5 Lent a March 29, 2020
Ez. 37:1-14 Ps.
130
Rom. 6:16 -23 John 11:1-44
One of my assumptions about the appearance of the Gospels,
is the success of the Jesus Movement.
The Jesus Movement and the early home church social phenomenon was so
successful that "institutionalization" began to occur. Institutionalization happens in any
organization that is successful and is comprised of members who really believe
in the mission of the organization to the point of perpetuating the message and
keeping it alive.
The Gospels were generated because of institutional
success. While the Gospel recount the
life of the root event of the Jesus Movement, Jesus Christ, they arose
after other writings. We know that they
occurred after the writings of St. Paul.
St. Paul was the chief theologian of the early church. He wrote letters about church order and
discipline, but also about the theological importance of Jesus and the
justification of a truly universal church, including of the Gentiles. St. Paul also generated the most significant
poetic metaphors for the mystical experience with the Risen Christ through the
power of the Holy Spirit. And St. Paul
did not ever actually see Jesus of Nazareth
Members of the early church were initiates in a spiritual
path of Christians who shared different kinds of experiences of the Risen Christ and the Holy
Spirit. St. Paul and other leaders
instructed these Christian initiates into this mystical path. Paul provided an entire poetry to speak about
this experience. He provided a
theological history to connect the Jesus Movement as a significant innovation
in the Judaic traditions. It was so
innovative that many in the synagogues believed that went too far abroad from
prescribed Judaic ritual practice.
By the time the Gospels were written, the success of the
early churches required programmatic teaching of incorporating the mystical
teaching, practice and theology of Paul into presentations of the life of
Jesus.
John's Gospel was the latest Gospel serving as a hiding of spiritual meaning and practice within the presentation of words, deeds
and life example of Jesus of Nazareth.
What did Paul write about us? He said that we lived within the state of
death of sin. Why? The wages of sin is death. No matter how we consider mortality, it is
anchored in the reality of death. Human
life comes with the experience of death.
But St. Paul also wrote that we could experience another kind of life
even as our physical lives careens towards death. We could experience the Holy Spirit and the
life of Risen Christ, as a down payment or as an assurance of eternal life, or
as the writer of John called it, "abundant life."
So, Christians who experienced the premonition of eternal
life in the experience of the Holy Spirit still knew that they were going to
experience physical death. How could
this ambiguity be presented in a Gospel teaching?
We have the brilliant story of Lazarus, a friend of Jesus,
one of whom it is said was loved by Jesus.
And Jesus loved and was loved by the sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha
of Bethany.
Lazarus is the one who died but who is brought to life
again by Jesus Christ. But Lazarus would
die again. Of course. So, what is the teaching purpose of the Lazarus
story?
Each of us is like Lazarus.
We live under the basic human condition of sin and what is that? It is knowing that we will physically
die. Yet even in this state of being
defined by life's duration ending in death, we can experience another kind of
life, resurrection life, eternal life, Holy Spirit life. And experiencing this resurrection life does not exempt our bodies from
physical death.
This is brute Christian realism. The experience of the Holy Spirit, the
mystical experience with the Risen Christ as our spiritual identity does not
deny or exempt our bodies from death.
But it means that physical death will not define us as a final boundary
of our life. Why? Because while we live
in our bodies we can know Jesus Christ, the Risen Christ as the Resurrection
and the life.
We can know that Jesus is weeping at how profound we
experience the loss of life of each person in our cherished lives within our
bodies. But we, in our state of death,
can experience this inner assurance of living beyond our bodily life. And this is the narrative for the eternal
image of hope that is within every person in this world. This eternal image of hope within us needs
the narrative of the resurrection to release it into the hopeful practice of
faithful lives.
Can we appreciate the sheer genius of how this story of
Lazarus encapsulates the profound mystical theology and practice of St. Paul?
The coronavirus has brought into focus the state of death
which we all live in. It heightens our
sense of mortality. It results in our
mourning of the death of people. And so, we today affirm that Jesus is resurrection and life; Jesus affirms personal
continuity beyond our deaths. And knowing
this, we can live differently.
We today can know ourselves to be like Lazarus, friend of
Jesus, loved by Jesus, but living in the state of the death of sin. We can know the apparent delays of Jesus,
which represent the probable conditions of freedom in our world. "Jesus, if you had been here, the
coronavirus would not have occurred."
The conditions of freedom means that often good things, health and
resolution are delayed because not everything runs according to our own desired
personal schedules.
But you and I, living within the state of the death of sin,
with many apparent delays in positive outcomes; we can know resurrection life
because of the encounter with the Risen Christ who says to us like Martha of
old, "I am resurrection, and I am life." Within each of us, we can know this abundant life. So while we live on perpetual delay of the
perfection that we so desire for everything, we can experience the totally
compensating resurrection life of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
And if you and I can pierce the inner meaning of the Lazarus
story; we have been initiated into the spiritual mystical program of Jesus
Christ. Amen.
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