No greater love

On this fifth Sunday of Lent, permit me to share the reflections of my ordination batchmate, Fr. Vic Baltazar, SJ, Director of the Center for Ignatian Spirituality, on the raising of Lazarus:

While in the thick of ministry, Jesus is summoned by beloved friends Martha and Mary. Their brother Lazarus, also a close friend of Jesus, was very sick and in mortal danger. But Jesus decides to defer his coming. In obedience to his Father’s will, he postpones his coming so that “God’s glory may be revealed.” When friends peg their hope on you to save the life of their brother, it must be quite difficult to give this reason for not coming immediately. In not responding in haste, Jesus has risked his close friendship with the sisters.

When the opportune time to come arrives, Jesus does come to Bethany at the risk of the sisters’ rebuke and the risk of an encounter with his enemies from the Sanhedrin. Jesus listens to the sisters’ lamentations. But conversing with them, he is able to elicit from them very deep professions of faith that he will indeed raise Lazarus to life some day. Jesus deepens their faith even more. Jesus does not only have the power to raise Lazarus on the last day, He is himself the author of life and thus has the power to restore Lazarus immediately, especially so that God’s glory will be revealed.

There is no doubt that Lazarus had already died when Jesus came. The curious detail of Jesus’ coming on the fourth day since Lazarus died testifies to this. The Jews believed that it is only on the fourth day when the soul leaves the body and moves on to Sheol, the place where the dead go. But Jesus being the author of Life, orders the tomb stone rolled and after intense prayer, calls forth Lazarus. He orders that Lazarus be unbound from the linen that covered him, a sign that signified the freeing of Lazarus from the cudgels of sin and death.

But what my instincts tell me as one of the more important details in this story is this: as a result of the great impact of the event of Lazarus’ raising on the people, the Pharisees and scribes begin to conspire and resolve to send Jesus to death. Indeed, Jesus’ giving back life to Lazarus also meant that he was sealing his fate on the cross, death on the cross.

Alas, giving life to a friend has a cost. Genuine love of friends challenge us to soften the limits we put on self-giving. Real love for a friend goes beyond loving from our surplus, or loving with condition, or loving because of an expected “return on investment.” For Jesus it was trusting radically in his Father’s love who after all was ultimately not asking Jesus to abandon his friends, but to wait for the opportune time when a fuller love can be made manifest. In the end indeed, we come home once more to this: “no greater love there is than this: to give ones life to a friend.” And yes, we are all, by the standard of the cross that seals our Christian identity, called to stand by this truth by the very disposition of our lives.