Fifth Sunday of Lent Year A
My cousin Donovan’s tombstone contains the words of Jesus to Martha in today’s gospel: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will never die.”
Death brings with it terrible hurt, it comes with a sting. But even so, would it not have been better for him to rest in peace? Was he risen from death for his sisters and the townspeople of Bethany, to take away their sorrow? Or was it for his own benefit? Jesus says it was for the glory of his Father, and so that everyone seeing it may come to believe in him whom the Father sent. Everything happens for a reason, they say. There is the reason for Lazarus’ resurrection from the dead.
Honestly, for his sisters and those close to him, even for his friend Jesus, with respect to God’s intentions, whatever the reason for Jesus’ raising Lazarus from death, they were happy to have Lazarus alive and well again.
This was the seventh and last ‘sign’, as Jesus’ miracles are called in the gospel of John. The first one, remember, was at the wedding in Cana, which was a sign of the abundance of joy that God brings into the world through Jesus. With that wine. Here, it feels the same, overflowing joy.
Life is preferable to death anytime.
At this moment in our history, there is so much death around us. It is plain for all to see. It becomes normalised. ‘What are you doing?’ someone would ask his friend, who would reply, ‘I am watching war.’ You would know he is not watching a movie, not playing one of those war games, but watching the news. Watching war. A deathly entertainment.
I am the resurrection and the life, says the Lord.
Amidst all this war and strife, conflict and death-making ways of man to his fellows and their common home, the world, the time will come when death will be no more. That is every bit worth looking forward to. When “they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks,” when “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4).
In the meantime, working for justice to achieve that peace is the duty of each one. We do it knowing that “if the Lord does not build the house, in vain do its builders labour,” and “in vain our earlier rising and going later to rest” (Ps. 127:1-2).
Jesus calls us out of our graves. Come, let us go with Lazarus. There is work to be done.