{"id":1326,"date":"2014-04-06T18:58:38","date_gmt":"2014-04-06T22:58:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/?p=1326"},"modified":"2014-04-06T18:58:38","modified_gmt":"2014-04-06T22:58:38","slug":"homily-fifth-sunday-in-lent-year-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/homily-fifth-sunday-in-lent-year-a\/","title":{"rendered":"Homily – Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year A"},"content":{"rendered":"

5th<\/sup> Sunday in Lent, Year A<\/a>
\nEzekiel 37:12-14
\nRomans 8:8-11
\nJohn 11:1-45
\nApril 6, 2014<\/p>\n

Lazarus is ill.\u00a0 He is also a friend of Jesus.\u00a0 Jesus has healed lots of people.\u00a0 So one would think that when Jesus receives word that Lazarus is sick he would immediately go to Lazarus and heal him.\u00a0 He won\u2019t have even needed to go to him.\u00a0 Jesus had healed some from afar.<\/p>\n

But Jesus doesn\u2019t go immediately to heal Jesus.\u00a0 In fact we are told that when he heard that Lazarus was sick he remained where he was for two days.<\/p>\n

Then he goes but by time he arrives there Lazarus has already died.\u00a0 Has Jesus failed?\u00a0 Of course not!<\/p>\n

Both Martha and Mary speak to Jesus, stating their faith that if Jesus had been there, Lazarus would not have died.\u00a0 Theirs is a great faith but it is not a \u201ccomplete\u201d faith.<\/p>\n

Jesus speaks to Martha of \u201crising\u201d.\u00a0 Martha says she knows that we will rise in the resurrection on the last day<\/i>.\u00a0 She does not realize that Jesus is the Resurrection.<\/i><\/p>\n

By the time Jesus arrives at the tomb, Lazarus has been dead for four <\/i>days.\u00a0 It is important that it says four<\/i> days because in the Jewish understanding of the day, the soul lingered for three days but after four days there would be absolutely no hope of life.<\/p>\n

That does not prevent Jesus from performing a great work.\u00a0 Martha, Mary, and many others have come to believe in Jesus\u2019 power to drive out demons and cure the sick but no one would ever fathom that Jesus had power even over death.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s precisely why Jesus does this miracle!<\/p>\n

For them death seemed so final but what is death?<\/p>\n

Death is an end to life as we know it<\/i> here on Earth but it is not an end to life.\u00a0 This distinction is essential to our faith.<\/p>\n

Every burial I do at the graveside, the intercessions start off with Jesus\u2019 words from today\u2019s gospel, \u201cI am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.<\/i>\u201d\u00a0 There we are standing at the graveside.\u00a0 When can death ever some more certain than when we stand at the grave?<\/p>\n

Yet, that is the precise moment when we receive these words of Jesus that if we believe we will not die.\u00a0 In human words, it makes no sense.<\/p>\n

But in faith, it takes on a whole other significance.\u00a0 In the scope of eternal life, physical death means little.\u00a0 Yes, it means we no longer live in this physical world and is no easy thing to accept.<\/p>\n

Seen without faith, physical death is an end.\u00a0 Seeing as God sees, physical death is merely a rite of passage to be with God in Heaven.<\/p>\n

So what is the death that we must fear?<\/p>\n

The death that matters is eternal separation from God (Hell).\u00a0 Ezekiel speaks to the people in exile the Lord\u2019s promise that he will open their graves and raise them up.\u00a0 We see this as a prophecy of the Resurrection in Jesus but with the next line \u201cand bring you back to the land of Israel<\/i>\u201d it speaks of how the Israelites feel they have been separated from God in exile.\u00a0 We know that God is everyone but in the days of the Exile, the understanding was that when you leave a land, you left the god of that land behind.\u00a0 So the Israelites, felt separated from their god.\u00a0 God promises to fix the separation, returning them to Israel.<\/p>\n

What separates us from God?\u00a0 What causes spiritual death?<\/p>\n

Sin!\u00a0 Jesus can fix that too.<\/p>\n

Physical death is not easy to take but as people of faith, it is spiritual death that we should fear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

5th Sunday in Lent, Year A Ezekiel 37:12-14 Romans 8:8-11 John 11:1-45 April 6, 2014 Lazarus is ill.\u00a0 He is also a friend of Jesus.\u00a0 Jesus has healed lots of people.\u00a0 So one would think that when Jesus receives word that Lazarus is sick he would immediately go to Lazarus and heal him.\u00a0 He won\u2019t …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Homily – Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year A’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMTPk-lo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1326"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1327,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions\/1327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}