Sunday 9th March 2008LENT V

Fr Julian Browning

Ezekiel  37  :  1 – 14 ;  Romans  8  :  6 – 11  ;   John  11  :  1 - 45  

That Gospel was too long. And now you have to listen to me droning on about it.  But it's not just our patience which is being tested today, it's our capacity for belief in what we're hearing. St.John pushes us to the limit. Lazarus was dead. He was in the tomb for four days, which was long enough (according to what they knew then) for the soul to leave the body. So there's only a decaying body there. But Jesus summons him from the tomb, and out comes Lazarus, graveclothes and all.

Those who live according to the Spirit read the story of Lazarus again, and see that the compassion of Jesus, the love of God, has no limits, that love is more powerful than death.

We can go so far with this story. We can feel the pain of it, the anguish of the bereaved, that desperate call for things to be different which we have all made at one time or the other – Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died. That edge between life and death is always sharp. But we're not there for a conversation about bereavement. We're watching a dead man walk out of a tomb.

Help is at hand in the second reading today. St.John's story is about life and death. St.Paul talks about flesh and spirit. It's such a booby trap, this division between living according to the flesh and living according to the spirit. It's led to  much unnecessary guilt and suffering down the years. We have come to see within ourselves Flesh versus Spirit. Flesh and spirit as different parts of one human being. Body fighting mind. Indulgence, then repression. Flesh says yes, Spirit says no. A constant battle within the person , never resolved, rarely understood. What sort of religion is that? A sort of Hate Myself religion? Well in this letter St.Paul doesn't mean that, and who would wish a lifetime's suffering on anybody anyway? Flesh as against spirit. St.Paul is telling us about two quite distinct integrated ways of living. Those who live according to the flesh live in a way shaped by the values and standards of the world which has rebelled against God. It means getting by without God. Living according to the Spirit is to have one's mind set on the Spirit of God; our modern word mindset describes it well, a mindset on life and peace.

Those who live according to the flesh read the story of Lazarus and see death. They listen to a frightening story, they see Lazarus, we see Lazarus, as St.John describes him, coming out of the tomb with his face still bound. It's a horror story in which Jesus indulges the weeping women by trying to reverse the processes of nature. Lazarus is dead. Those who live according to the Spirit of God will read the story of Lazarus to learn about life. Lazarus is a man brought back to human existence; he came out as he went in, with his face bound.  When Jesus rose from the dead the graveclothes were left behind. His face and body were not bound. Resurrection, then, is so much more than just being brought back to life. It is a new life in which all can share. And there's more. Those who live according to the Spirit read the story of Lazarus again, and see that the compassion of Jesus, the love of God, has no limits, that love is more powerful than death. Those who live according to the Spirit can see how God always works: the eternal truths are going to be shown to us in the personal, in the real world, in the village of Bethany. In the thick of that pain and sorrow, Jesus says, I am the resurrection and the life. We know what's coming in two weeks' time. Jesus who raises Lazarus must himself die and rise again. Those who live according to the flesh see death as the inevitable end. Those who live according to the Spirit begin to see that the danger we face is not the loss of life, which is indeed inevitable, but the loss of hope. Have you lost hope? Have we lost hope as the Church? Can these bones live, as God asked Ezekiel? Or shall we just keep going on automatic pilot until life is over? The signs of hope, if there are any, will be found in this desert of ours. That's where the bones join together, as they do in the reading from Ezekiel today. Here's what happens, I think. What keeps hope alive in the desert of this world is not belief but compassion. The sign of hope revived in your life will be compassion in some form or other: the compassion which Jesus showed for Martha, Mary and Lazarus, whom he loved; the compassion which we can see for ourselves in the lives of others; and, most surprising and significant of all, the compassion we can find within ourselves. In the ruin of our hearts, God sits. In the deserts of the heart, let the healing fountain start. Maybe that is what we went into the desert, the forty days of Lent, to find: signs of the compassion which will bring hope back into our lives. God's compassion, the compassion which is God at work, the compassion which raised Lazarus, doesn't only bring us hope; it brings us back to life.