Toward Resurrection
The final Sunday before Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week orders our spirituality toward the coming death and resurrection and calls us into a more intense spiritual preparation for the paschal mystery (Luke 20:9-19; John 11:1-17; 12:20-33). In the ancient church, this fifth Sunday of Lent was called the “First Sunday of the Passion.” On this Sunday, Christians veiled the cross and other objects in the church that symbolized Christ and his work on the cross. The veiling of the Christ symbols has been viewed differently by various commentators. Most agree that it is a way of communicating the humiliation of God in the voluntary death of Jesus, a symbol to impress upon us the steep cost God was willing to pay for our redemption.
The story of Lazarus (John 11:1-17) captures the spiritual experience of preparing for the great paschal mystery. The death of Lazarus is a symbol of our own dead spiritual condition. During Lent we are called on to look at our own deadness and to act on it. In this week we look at the juxtaposition of death and resurrection. We are called not to remain dead but to be raised to newness of life, to new birth, to a fresh and new encounter with Jesus. Some of us are spiritually dead because our faith is purely intellectual. We believe the right things. We adhere to the creeds, the confessions, and the doctrines of the church. But there is no life in us, we simply acquiesce to the tradition for tradition’s sake. We believe that we believe, but we know that is not enough. Others of us are dead because we have a total lack of feeling. We are not moved by the worship of the church, by song and prayer; by Eucharist and festivity. It is there, but it isn’t real, it doesn’t touch us in the inner recesses of our being. And we feel cold, numb, and dead.
The God who raised Lazarus from the dead can raise us up from our intellectualized and nominal faith. As Jesus called forth life in Lazarus (John 11:38-44), so God can resurrect us to new life in the resurrection of Jesus. God, who raised Jesus from the dead, can raise us up to a new experience of spiritual life surging within us. The key is to unravel the rags of self-righteousness and to surgically remove the sin that stands in the way of God breaking in on us in refreshing new ways. This can only happen when we choose to take our sins and our indifference to the cross and the tomb and let them be buried there so we can rise with Christ, committed to serve him in a new and radically devout way. Our spiritual journey this week proceeding out of this consciousness prepares us to walk the road to Jerusalem and to enter into the final stages of death with our Lord during Holy Week. This is the way to experience redemption. We must know who we are and where we fall short of a true following after Jesus. Then we must take the specifics of our self-understanding to the grave so we may rise with Christ anew. This is how Lent orders our spirituality.
Robert Webber, from Ancient-Future Time
Robert E. Webber (1933-2007) was a theologian and writer known for his work on worship and the life and teaching of the early church. He has been a leading force in encouraging churches to consider the ancient liturgies and practices of the church throughout history and to see how we can learn from them and implement them in our present cultural and spiritual situation. He is credited with coming up with the term “ancient-future” as a way of realizing that the future life of the church is rooted in its connection with the truths that we can glean from the past.