Do You Believe This?

 

5^th Sunday of Lent

Cycle A

This is one of the most emotional gospel passages. We can feel the anguish and confusion in Martha and Mary’s exclamations, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” “Where were you, Jesus, when we needed you the most? We thought you loved Lazarus, and us. Don’t you know that with our brother gone we have lost everything? You were there for the blind man and for so many strangers, why not us? We thought we were special to you. We have been faithful to you when others have fallen away. We love you so deeply, why have you abandoned us?” Everyone around them was weeping. Jesus was weeping. It says he was perturbed, deeply disturbed. This wasn’t just a random scene that Jesus came upon. This was a planned event. Jesus knew that they needed him, yet he chose to delay in order to what, make a point?

 

It can seem like that sometimes, can’t it? So many times in our lives we feel that our prayers are not answered, that God is far from us. Where is he when we call out to him in our distress? Why does he delay? It seems that the darker our suffering the further he can be from us. Why doesn’t he do something? I know that he can. I know that he loves me. Why doesn’t he show it? He told us to ask and we shall receive, to be persistent in our prayers. Where is the answer? So many times, it doesn’t make sense to us.

 

But there is always an answer, and it is simply, trust me. You do not see the entire picture yet. Trust me. I know it is painful. It is painful to me, too. Trust me. We will never really know the reasons behind God’s actions. After all, he’s God and we’re not. And he doesn’t act on our timeline or desires. But like Martha and Mary, because we believe we are willing to accept what is and our own limitations of understanding, even when it’s hard, even in the face of death. It may not make sense, Lord, but even then, I accept it because I have that ultimate belief in who you are and what you have promised me. This pain will end, and I will rise.

 

 “I am the resurrection and the life. Do you believe this?”

 

Each and every one of us will be faced with that ultimate question of our belief. Either it will be when someone we love is suffering, or at the end of our own lives. How will you answer? “I don’t know” is not an answer. It’s not what you know, it’s what you believe. Do you believe in eternal life and that Jesus is the way to obtain it?

 

This is really what it’s all about. It is the core question of our existence. This is why we are Christians. Christianity is not just a way of living; it is our hope. It is the hope in the resurrection that guides us and drives us. It is what gives us our true purpose in life. If this life here on earth were all there is, why bother? If all we have is the struggle and suffering of this world and then eternal oblivion, why would we ever strive to be better, to love one another, to change things? The belief in eternal life is deeply embedded in each human being because we are created in the image and likeness of the eternal God. It’s the most natural belief in the world.

 

I mean, can you imagine what chaos the world would be in if no one believed in eternal life? If no one had come to show us the way and to give proof that there is more than just this life alone? You think it is bad now, there would be no order, no self-control. Everyone would just be in it for themselves, living for pleasure and power.

 

But that’s just one aspect of it. Can you imagine the despair that the world would be plunged into if there were not this hope that ultimately goodness, peace and justice awaits us? How could you live with yourself if there was never any hope of redemption, of forgiveness? Jesus death on the cross redeemed us and gave us the possibility of heaven. His resurrection showed us what that heaven would be. We see too truly the results of sin. It’s one thing to know our sins are forgiven, it’s another to see the result of that forgiveness.

 

“I am the resurrection and the life.” Life is the core of our faith, of who we are as human beings, because we were made to live, and to live fully. Do you ever ponder what’s at stake here? Do you see the hope in those words?

 

And it is not a false hope. God himself deigned to take on our life, to become man, not because he needed or wanted to experience humanity, but because he wanted us to experience divinity. He wanted to show us the reality of life, life here on earth and in heaven. And it is that reality that can help us accept the temporary pain and suffering we experience so often here. But even more, he wants us to fully experience the joy and love and peace and justice that is also a part of life.

