When the tomb turns into a wellspring of life

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Ez 37:12-14; Rm 8:8-11; Jn 11:1-45

We all need to scrutinise our spiritual growth

There are three snapshots from today’s gospel reading that I would like to offer for our meditation, as we continue our journey with our Catechumens who are about to be received into the Church through the sacrament of Baptism in a few days’ time. After all the preparation that they are doing, which we call the scrutinies, is something that we must all be doing together. Whether we are going to be baptised this Easter or whether we have been baptised seven or 80 years ago, we all need to scrutinize how and what we are doing, which areas of our life need particular attention, which areas of my life are tainted with sin: both of what we do and of what we fail to do. Pope Francis calls these the areas of necrosis in our heart, the parts of ourselves that are dead and therefore need particular attention.

First Snapshot: Martha and Mary Blame Jesus

The first snapshot that I would like us to meditate upon is very particular because we see Martha almost blaming Jesus, when she tells him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” In other words, she is telling him, “It is your fault that my brother Lazarus died.” Martha’s comment sounds all too familiar. In fact, later on her sister Mary says exactly the same words to Jesus (Jn 11, 32). But these words are familiar because they are the same words that we express to God in our own grief. How many times do we call out to God, in the midst of our sorrow. “Lord, where are you? If you were really with us our place would have been a better place! Look at all this sin and injustice around us. If only you had been here.” We blame God for everything, and when we do so, relinquish our responsibility. JK Rowling, the acclaimed author of Harry Potter, in a commencement speech at Harvard University just a few miles from here says that there is an expiry date to blaming your parents. At a certain point in life, she says, we have to start taking responsibility of our lives. I think that we can say something similar about our relationship with God. There must come a time in our life, which is a time of spiritual maturity, when instead of blaming God for our losses in our life, we start seeing them as places where God’s glory is revealed.

Second Snapshot: Martha doubts Jesus's ability to give New Life 

This brings me to the second snapshot where this time we see Martha finding it hard to believe the Jesus can actually raise the dead to life. Martha keeps spiritualising and rationalising Jesus's words. "Yes, I know that Lazarus will rise on the last day," and then again she tries to dissuade Jesus from ordering the stone to be removed from the tomb because Lazarus had already been dead for four days." We too might have reservations about Jesus's ability to bring to life the dead and necrotic areas of our life. We recognise these doubts are when we find that we are resorting to our own petty remedies and quick fixes to our difficulties: we doubt Jesus’s ability to bring life where we otherwise only see death. For example, disagreements among us easily result in the relationship being terminated, or we see our sinfulness merely as a character trait or a result of the society in which we live, thus asserting that change is impossible.

Third Snapshot: Jesus standing at Lazarus's tomb

In the third snapshot we see Jesus standing at Lazarus’s tomb, first weeping then calling on him to leave his tomb and come out. Standing before a tomb is very discomforting. It reminds us of our limitations, and ultimately of our own death. Jesus too weeps. He weeps when he sees us helpless, stuck in our tombs and reluctant to start afresh. Jesus weeps when we seem to prefer death to life, sin to virtue. But Jesus also calls us out of our tombs as he called Lazarus out of his tomb.

When the tomb overflows with life

You who are going to be baptised in two weeks' time and probably all of us here who have been baptised, we simply had some water poured on our head while the priest or deacon pronounced the words of baptism. However in ancient times, it was done differently. The fount was big and deep and it resembled a tomb. Those who were to be baptised descended into the water through three steps, were immersed into the water three times and then came out of the font through three on the other side. It showed in a symbolic way what we read in today's three readings: Ezekiel who speaks of God who brings us out of our graves, Lazarus who is brought out of his own tomb, and we who are raised with Christ as Paul says in his letter to the Romans.

Death turns into life

The tomb therefore becomes the wellspring of a new life. Death turns into life when we learn how to die to ourselves, that is, every time we say “no” to sin, every time we give our life for the other person by placing his or her interests before ours. The tomb becomes the wellspring of life whenever we embrace our own limitations and unite ourselves with Christ who is the giver of all life.