Lazarus Come Out: Reflections on the Readings for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, Cycle A

If you haven’t already read the readings you can find them here.

Ezekiel 37:12-14
Psalm 130
Romans 8:8-11
John 11:1-45

Lent is nearing its conclusion. As we get closer to Easter we see more indications of its significance, the Resurrection of Our Lord, and ultimately, ourselves. As such, the raising of the dead is a common theme in today’s readings.

We hear about the pharisees and the Sadducees throughout the gospels. But the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. They confined their beliefs to the Torah, the Books of Moses (the Law), the first five books of the Bible. As such they have a very narrow view and miss out on much of the richness of the rest of the Old Testament. It’s no wonder they had greater difficulty than the pharisees in understanding Jesus. Nevertheless, the coming of Jesus (the Messiah) is prophesied in the Torah. “A prophet like me will the LORD, your God, raise up for you from among your own kindred; that is the one to whom you shall listen.” (Deuteronomy 18:15)

By ignoring the prophets the Sadducees miss the prophecy from today’s first reading from Ezekiel. God says He will raise the dead and in the gospel reading we see Jesus fulfilling this by raising Lazarus, again pointing to His divinity. Note the statement, “thus you shall know that I am the LORD.” The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible (ICSB) notes, “In light of this verse, the reader of John discovers that Jesus is the Lord God of Israel when he raises Lazarus from the dead.” Similarly, when John the Baptist’s disciples ask Jesus if He is the One or should they look for another “the dead are raised” is one of the signs He tells them to report back to John. (Matthew 11:5)

Psalm 130 is one of the penitential psalms of Christian tradition and one suggested for reading and reflection during Lent. God’s mercy results in greater reverence and awe for Him and His works. “But with you is forgiveness, that you may be revered.” Who could stand before the Lord and His judgment if He marked iniquities. Therefore we all need to cry out and ask for His forgiveness, “For with the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.

Paul’s letter to the Romans also gets to the topic of the Resurrection. If we are united with God and with Jesus, God will raise us as He did Jesus. But for this the spirit of God must dwell within us. We must put away our worldliness, our lives in the flesh and rely on the Spirit of God so that we may be in the Spirit. “But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness.”

The Spirit of God dwelling within us is the grace God gives that enables us to do anything. Jesus told us, “Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) Most significantly, without God’s grace we cannot get into heaven. The Spirit of God is what will bring us to our own resurrection.

In the gospel we learn of the death of Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42), all close friends of Jesus. Curiously, Jesus delays his going to “awaken” him. At first this seems odd because ultimately it results in Lazarus being “in the tomb for four days” by the time they arrive. However, looking closely we see that Jesus does this on purpose.

He tells His followers, “This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Like the healing of the man born blind last week, Jesus actions are to show the world the glory of God and, through it, His own glorification.

As in so many other cases, the apostles misunderstand what Jesus is trying to tell them. He uses the term sleep and so they think only of normal sleep rather than the sleep of the dead. Jesus corrects them, “So then Jesus said to them clearly, ‘Lazarus has died. And I am glad for you that I was not there, that you may believe.’” Although this takes place days before His crucifixion and the apostles had been with Him for three years, their understanding of who He really was, and His mission was still lacking. There is a lesson for us here as well, do we understand who Jesus is and our part in His mission?

At their last visit to Bethany, the locals attempted to stone them. The apostles try to dissuade Jesus from going back there. Nevertheless, Jesus persists, “Let us go to him.” Thomas, although fearing for the Lord’s death, says, “Let us also go to die with him.”

Fulton Sheen comments on this situation: “Whatever else may be said of Thomas, it must be admitted that quicker than all the others, he recognized the death that was in store for Our Blessed Lord, though he was the last to recognize the Resurrection. ... Whenever Thomas appears in the Gospel, he is always taking the black side. And yet, if the only way of continuing to be with the Master was to die with Him, Thomas was willing to do that.” (Fulton Sheen, Life of Christ)

When they get to Bethany, Martha rushes out to meet them, declaring, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” However, Jesus’ purpose was to let Lazarus die and even to be in the tomb four days so that He could truly demonstrate the glory of God. In Jewish tradition it was understood that, after three days, the body would begin to decompose, accompanied by the smell of decay. Nevertheless Jesus tells Martha, “Your brother will rise.” At this point Martha expresses her faith in the resurrection on the last day, but Jesus corrects her, “I 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.” Martha’s expression of faith, like that of Peter (Matthew 16:16), extends to Jesus Himself, “I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God.”

The next scene includes the arrival of Mary who is weeping and Jesus wept with her. Going to the tomb, Jesus, as always, prays to the Father, this time aloud: “Father, I thank you for hearing me. I know that you always hear me; but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that you sent me. And when he had said this, He cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’”

Lazarus, the dead man, comes out of the tomb, still bound in his burial cloths. Jesus tells the crowd to untie him. “Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what he had done began to believe in him.”

Jesus’ dialog with the apostles, with Martha and Mary, and the demonstration to the crowd all point to Easter and beyond as well as exemplifying Jesus’ divinity. The scene shows us dramatically that our resurrection is part of the future, if we live in the Spirit. Although not mentioned here, the alternative is eternal damnation, implied in Jesus’ statement to Martha, but clearly stated elsewhere in the gospels. And this is what Lent has been about, learning about ourselves, where we have separated ourselves from God, and learning how to live in the Spirit through repentance and conversion.