 

This morning we will be calling forth our elect and candidates for the third scrutiny. The past two weeks and today we have heard in the gospels

three stories with the common theme of calling forth. Jesus asks those who he encounters to do something for him. “Give me a drink”. “Go and wash in the Pool of Siloam”. “Lazarus, come forth”. All of our elect and candidates have expressed the feeling that are here because they have been called. Something you cannot fully express has drawn you to the Catholic Church. Over the past several months you have seen that seed grow into fuller understanding, and I think you now have a clearer idea of why you were called. You are called to the waters, your eyes have been opened, and you have hope in Jesus as the resurrection and the life.

 

Jesus knew Lazarus. The woman at the well was never named, nor was the man born blind. Lazarus was named. As are his sisters, Martha and Mary. Why is that? Because for Jesus it was personal. These were not some anonymous people who he met along the way. Martha and Mary asked Jesus to come. Jesus loved this family very much. He knew them by name. That’s important, because when we can put a name to someone they become familiar to us, more important to us.

 

You are also loved very much by Jesus. He knows your name. He knew it before you were even created. He has carved it into the palm of his hand. For Jesus, it’s personal. Your life is personal to him. He weeps over your pain and rejoices over your successes. And like Lazarus, he has called you forth to new life. He unbinds you and sets you free.

 

 

 

Born Blind

 

4^th Sunday of Lent

Cycle B – Scrutiny

 

Have you ever experienced total and complete darkness. It can be terrifying. A few years ago we went to the Black Hills of South Dakota and toured the Wind Cave. It is an amazing experience. The cave is one of the longest in the world, 150 miles long, and it goes down over 100 feet. It has a rare type of stalactite there that hangs really low, so at times you have to bend over to walk. There are strings of lights hanging in the caverns, so it’s easy to see the path, but 100 years ago, when it was first explored, the spelunkers used candles attached to tin hats. I can only imagine what would happen if the candles burnt out and they had to find their way back in complete darkness.

 

At one point we sat in a large cavern on wooden benches, and they turned out the lights. You literally couldn’t see your hand in front of your eyes, and the darkness was almost a physical being that engulfed you. Being that I have claustrophobia I almost panicked. I began to imagine what would happen if they didn’t go back on. It was a bit terrifying, even though I knew it was only temporary.

 

What would it be like to be born blind? What would life be like if we never had experienced light, with nothing to compare the darkness to? We equate darkness with evil. We call Satan the Prince of Darkness, and we fear the dark. Because we can see we feel uncomfortable in the dark. We fear the unknown, we fear what we cannot control. We’re afraid we’ll stumble and fall in the dark. Darkness is frightening for us only because we know the difference between light and darkness. If we were born blind, we would never have experienced light, so darkness would hold no fear for us. For one born blind, who has never experienced the light, stumbling and falling is a natural thing. Relying on the help of others is a requirement for survival.

 

This gospel begins with Jesus’ own disciples asking a question based upon a belief all Jews had at the time – that physical weakness and disease meant you or your family were steeped in sin. If you were a sinner God punished you with infirmity. If you were righteous, you were healthy, wealthy and wise. Everybody believed this: the Pharisees did, the disciples did, and the blind man himself did.

 

The blind man could not enter the temple. Everybody said he shouldn’t be there, and he himself thought he shouldn’t be there. He also thought he was unworthy to be in the presence of God, just because he was blind. He was reduced to begging at the door. The people who passed him every day saw him as unworthy, beneath them, worthless to God and man. And so, he saw himself as unworthy and worthless. How could he ever become worthy? How could he ever come in out of the darkness and be included among the seeing?

 

The saddest thing about the blind man is that he bought into his culture’s prejudices and allowed them to make him feel less about himself, to alienate himself from God and his community. Even today, we can allow outside influences to keep us from God. We can beat ourselves up so much that we actually stay away from God. How wretched you must feel to keep yourself from God. Have you ever not come to Mass because you felt unworthy? Or stayed away because you were not in the “right frame of mind” to receive the Eucharist; that you just didn’t think you could come to Mass with all those people there and try to pretend that everything was ok? Why just go through the motions?

