Alive Forever

Every society has certain topics, which they usually avoid in conversations. One such topic, which seems to be universally avoided, is death. And when it is necessary to refer to death, most people resort to euphemism.

We have a number of euphemistic expressions regarding death. We will say, for example, that Mang Peping recently “passed away,” or “has gone to his eternal reward,” or “is no longer with us.” A widow speaks of her “late” husband.

We pray for our “dear departed.”  Nowadays cemeteries are called “memorial parks,” funeral parlors are called “memorial chapels.” And corpses are referred to as “mortal remains.” People are not buried anymore. They are “laid to rest.” As can be seen, a whole rhetoric has been invented on the topic of death with the express purpose of avoiding any direct reference to death itself. Sometimes such euphemism can lead to surprises.

My sister reported the following conversation in an office in Hawaii. Someone called up Tom’s office and asked if he could speak to Tom. The new Filipina secretary answered, “I’m sorry sir, but Tom just passed away.”

“What,” said the caller, “I spoke to him just half-hour ago. He sounded well. What happened?” “He’s OK,” said the secretary, “I just saw him passed away to the parking lot about five minutes ago.” Was Jesus using euphemism in today’s Gospel when he says that his friend, Lazarus was asleep?

Today’s liturgy focuses on a pair of monosyllables – life and death. Not only will you consume the Bread of Life, the antidote to death, each reading takes up the theme – each in a different way, each with urgent meaning for your existence and mine.

The readings are a marvelous movement from Ezekiel to Paul, to John – from  Jerusalem  to our world to the next, from the past to the present into the future. The movement opens with the prophet Ezekiel. The context is exile. In 597 B. C., when Ezekiel was about 26 years old, Jerusalem was attacked and conquered by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar.

In this context, Ezekiel’s prophecy has two startling stages. Through the early years of exile, the Jews in Babylon were still hopeful that Jerusalem and its temple would survive. Ezekiel refused to feed that hope. Jerusalem, he prophesied will be destroyed, and its destruction will be God’s judgment on a people that has played the harlot of infidelity to its God.

In 586 B.C. the city and its temple were destroyed. From that point, when the exiles had lost all natural hope, Ezekiel’s role was reversed. He “now preached hope to a people who felt they were doomed. Here is where our passage in the first reading fits in.

The Jews in Babylon spoke of themselves as dead: “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost…” But God commanded Ezekiel to prophecy: “Behold, I will… raise you from your graves, O my people; and I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land; then you know that I, the Lord, have spoken, and I have done it…” (Ezek. 37:12-13)

Once the exiles repented of their infidelities, once they recognized that mere human hope is hopeless, once they despair of what they can do by their naked selves, God will give them a new Spirit, His own Spirit, will give them new life, life in a Jerusalem restored, in a temple rebuilt. From death will come life. They will experience once again God’s presence among His people in their own dear land.

From Ezekiel the readings move  to Paul, from ancient Jerusalem to our world, from the past to the present. Again we hear of death and life, of dying and rising. The dead are “those who are in the flesh, who live according to the flesh, who set their minds on the things of the flesh.” (Rom. 8:5)

For Paul “flesh” has a special meaning. It denotes man and woman in their natural, physical, and visible existence, weak and earthbound; it connotes the natural human creature left to its native self. What is it in the concrete? Paul spells it out for the Christians in Galatia: “Now the works of the flesh are plain: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party strife, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like.” (Gal.5:19-21)

These are what separate me from God, weaken the life of God in me, darken the image of Christ in me. But if this is what it means to be dead, who are alive? In Paul, even more than Ezekiel, alive are those who are “in the Spirit,” in whom “the Spirit of God really dwell. Too vague for you?

How do you know that this “Spirit of God” actually lives in you, acts in you, move you? Again Paul spells it out, not only for the ancient Asia Minor but for contemporary Philippines. You can be reasonably sure you are alive, you can be confident that God is at work within you, if the fruits of the Spirit shine out from you. Paul lists nine (Gal. 5:22-24):

You are alive if your life is shaped of love: if your life is centered not on yourself, but on a whole little world around you.

You are alive if joy suffuses your whole self – a joy that lends joy to all you touch.

You are alive if you are at peace – at peace with yourself, at peace with your sisters and brothers.

You are alive if you are patient: if you can take the slings and arrows of each day with a measure of calm, with a minimum of complaint.

You are alive if you are kind, not only to your own kind, but to such as bore you to tears.

You are alive if you are generous – not only liberal in giving, a free spender and not a free-loader, but free from meanness of mind, from smallness of spirit.

You are alive if you are faithful: if you are full of faith in God and your fellows, if you inspire faith and trust in others.

You are alive if you are gentle: if you are caring, courteous, and considerate.

You are alive if you are in control – not of others but yourself, master of whatever passions make you less human, less a mirror of the Christ in whose image you were molded.

This it is to be alive in the Spirit, fully alive. Does it sound impossible to you? To you, yes. The glorious thing about life in the Spirit is that it is a gift. It is the Spirit who brings you to life, if only you want to come alive, if you ask for it with all your heart.

From Paul the readings move majestically to John, from our world to the next, from the present to the future. The Christian Gospel, the “good news” is not simply that we are alive now; the good news is that we are destined to be alive forever.

The Gospel of Lazarus tells us in story what Paul proclaimed to the Christians of Corinth: If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life alone we have had hope in Christ, we are of all men and women most to be pitied.

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first of those who have fallen asleep. Do you really think the Son of God would have come in our flesh, preached a kingdom not of this world, and died brutally between two thieves so that we might live 90 days or 90 years?

The story of salvation makes sense only if you take literally the verse in St. John’s Gospel: “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

That promise spans your entire life. It began when water was poured on your head in baptism and the Lord Jesus made you not merely members of an earthbound human race, but heir of heaven. It is repeated every  Sunday, day after day, when your body and spirit are charged not with bare symbols but with the Bread of immortality. The promise courses through your very veins at this very moment, the pledge of days without end: “If [you] love me, my Father will love [you], and we will come to [you] and make our home with [you].” Today’s grace is your pledge of tomorrow’s glory.

My dear Friends: Ezekiel, Paul and John guaranteed us in different ways that God can make dry bones spring up to life. But, like Lent itself, they remind us that rising involves dying. Dying begins when living begins; we share Jesus’ dying by sharing the cross through the whole of our lives. It was not by refusing the cross that Jesus triumphed over death; it was in his very dying that he gave us new life – now and forever.