Fifth Sunday of Lent

Sorry for the delay on this post.  Here is my Sunday Homily:



http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/040614.cfm

          There is a saying that goes, “If you want to make God laugh, just tell Him your plans”.  It’s a short and rather pithy statement, but it has a lot of wisdom in it.  God is the only one who really knows what is going to happen.  He can do whatever He wants; He is in charge.  We ourselves are free to make all the plans we want and we can talk all we want about the things that we want to do, but just because we want to do this or plan on doing that it doesn’t mean that it is actually going to happen that way.  

          Imagine if our prayers consisted only of us demanding that He do all the things that we wanted.  It would probably sound like the most lopsided contract negotiation we ever heard.  “Okay God.  Here’s the deal.  No more of this getting up before eight business, alright.  I know you like to get up early, but some of us some need their beauty rest.  Now about work, I’m planning on getting that nice big promotion and raise that I’ve had my eye on for the past few weeks.  Yeah, you know the one.  I know I haven’t been working that hard, but I totally deserve this more than those losers who are applying for it.  I mean, why should they get it?  And if you could get to work on that house on the lake that I waiting for since last summer.  I know you got a lot to do, but come on: buyer’s market.  Chop, chop!  I’ve even been working on getting to Mass on time more.  Last weekend Father wasn’t even half way up the aisle yet.  I was totally on time.  That’s got to count for something.  Oh!  One last thing, Lord: I’ve got to talk to you about the weather situation down here.  I think your snow machine is on the fritz.  When we had snow in late March that was kind of funny.  When you sent snow on April Fools day, that was cute, but close to a foot on April 4^th?  Come on God, get with the program.  I got places to go, people to see.  Well, talk to next week.”

          Sometime we might find ourselves asking a lot of God.  We might even say we are demanding of God at times.  But I seriously doubt that anyone is quite as demanding or as self-centered as that caricature I was just describing.  I think, for the most part, Christians understand when we ask something of God and it doesn’t turn out the way we expect it to.  God knows what we need better than we can comprehend right now.  What is harder to accept and harder to understand is when bad things happen to ourselves and to our loved ones.  Then we do get demanding as we insist on an explanation from God for what just happened.

          In the Gospel today about the death and rising of Lazarus we see the sorrow of Martha and Mary at the death of their brother.  We also see their frustration as they both say, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died”.  There is a certain amount of faith in that statement.  Both women know that He certainly has the ability to heal people.  Martha even adds, “But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.”  She knows that Christ’s power comes from God.  This puts her far ahead of the crowds who have trouble understanding who Jesus even is.  That phrase, “If you had been here”, however, also mirrors the statement of part of the crowd, “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?”  The phrase become a bit more accusatory:  Lord, if you would have come, you could have saved his life.

          How many times in our lives do we say to God, “Lord if you had been here”?  Lord, if you had been here, my mother would not have gotten cancer.  Lord, if you had been here, my son wouldn’t have left the Church.  Lord, if you had been here, my sister wouldn’t have started using drugs.  Lord, if you had been here, my husband would have gotten that job.  Lord, if you had been here, my father wouldn’t have died.  All of these phrases and other version of them can also come in the form of a very pointed question: “Lord, why weren’t you there?  Where were you at that time?”  We may be tempted to accuse God (or Jesus, or the Holy Spirit) of not being there when we needed Him most.  We may even want to blame Him for not trying to stop it.

          Martha and Mary, and the crowds in Bethany, didn’t quite understand that even though Jesus wasn’t physically there when Lazarus died, He is there now and will still work wonders.  Likewise, when we are overcome with sorrow or grief over bad things that can happen to our loved ones and ourselves, we can forget that God was there when it happened and is still here with us, even in the hurt.  He was with us in those dark times, even though we didn’t know it, and will continue to carry us as we live our lives here on earth.  He will be with us even unto death.  Trust that He is with us.

          Death is a very scary thing for many of us.  What happens after death?  Will I be with loved ones when I die?  Will I get to be with God when I die?  It is in death that we truly have to put our trust and hope that God will be with us until the end and will bring us to the Resurrection. 

          The readings today point both to Christ’s Resurrection that we will celebrate in just two weeks, and to the Resurrection from the dead that we all hope to be a part of some day.  The Gospel shows how Christ has the power to raise us up again, calling us out from the tomb.  Our first reading from Ezekiel speaks of how God will open our graves and have us rise from them.  Our second reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans teaches us that it is through the Spirit of God dwelling within us that will raise our mortal bodies to life.

          We cannot demand, brothers and sisters, that God give us everything we want and make our lives always perfect.  But when we put our trust in Him, we will know that He will be with us in all our difficulties and we will have hope that He will raise us to new life.  Death will be conquered.