us. As you and I weep for those we love who are ill or have passed, we're one with Jesus, and Jesus is one with us. And that didn't stop him. They roll back the stone. We heard it. Lazarus, come out. And the corpse, not dead, walks out with the shroud bands around him. Jesus tells them, take off the shroud, remove, untie him, set him free. He just brought Lazarus back to life. You and I have never seen that. From the time of creation to this moment, no one has ever seen that. We're here today because the one who did that is life. He is the resurrection. He is our hope. He knows our souls and our hearts. And he calls us forward. And the scriptures give us this reminder of what's going to be celebrated in a few weeks when we celebrate Jesus Christ coming back from the dead. Jesus Christ alive and never dies again. That's why we're here. That's why every church in the world has been built. Because we believe he's alive. Because in his words, he is the resurrection and the life. As we continue our Holy Week, next week after Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday and Good Friday, the sacred, the most sacred days of our church year. Try to be here. Try to be at those sacred days, Holy Thursday, when the feet of the disciples are washed, and Good Friday, when Christ is crucified, and of course, the day of the resurrection. That's why we're here. As we pray for those who are ill, for those who have died, we put them all in the hands of God, and we continue to live in Jesus, the resurrection, and the life.