5th Sunday of Lent – 26 March 2023
One of the maxims that we learn in our life is that when we are in a hole we should stop digging. It is remarkable, however, just how difficult a thing this is to learn. From time to time we see the difficulty in the publicity surrounding a public figure who has got themselves into a hole and does not know when to stop digging. We tend to cringe at such situations but all of us know, in some form or other, what it is to dig a hole for ourselves, or to paint ourselves into a corner. It happens in our work life and it happens in our relationships. We try to cover our steps, or we overstep the mark, we say too little, we say too much, we do too much, or we don’t do enough in a situation. However it happens, we feel caught. More seriously we feel rather trapped, entrapped. Worst we feel entombed: we are paralyzed. The future dissolves for us. No longer is the future an open horizon full of possibility and promise. And so, the present becomes shrouded in a kind of darkness and fog. Our memories become a kind of grave. We are entombed by the past.
Although a sensational mistake may dig a hole for us in fast fashion, there are lots of other ways though in which the past pulls us back into itself and robs the future of the openness and vitality that it can have for us. We nurse a grievance against someone from many years back, and even our facial expressions begin to display a certain sourness and contempt. We wallow in a hurt or a disappointment and feel that our life now is only a dim reflection of what it could have been. Because we are so focused on a past opportunity that never came into being, we are now blind to what new possibilities might present themselves. Or perhaps we did make a very significant mistake in the past, but have never been able to accept it. And so, we now go on loathing ourselves, keeping on blaming ourselves, never free and caught into a kind of self-punishment. The past can entomb us or entrap us in many ways.
However it might display itself for us, it is the place Jesus wants to touch. This is the difficult lesson we learn in our Christian spiritual life. If we want to find God truly we are to go to that place where we are most afraid because that is where God waits for us to free us, to transform us, to enliven us.
Jesus comes that we may have life and have life in all its fullness. He is passionately interested in anything that robs us of that life. We may have a great fear about what entombs us, but he does not. He goes to that place ahead of us, and looks at it squarely in the face. He has one wish: that the place of death for us, however that deathliness be indicated, be transformed into a place of life, vitality, promise and possibility.
This is the mystery of the Resurrection that we celebrate in a fortnight’s time: the place we would expect death and decay, fear and loathing has become transformed into a place of life and unimagined possibility, a place of hope and new beginnings.
The Easter celebration, however, only makes sense in our life when we are given the courage and confidence to face those places of death in our own life and begin to wonder about the flipside: the life and possibility that await there to be called forth into the light of day.
To the dead Lazarus, Jesus cries out, “Come forth!” This dead Lazarus is in each of us. As Lent comes to a close and as we move into the great festival of Easter let us hear the call made to us all.
