Florida Catholic | Sunday Word

Fifth Sunday of Lent

Salvation, salvation, salvation

March 9, 2008 :: Ez 37:12-14; Ps 130:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8; Rom 8:8-11; Jn 11:1-45

MSGR. MICHAEL REED

Jesus is calling us forth during this season of Lent to live a new and more vibrant spiritual life, a life that can no longer be constrained or held captive by sin, death or the tomb.”

In the Gospel of John, Jesus raising Lazarus from the tomb is the seventh and final sign of glory identifying Jesus with the God of creation, miracles and wonders of the Old Testament. Interestingly, all of Jesus’ miracles that precede it occur around the Sea of Galilee, which was a lively place with waters full of fish and the shorelines teaming with commerce. The raising of Lazarus does not occur in this vibrant place brimming with all types of activity. Instead, Jesus will raise Lazarus in the city of Bethany, not far from the Dead Sea. Bethany in Hebrew means “House of Grace.” The name alone tells us that God will do amazing things in this place.

In John’s Gospel, significance and attention is given to geography, and the principle of “location, location, location” plays an important role. There is an obvious connection between the Dead Sea and the death of Lazarus. Likewise there is a connection between the Dead Sea and nearby Jerusalem where Jesus will be crucified and die. Not only is the Dead Sea the lowest spot on the earth, but it geographically represents death. In the United States there is Death Valley, the lowest, hottest, driest place on the continent. The Dead Sea is appropriately called that because nothing can live or grow there. Its waters are full of salt. Yet, how ironic that not far from this place of death is the city of Bethlehem in which Jesus was born. Jesus’ birth foreshadows that the days of the reign of death are numbered. Jesus is proclaimed, in the Gospel of John, to be the resurrection and the life.

Jesus will baptize and be baptized in the river Jordan, which connects the Sea of Galilee in the north with the Dead Sea in the south. And since the waters of the Jordan flow from north to south, we might imagine that those who are baptized in the Jordan River just north of where it flows into the Dead Sea are strategically saved from flowing with the current into the sea of death, into death itself. Jesus and all the baptized are powerfully saved from the clutches of death so that they might live.

So, Jesus stands outside the tomb of his friend Lazarus in Bethany and calls him to come out. In the original Greek text, the words used by Jesus demonstrate his outrage and anger at what death has done not only to his friend, but to the world. Now, by the power of his words, Jesus, who is the Word of God, will defy death and sin. With powerful voice and authority, Jesus cries for Lazarus to come forth from death and the tomb. And when Lazarus comes, Jesus demands he be set free from his wrappings so that he may live!

Giving us new life is exactly what Jesus wants to do for us. He is angry at what a life of sin and death has done. Jesus is calling us forth during this season of Lent to live a new and more vibrant spiritual life, a life that can no longer be constrained or held captive by sin, death or the tomb. This then becomes for us the most important of Jesus’ principles: “Salvation, salvation, salvation!”

Msgr. Reed is chancellor of the Pensacola-Tallahassee Diocese.

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