B Cycle – 5^th Sunday of Lent 24

Jn. 11:1-45

On this final Sunday of Lent, the church gives us an option to read the normal readings of the day, or the readings intended for the candidates and catechumens. They are both powerful readings and the Old Testament reading read at the normal mass contains the consistent and most powerful promises of God. We need to hear God speaking to us through Jeremiah but more than hear we need to digest them and allow those promises to become a burning desire to be satisfied.   

For that to happen we must realize how what we are currently experiencing is not connecting us with God.  We must do what Jesus invites us to do and that is to “roll back the stone” to see the glory of God. 

So today I am mixing up the readings and I invite you to get your bibles and read the prophecy of Jeremiah Chapter 31 versus 31 through 34 and the gospel of John 11:1-45.  Through the prophet Jeremiah, God makes a covenant with us which reinforces the covenant He made with Moses and Abraham.  God promises to be our God and to give us new life.  Other prophets repeat the same promises, but they are somehow not as clear and as connected as Jeremiah’s prophesy. 

Keep in mind this is God’s desire for us to experience and to live.  However, like all of God’s desires we can accept and desire them or reject them. When I say desire, I am saying that desire must be a hunger needing to be satisfied. Mary of Bethany understood that kind of desire and ignored the insults of her sister to satisfy them.

  What God offers is a gift we must receive by listening and allowing those words to penetrate our hearts before we act on what we hear.  If we can do that those words will well up inside us until we give up our self-reliance and say yes “let it be done to me according to your word.”  For us to choose the better part we must stop working to please Jesus and allow Jesus to be pleased with us.  We must embrace those promises as necessary for us to grow in holiness and enter the covenant with God.

Through Jeremiah, God made us three promises that are necessary for us to grow in intimacy with Him through the Holy Spirit.   

First God promises to “…place His law within us and write His law on our hearts.”  We will be his people and He will be our God.  Never to abandon us, never to ignore us, never to reject us.  That promise will move the laws we learn from our youth and continued learning all our lives will reside in our hearts not our heads.  All the laws will become clear and concise, and we will understand what it means to love God with all our hearts, our minds our strength and our souls.  We will understand what it means to love our neighbor as ourselves.  The Spirit will teach us the truth about sin and condemnation. We will know every time we sin because our hearts will feel the weight of sin as it separates us from God.

The second promise God made us in that prophesy was “…we will know Him.”  Know Him, intimately and we will know His deep love for us.  Intimacy with God will be possible because we will know God delights in us and nothing can separate us from the love of God.  We will know God is for us not against us. We will know and understand God desires to give us all that is good.  We will know He desires to heal our brokenness caused by our never receiving unconditional love before.  The love we know as humans is conditional and we see the pain caused by the shallowness of self-serving human love.   

Once all those things happen within us, we will fully grasp the third promise made through Jeremiah.  That promise is to “…forgive our sins and remember them no more.”  God not only forgives our every sin, but God forgets or sin as we allow Him to embrace us.  We humans have trouble forgiving and we never forget the pain inflicted upon us by others.  How can we forget what others have done to us because what they did really hurt?  How can we forgive an unfaithful spouse, or someone who abused us? How do you forgive that drunk drive that killed your child or the person who took advantage of you financially.  We want them punished but God tells us to forgive as He forgives.  We can make a willful and deliberate decision to forgive.  We can say the words even if our hearts are not there yet. 

We must understand our forgiving others is necessary for our growing relationship with God.  After all Jesus in a parable tells us we must forgive others from our hearts.  Our offering forgiveness to others is important because unforgiveness is a stone covering our hearts.  When Jesus tells the people Lazarus is dead and to roll back the stone, He is reminding us how our unforgiving hearts are dead to the touch of God, Unforgiveness is preventing our hearts from reflecting the glory of God.  Roll back the stone of unforgiveness and we will see the glory of God transforming us and bringing us new live. 

What God is promising us in Jeremiah is real and tangible and is offered to us if only we give voice to our desire to have it fulfilled within us.  If we do that then we like Lazarus will experience the power of God bringing us new life.