What Is Your Grave?

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

On this Fifth Sunday of Lent we are getting very close to Easter.  Next week is Palm Sunday and then comes Easter Sunday.  So the first reading can help us a lot because God says to us that he will open our graves and take us out of them, and bring us back to our land.  This will prove to you that I am your God.  Lent is a time to recognize our grave, to see clearly the death we are in and to ask ourselves this question: what death are you experiencing today?  What has been your grave the last few weeks or months or years?  What does God have to take you out from, a sadness, an anxiety or whatever?  The mission of Lent is to see what we need to be freed from.  How can we prepare for Easter unless we know that in some sense we are dead?  How can we experience the resurrection if we don’t know that we are stuck?

All the readings can help us this weekend.  Jesus says in the gospel this illness of Lazarus will not be unto death, but its purpose is for the Son of man (Jesus) to be glorified.  The Lord allowed this illness to serve for his glory.  Any kind of illness, suffering or cross we have is for the same purpose: to glorify God.  The same is true for the events we see in the world: a banking crisis, the possibility of a recession, a difficult job situation, can all be for the glory of God.

The only thing that gives us certainty, that does not fail us is the love of God.  This love is solid, firm, unchangeable; it does not vary with the wind.  It is a rock on which we can build our life.  If you are distressed or anxious or afraid it is because your life is not built on this rock.  If we truly lean on Christ, then anything can happen to us and we are at peace.  We saw this last week with the man born blind.  It wasn’t because he sinned or his parents sinned it was only for the glory of God to be shown.  We are weak people, sinners, afraid of the future, of the unknown, we love money and all of this puts us in a tomb.

You and I are Lazarus.  We are already in the grave, rotting.  I like a few expressions in this gospel.  One of them says ‘take away the stone’.  It seems that Jesus is waiting for Lazarus to die before he goes to see him.  On purpose he waits two extra days.  And when Jesus arrives, he already is dead for four days, buried, rotten, like us, with a big, beautiful stone that covers that rottenness.  If you go to any cemetery or especially a mausoleum you see beautiful flowers, poems, photos, a lot of marble and granite with grass surrounding these stones underneath them all is death rotting and decaying death.  The pretty stones prevent us and others from seeing death.  In life we create this façade that make us look like a good dad, a good mom, a good son or daughter, a good priest but inside we are full of death.  Inside of us is selfishness, ego, love of money, sex, hatred, we impose ourselves on others, it has to be our way or the highway.

What I death I have and the Lord comes to me, to revive me, and to change this situation or how I react to it.  The Lord says to us, Come out! But first we have to roll away the stone so that the truth comes out.  It is rotten inside; it smells bad.  It has been already four days and the smell is terrible.  Now we see that Lazarus is an image of us, at times, dead and rotten.  Move the stone so the light can come in, so I can see the truth and the wonderful light of Christ can enter.  Take way the stone so Christ can enter.  He doesn’t move the stone; he doesn’t force us.  Others perhaps by their honesty take it away for us.

The suffering you have or the isolation or the family you live with or your community they remove the stone.  Let the truth of what we are come out!  They don’t want to move the stone and say it already smells; he is rotting.  But this is what we have to see brothers, our death, to see ourselves in Lazarus who is dead.

Then the other expression that moves me is: Lazarus, come out! Can he hear this?  Can a dead man listen to the preaching, can he hear a ‘good news’?  Can he be aware of the love of God in his life?  Absolutely, the dead can listen.  He and I have a chance to be saved, to listen to the Word, to the preaching, to the good news, not to hear the devil but to hear our Lord who doesn’t judge you or despise you or never says that you are disgusting.  I count on you, he says, and we don’t know why.  He says, I need you, I love you, I adore you.  You are the love of my life.  I give my life for you.

This is what saves us, but we cannot listen if the stone is not taken away if it is in front of us.  So don’t be afraid to move it.  He calls you by name, Fred, Sally, come out!  I want to give you life, to raise you up.  He can enter your death, your tomb.  I will take you out of it this week.  I can pull you out of the grave.  He will reach down into that tomb and raise you up.  Let us enter this time brothers and sisters and take away the stone so the Lord can call us out of death and into life.

 

 

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