5th Sunday Lent A - Homily 3

Homily 3 – 2011 

A couple of weeks ago I was travelling along the highway here to Ballarat.  I had netting over the radiator air-intake of my car in case I ran into locusts.  In fact there were no locusts, but swarms of white butterflies instead.  I started thinking.

The last time you see it, a caterpillar is spinning a cocoon around itself.  But what comes out of the cocoon is a butterfly.  What went on in the darkness of the cocoon? If the caterpillar was Fred, was the butterfly still Fred? Or did Fred the caterpillar die? and then the butterfly was born? Or was Fred the caterpillar somehow transformed – still Fred, yet not Fred? the same, but not the same?

Whatever the biological process, white butterflies can be a nuisance [especially if you’re trying to grow cauliflowers].  But, prescinding from that, they can also be symbols – symbols of resurrection.

In today’s Gospel story, Lazarus’s experience was not resurrection.  It was more a case of resuscitation.  He wasn’t transformed.  He might have come out scratching his head, but he didn’t come out of the tomb a butterfly, as it were.  Like the caterpillar and the butterfly, Lazarus’s experience can serve, too, as a symbol of resurrection.  He died.  But death was not the end.  Neither the transformation of a caterpillar nor the return to normal life of Lazarus is resurrection.  They just open our minds to possibilities, and set us wondering.

I am struck by Jesus’ statement to Martha in today’s Gospel: I am the resurrection and the life – not – “I shall rise; I shall live”; not  “I shall make you rise; I shall make you live” – but I am it: I am the resurrection; I am the life.

Through resurrection, we shall not so much be transformed like Christ, but transformed into Christ, and, somehow, become one with him.  Now, Jesus will make it happen [or, perhaps, the Father, in and through Jesus, will make it happen].  But we need to be part of the process, too.

Jesus uses the word to believe in to describe our co-operation.  When we say the Creed in a few minutes time, we’ll say: We believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord…  The believing that Jesus talks about is more than that.  It is not just believing a fact.  It means a profound psychological and spiritual engagement.  Believing in him means trusting him – totally.  It involves trusting his vision, his values and his life-style.  It involves entrusting – entrusting myself, totally.  It involves relationship, total openness and total intimacy.

To me, this suggests a third symbol of resurrection and of transformation – and that is a marriage relationship.  As spouses learn to trust each other, and to entrust themselves to each other, they become increasingly one, increasingly transformed, increasingly alive with, and through, each other’s life.

Through resurrection, we become Christed, christened.  We celebrated its beginning at our baptism.  The process is already under way.