5^th SUNDAY of LENT, A, 2009 "Gravesides"

(Year B, and Year A)

Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrews 5:7-9; John 11:1-45

These Gospels in mid-lent call us to look again to Jesus

to learn who he is: the water we live by,

the light in which we walk and find our calling.

And in today’s story, he is shown as life itself, powerful over death.

These are teaching stories, but it is more than ideas that we learn.

It is the learning of a person, learning for the heart.

A brief selection from the Letter to Hebrews

offers a kind of glimpse into Jesus’ own heart.

This interior life of faith

is something Jesus himself lived deeply,

trusting God in everything, even in death.

The first scripture today, from Jeremiah,

makes clear what a deeply important concern it is on God’s part,

to speak directly to our hearts.

This is new.

Not, as in days past, will we learn just through trial and error.

A new covenant is announced by Jeremiah,

a covenant of great intimacy,

and it is fulfilled, we believe, in Christ.

Let us listen for our own sakes

our heart learning here and now.

HOMILY 5TH SUNDAY of LENT -- A -- 2009

I’ve been thinking about what it is to grieve when people die.

It’s something we all go through, like Martha and Mary.

I vividly remember burials; the exact place of their graves is important.

I can picture those places, my parents under a fine signal pine tree,

Jesuit friends out at Milford,

our parish friends, just to name two:

Tom and then Jinny Moser on a hillside in Spring Grove cemetery

And I find when I visit a graveside, I think of things

I’d want to tell that person underground,

(how my sister would want to know about a sale at Talbot’s),

and I think maybe I should pray for them, and then I wonder about them,

and before long the questions pour out of me.

What is here, and where is the person who is gone now,

and was it too soon for them, or was it the right time.

I don’t often know anything, no answers come when I’m there.

Martha and Mary knew just a few facts of their brother’s burial:

dead four days, and now decayed beyond exposure.

And they had an answer to one question:

it was a growing Jewish faith in an event at the end of time

called the ‘resurrection of the dead.’

But that did not eliminate the questioning and sorrow.

Why would he die so young, too soon, from an illness,

and why didn’t his friendship with Jesus count for more.

Sacred questions of this kind do not have ready answers.

And when we let it all touch us, we’re at the edge of something vast.

So then, what does this Gospel story tell us.

I’ve always been a little put off by the idea that this one family in history

enjoyed the return of a dead brother.

I don’t think that’s the important point, really,

And Lazarus still would die one day, and so would Martha and Mary.

What the story reveals is that we are not alone in this mystery.

This vast edge of things is not a powerless moment.

Yes, there is no answer to many things I would like to know about death;

but there is this presence at the grave, (the vastness!).

I think this is the point of the teaching.

Instead of a solution, or an answer, we meet a person.

And Jesus has this persistent request: that we roll away the stone

and let the darkness be exposed–there is nothing to fear, nothing to hide.

Death is not against us. We are not crushed by it.

He makes no promises: he only says, I am the Resurrection.

I who stand with you as a brother, a friend every day,

I who meet you at this table, I am–the resurrection.

That is who I am finally, and I need for everyone to know

this is who I shall be for you all the time: life itself.

We tend to trim Jesus down to size, a teacher, a miracle worker,

we invite him to change things, or provide things,

but rather he says I am even now with you,

I am even now moving in your desires, I am in your questions.

There I am. Don’t expect solutions,

because what you really are looking for is me, within you.

And then he thanks God for each and every one of us right now.

"I thank you God for these moments and circumstances now

for this wounded Church, this family, this people,

I thank you that you have brought me to this dark place,

because now they will begin to see you in me.

They will find you in me, in their prayer and their dark places."

To put it in a personal way, go to a graveside, remember that place.

Something there is broken open.

And that is what we notice when we go there, something broken open.

You can feel it in your own body, this breaking.

Our own heart is exposed.

The heart of God is exposed, the heart of Jesus exposed.

That’s what we are going through, our heart opening up

so that a new covenant of intimacy will be written upon it.

Written deep inside, this intimate knowledge of God in Jesus.

The real question is this: are we ready to allow Jesus to be himself.

The human one, as he calls himself, who is one with God.

Ready to let him be enough! And to live within us.

Can he now take over our human struggle completely.

Right at the edge where it all eludes us.

Come out, come out, that is what he says.

Look then to see the one who invites you

to that connection powerfully, even this morning.