My question for today is straightforward. It’s this: How many of you know what CPR is? Right. Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation. How many of you know how to perform CPR? Great. It’s good to have you around! Even if we cannot perform CPR, most of us have seen it being done on television in programs involving medical emergencies. Today’s gospel, according to scripture scholars, also involves CPR. But not with the chest compressions and breathing techniques we usually associate with resuscitation. Instead, we heard of a more miraculous return to life. We heard how Jesus merely spoke the words, “Lazarus, come out” in order to restore his dearest friend to life. Words which contained the Pneuma, the breath of life, itself.
Although we sometimes think of this event as the “resurrection” of this man from the dead, students of the bible emphasize this was, instead, a resuscitation and not a resurrection. They point out that his friend, after all, died again. He is not with us here some two thousand years later. He was resuscitated, not resurrected.
It is our belief, however, that one other man has, in fact, been resurrected, Jesus the Christ, whose Resurrection we celebrate in a special way two weeks from now. However, we, in fact, celebrate this event each day, and in particular, each Sunday, here at Mass.
We also acknowledge the Resurrected Body of Christ differs from the revived body of his friend. Yes, there are similarities. After his Resurrection, Jesus showed his disciples the wounds made by the Roman soldiers at his crucifixion. He asked for food there in the upper room when he returned to them. He ate fish with them on the beach, on the early morning he met with them by the Sea of Galilee. The resurrected body of Jesus was every bit as physical, as real, as the revived body of the brother of Mary and Martha when he stepped from his tomb.
Yet, the glorified appearance of the body of Jesus was such that Mary Magdalene did not recognize him when he first appeared to her after he rose from his own tomb. Two of his followers knew him only in his breaking of the bread with them. Yes, there are differences, it seems, between a resuscitated body and a resurrected body. There is a difference between a temporary return to life and life everlasting. And it is this life everlasting which has been promised to each of us.
This promise was made to us, in part, through the words we heard in today’s gospel reading when Jesus said, in response to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
Each one of us professes our own belief not only in the Resurrection of Jesus the Christ but in our own anticipated resurrection as well. Each time we profess our creed, we speak of the resurrection of the body, our own body. Yet, for many of us, there is, I think, a tendency to accept the Resurrection of Christ and still doubt our own resurrection will occur. We may be like those amazed onlookers who stood with Mary and Martha there at the tomb of their brother, not knowing what to expect when they heard those words, “Lazarus, come out.”
Perhaps, it was for this reason, to help them believe, that he had been resuscitated, and one day would, also, be resurrected. At the same time, Jesus instructed them, “Untie him and let him go.” He called for the active participation of the onlookers in the return of his friend from the dead. Perhaps, in a similar way, Jesus calls each of us to an active participation in our own future resurrection and in the resurrection of others. Perhaps, he calls each of us to learn “CPR” and to actively participate in his particular form of “CPR.” For you see, in the kind of “CPR” he urges us to learn, these letters do not stand for “Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation.” Instead, they stand for “Change, Prayer and Resurrection.”
CHANGE. Each day of our present lives is a day for change. Change occurs not only during Lent but should be part of our daily living. And yes, Lent is a special time to practice “change,” to look in a special way at what should be changed. To change how we allocate our most precious resource, time. To allocate more time for God, for family, for friends. To change abusive behaviors that detract from our relationships with others. Behaviors involving excess drinking, eating, abusing drugs, gambling, viewing pornography, swearing, lying, cheating, stealing.
Yes, each of us knows what we should change in our lives. And although we can, and should, begin to change during any season of the year, the remaining two weeks of Lent provide us with an added incentive to change our lives, an additional opportunity to change our hearts. And how do we begin and accomplish such change? We need to use the second part of Christ’s CPR plan. We need to engage in Prayer.
PRAYER. Speaking and listening with God, with Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We need to practice our communication with our Trinitarian God. In today’s gospel, we heard how Jesus communicated with his Father, with Abba, when he said, “Father, I thank you for hearing me. I know that you always hear me; but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that you sent me.”
We, too, must recognize the Father does hear us. We, too, must speak and listen to the Father in ways which allow others to come to the belief that they, too, can speak to him, that he listens to them, and, in turn, he speaks to them. It is with and through Prayer each of us is empowered to change our own hearts and help others to change their own lives.
Change. Prayer. Resurrection. CPR. It is with our Change in becoming closer to God, to others, and to ourselves and it is with our Prayer with Father, Son and Holy Spirit, that we can look forward to our own Resurrection, to life everlasting.
St Paul certainly agreed with this truth when he wrote to the Romans the words we heard in today’s Second Reading, “If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit dwelling in you.”
As for us, we have only one of two choices in the matter. On the one hand we can believe Jesus is a liar, that he is, and has been, a deceiver. Or on the other hand, we can believe he spoke the truth when he said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Jesus then asked Martha the same question he now asks each one of us, “Do you believe this?”
5th Sunday of Lent; March 13, 2005; Revised: March 9, 2008; March 29, 2009
Ezek 37:12-14; Rom 8:8-11; Jn 11:1-45