 

Do you think that you shouldn’t come to Mass if you haven’t exactly been living a perfect Christian life lately? I mean, why add one more hypocrite to the mix? Do you think that you have to have it all together in order to worship the Lord? I’m not perfect, so I’ll stay away. Does Jesus really only call the righteous? If that were the case, there’d be no one here. It’s sort of like saying that I’m starving, so I really shouldn’t come to the banquet. The very thing you think you should avoid is the thing you really need. Sometimes we blind ourselves to what we’re really doing here.

 

It’s ironic that the best way to become worthy of the Eucharist is to experience the Eucharist. None of us can ever make ourselves worthy of being here. If blindness is equated with sinfulness, then we’re all born blind, aren’t we? Only God can make us worthy, just by willing it so. So, we have a choice, to beat ourselves up for not being worthy or to accept the grace of God that allows us to see. To exclude ourselves from the banquet or to humbly accept the invitation.

 

Today we hear a story that closely parallels those of our elect who are here with us this morning. Like the blind man, they’re on the outside looking in. Not really sure what they’re seeing. Jesus calls them forth. He makes them uncomfortable at times and calls them to the waters. They do not know the way, so others need to help them get there. When their eyes are opened, they still are not sure exactly who Jesus is, even when he is right in front of them. They come up against opposition. The entrenched prejudices of others try to derail their journey. Sometimes they are thrown out. Sometimes others try to keep them in their places. Finally, Jesus comes to them in the light, and they recognize him for who he is. They have become his disciples.

 

It’s funny, isn’t it, that the ones who thought they were worthy – the Pharisees – were the ones that Jesus said were blind. Their sin was their prejudice against people like the blind man, people they thought were sinners. They could not see their own shortcomings, and that we’re all blind in one way or another. And I am blind about many, many things. I am blind to the plight of the poor because I have never gone hungry in my life. I am blind to prejudice because I have never really experienced it personally. I am blind to the hurts suffered by other people because I am so focused on my own.

I guess in many ways we’re all Pharisees; we’re the good church going folks who think we have all the answers. We’re the ones who go along with the conventional wisdom of our day, blinded to how we are actually making things worse in our ignorance.

 

This morning we are celebrating the second scrutiny for our elect. We’re not here to scrutinize them. They’re here to scrutinize themselves. We all need to scrutinize ourselves. That scrutiny can be painful, but it must be undertaken with open eyes. Only then can we remove the blindness from our hearts. Blindness to our own sinfulness, and blindness to the needs of others, no matter how sinful they have been.

In many ways these elect see more than we do. They hunger for the light that we take so easily for granted, and they don’t have all the barnacles we good Pharisees have built up on our carcasses over time. But just as they have needed our help to see from time to time, we too can draw on their light as we all stumble together towards our Lord.

 

This story is really more a parable with a point, but it doesn’t really describe the blind man’s reaction to his first experience of light. Was it exhilarating, was it terrifying? He had never seen all the things he now could, people, trees, sunlight, buildings. He had only imagined what they would look like. And he never had the complete picture until now.

 

You may have heard the parable of the three blind men who come upon an elephant. They didn’t know what it was. One of them touched the tail and declared, “An elephant is a snake.” Another touched the trunk. “An elephant is like a hose.” The third touched the body and exclaimed, “An elephant is like a mountain!” Each only experienced a part of the reality of the elephant. Their vision was incomplete because they couldn’t see the big picture. They couldn’t see the completeness of the elephant. The blind man had a lot of unlearning to do. His life was really just beginning, and his world view had been completely and radically changed.

 

That’s what it means to be a disciple. St. Paul says, “For now we see in a mirror, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part, but then shall I know fully even as also I am fully known”. We don’t and can’t see the complete picture yet, but as we encounter Christ more and more in our lives our eyes are opened more and more, and we see him, and ourselves, more distinctly. I remember when the lights went back on in the Wind Cave, how happy and relieved I was to be able to see. When we witness the light of Christ we will be called to completely and radically change our world view. We will be transformed if we allow ourselves to see.

 

Living Water

 

3^rd Sunday of Lent

Cycle A

We’ve sure had a heck of a lot of snow this year, haven’t we? They say it’s the most we’ve had in the past 40 years. And it’s a good thing and a bad thing, isn’t it? It made for a great ski season. Park City has never stayed open until the end of April. And the reservoirs are actually being let off a bit even now, in anticipation of a strong runoff in the Spring, so the watersports should be good this summer.

