JESUS, THE GIVER OF LIFE
Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year A. John 11:1-45.
AIM: To proclaim
Jesus as totally human and totally divine, giver of eternal life here and now.
Why was Jesus crucified? Luke’s gospel
suggests that it was the result of the resentment felt by the leaders of Jesus’
people at the enthusiasm of the common people “for all the great things they
had seen” Jesus do. (Lk 19:37, Jerus. Bible) In John’s gospel the raising of
Lazarus is the climax of these “great things” which provoked enthusiasm in
some, resentment in others. It is the last and greatest of the seven “signs”,
as John calls them, which show us who Jesus is. Last Sunday’s gospel, in which
Jesus healed the man born blind, showed us Jesus as light of the world, and the
giver of light. What does the sign in today’s gospel tell us? Three things.
1. Jesus
Christ is our brother and our best friend.
“Master, the one you love is ill” was
the message Lazarus’ sisters sent to Jesus. No specific request was necessary. Jesus
would know what to do. Nor did Mary and
Martha need to name their brother. “The one you love” was all the
identification Jesus required. The gospel writer, in recording these words,
means us to understand that Lazarus stands for all those Jesus loves — ourselves included.
“See how he loved him,” the friends of
Mary and Martha say. It is their response to the shortest verse in the Bible:
“Jesus wept.” We call Jesus the God-Man. Does that mean that he is partly God
and partly man? No! Jesus is completely
divine, and completely human. What
better example of his humanity than his tears at the grave of his dear friend
Lazarus?
Jesus was no Superman immune to human
suffering. However deeply we suffer, Jesus has suffered more. When we think
that no one can possibly understand what we are going through, we are wrong.
There is One who always understands,
who is always close to us. He is Jesus Christ: our brother, our lover, our best
friend. But he is more.
2. Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God.
This gospel according to John begins
by saying of Christ: “In him was life and the life was the light of the human
race” (1:4). Last Sunday, in the healing of the man born blind, we saw Jesus as
the giver of light. Today we see him
as the giver of life. Perhaps you’re
wondering what that means. Don’t we have life already? How, then, can Jesus
give us what we already have?
The life we possess already, which we
received from our parents, is passing away. Every hour, every minute, every
tick of the clock, brings us closer to the end of this life. Jesus Christ is
the giver of a new and higher life, one that is not passing away. “I am the resurrection and the life,” he says in
our gospel reading. “Whoever believes in
me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will
never die.”
To believe in Jesus Christ means to trust him. For those who trust Jesus
physical death will not be the snuffing out of a candle. It will be the gateway
to a new and higher life; a form of existence which, unlike earthly life, is not passing away: where there is no more
suffering, no more sickness, no more death; where — as we read twice over in
the last book of the Bible -- “God will wipe away all tears from [our] eyes.”
(Rev. 7:17 & 21:4). Before he went to his own physical death on Calvary , Jesus showed himself to his friends as the giver
of life, the one with power even over death.
Between the raising of Lazarus,
however, and the resurrection of Jesus there was a crucial difference. Lazarus
returned to his former life. Jesus went ahead to new life. We see that even in the details. Lazarus came forth from
the tomb still wearing his burial clothes. He would need them again. Jesus left
his burial garments behind (cf. Jn
20:6f). He needed them no more. He had passed beyond death to a new and higher
life.
Jesus’ tears for his dead friend
Lazarus are a sign of Jesus’ humanity. His tears show that Jesus is our
brother, our lover, our best friend. The raising of Lazarus shows us Jesus as
the giver of life, divine Son of God. But Jesus is the giver of life not only
to Lazarus — and this is the third thing this sign shows us:
3. Jesus Christ gives eternal life to
believers here and now.
We friends of Jesus live on two
levels. We live, first, on the level of physical life, growing shorter every
day and terminated by death. And second, we live on the spiritual level, on
which we have an eternal and indestructible relationship with our heavenly
Father. Eternal life is not something far away, pie-in-the-sky-when-we-die. No,
the eternal life which Jesus gives to those who trust him and believe in him
begins right now.
The principal means Jesus uses us to
give us his gift of eternal life is the sacraments. The sacraments, however,
are not merely infusions of some kind of spiritual power called “grace.” Every
sacrament is a personal encounter
with Jesus, our brother and our best friend; with Christ the eternal Son of
God; with the One who loves us more than we can ever imagine.
These three lessons of today’s gospel
are beautifully summed up in the introduction to the Eucharistic prayer which
we shall hear in a moment:
C As a man like us
Jesus wept for Lazarus his friend;
C As the eternal
God he raised Lazarus from the dead;
C In his love for
us all Christ gives us the sacraments to lift us up to everlasting life.
So much meaning in this simple story;
so much beauty; so much to cheer us, to uplift us; to comfort us when we are
discouraged; to strengthen us when we grow weak; to raise us up when we fall;
to fill our mouths with laughter and our tongues with joy! Do we ever stop to
realize the glory of it all, and truly worship?
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