But I think even the most diehard skiers are a bit tired of it by now. We all say, “Well, we need the water”, and we do, but many towns are starting to fill sandbags just in case there’s flooding. And we’re seeing a lot of avalanches. Water is always a two-edged sword. We either have too much or too little. It can mean life or death. We need it to live but it can also kill us. With the spring runoff upon us, we’re going to start seeing a lot of water making its way down the mountains. Have you ever followed a stream as it meanders down the mountain? Why does it choose the path it does? It doesn’t go straight downhill, which would be the fastest way to flow. It goes this way and that, curving, dropping, and falling, seemingly randomly. Water seems to have a mind of its own, doesn’t it? It really does seem to be alive at times. It finds the path of least resistance, then forces its way into it. It is almost alive. It seems to know where to go and it can completely change the landscape it travels through.

That stream or river didn’t start out as a large, forceful body of water. It started out small, as a trickle of melt off, and it was joined by other small trickles, until it had the wherewithal to force some dirt out of the way, find a crack here and there and flow into it, eventually carving a path for itself. In time, moving through the path of least resistance, it could become a rushing stream or mighty river, giving life to nature and to humanity.

Living water. Finding small cracks and exploiting them. Giving life to nature and to humanity. Such a wonderful image for baptism. And today is all about baptism. This morning we will be celebrating the first scrutiny for our elect, and so we read from the wonderful gospel story of the woman at the well. Our elect are preparing for baptism at the Easter Vigil, and they need to hear this story today, because it’s their story.  Our candidates received their baptism earlier in their lives, and we honor their baptism as well as they hear the renewal of Jesus’ gift of lifegiving water that never dies.

Just like the water in a mountain stream, the living water of Jesus always finds a way through. It seeks out the smallest crack and fills it. Sometimes that crack is caused by our weakness and our sinfulness and our brokenness. God’s living water doesn’t avoid the brokenness, it seeks it out and finds it and fills it. It changes the landscape of our lives and heals it. Jesus knew the Samaritan woman’s sinfulness. He knew the pain her sins had caused her and her community. He didn’t judge her for it. He didn’t withhold his life-giving water. He offered it to her. And when she took it, the whole town was transformed.

The woman at the well came to love Jesus only after he “told me everything I have ever done”. But that was not what turned her heart. Everyone in her village knew her past. It was the fact that even though he had such intimate knowledge of her and her life, he did not judge her for it like her neighbors did. Instead, he offered her eternal life. How liberating that must have felt for someone who felt so ostracized and worthless that she had to go to the well in the middle of the hot day, when no other people were expected to be there! Jesus gave her back her dignity. He spoke to her when he wasn’t supposed to. He conversed with her as an equal, without looking down on her. And he offered her himself, the life-giving water that would change her life forever.

We are all the woman at the well. We all have a past that includes things we aren’t particularly proud of. We all have sinned and have felt the worthlessness sin can bring. And we have all encountered Jesus in some way or other. Some of us have moved our relationship with him to another level, to the level of trust. Some of us have gone all the way to love. We been transformed by the living water of Jesus.

How so very often we take water for granted. We turn on the tap and out it comes. The snows melt and the water somehow gets to the farms so we can have food and into our pipes, so our lawns remain green. We just expect it to be there. We rarely think about it. How so very often we take the living water of baptism for granted. After all, for most of us baptism happened a long, long time ago. What began as a trickle on our foreheads may have dried up. Or it may have grown into a rushing stream that cannot be contained.

Whatever it is now, take a lesson from the snows of winter. Every summer the waters recede, and the desert is parched, yet every winter the snows fall and in the spring it melts and runs down the mountains, starting small and growing in force until it gives life to all nature and to humanity. Every spring we celebrate the season of Lent when we are in the desert. When we are parched. When we come face to face with our own brokenness.

But the snows are melting, and the water is coming.