5th Sunday of Lent, Year A
Previous Years: Year A (2022, 2020, 2018, 2017), Year B (2018), Year C (2022, 2019)
Preached at the Church of the Assumption in Bellingham, WA
Recording
https://moorejesus.podbean.com/e/the-presence-of-god-1679858527/
Transcript
[Thank you to T.W. for editing this transcript.]
Normally, when I go on vacation and I don’t preach for a couple of weeks, I have all of this evangelical energy building up and I have a barn burner homily ready to go when I get back. But, for whatever reason, all the Lord gave me this week was metaphysics and sacramental theology. So, for some of you, you’re welcome and for others of you, welcome to Lent.
Both sisters in today’s Gospel (John 11:1-45), Martha and Mary, are noted for their divergence of personality. Both sisters tell the Lord the same thing, Lord if only you had been here, our brother would not have died. I think it’s a really powerful thing to hear in the Gospels, because at some point in most of our lives we are going to have a similar thought. Lord, if only you had been here, this would not have happened, or I wouldn’t have experienced this pain, or things would have gone better for me or the person that I love. If only you had been here, I wouldn’t be suffering right now. And it’s a cry from the depth of faith. We believe in the Lord Jesus. Martha and Mary believed deeply in the Lord Jesus. They saw him work miracles. They knew of all of the wonders he was doing around the Jordan, Galilee and Judea. And so, when they were suffering, when their brother was sick, they wondered why was the Lord, in whom we believe, absent from me in my time of need and my time of suffering.
Jesus reassures them. He particularly reassures Martha, telling her that he is the resurrection and the life and because they have believed in him, her brother will rise. But there’s still that existential call from her heart, “‘Lord, if only you had been here, our brother would not have died’’’ (Jn 11:21). Now we are very blessed to live in the era of humanity after the Ascension. Because after the Ascension, the Lord is even more present to us than he was to them. They had to wait for him to journey to them. The Gospel says he waited for two days, but by the time he got there, Lazarus was dead four days, so his delay is not what caused Lazarus to die. But it was going to take him some time to get there anyway. Which leaves us with the question, how is God present to us today? If we wonder, where is God in all of our sufferings, our theological tradition actually has very concrete academic answers to that question. And that’s what I want to bring you today. Where is God present according to our faith?
We have to start with the idea that God is a Trinity. So, there is one God. There can only be one all-powerful creator. Only one entity can create everything else. There is one God, one nature, but three persons. Within the one God there are relationships. We see this in the Gospel. For example, Jesus, before he raises Lazarus, looks up to heaven and prays to his Father. Jesus and the Father are both the same God, the one God, but there are relationships within the one God. And so, the second person of the Trinity, Jesus, is expressing his relationship with the first person of the Trinity-that internal relationship within God. A person is an entity in relationship, which means that we can actually have a different relationship with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. As three different persons, our relationship with each of them can be different, and so the way in which they are present to us is also different. The Father is described in our theology as the Godhead, which is related to the English word fountainhead-the source of divinity, the source of godliness. Again, there is only one God, but when we think of these relationships and how they interact with each other, we’re thinking that the Father is the relationship from which everything seems to flow. And so, our creation flows from the Father. All of the power of God seems to flow from the Father, which is why Jesus prayed to his father before enacting a powerful miracle. The Father is present to us through our existence. We don’t believe in a watchmaker hypothesis. It’s not that God created the universe with all of its different laws, wound it up, and let it go is now absent to us. God underlies our existence. We would not continue to exist unless he continued to have us in his mind. We are held in existence by God at every moment, which means he’s present to us in an incredibly intimate way. He is present in the depths of our existence. He knows us more intimately than we can know ourselves, because he knows every single thing that holds us in being. Our father God, as our creator, is inseparable from our experience of being. We’re not pantheists. We don’t say that he is the atomic forces underlying our existence. He is outside of the material world. So the way in which he holds us in existence is even deeper than molecular forces. He holds us in existence by the very act of existing. He is the definition of existence. And so insofar as we are (this is where theology runs out of words) we participate in his being. That’s why when he says that his name is “I am who am” (Ex 3:14), he’s defining himself as the very act of existence. So insofar as you exist, you are participating in the one true, infinite, and perfect existence of God.
The second person of the Trinity is present to us incarnationally. Most commentators would say that when we are told we are made in the image of God, we’re made in the image of the second person of the Trinity. He is, in the Trinitarian relationship, the one who receives. He receives everything that pours out of the Father. So, just as we receive everything that pours out of the Father in our existence, we are made in the image of the second person of the Trinity. He is the one who is incarnate-who took upon himself a human existence. We are in his image, and when we think about how Jesus present to us, we think about tangible things, it has to be incarnate, it has to be touchable, part of this world. That’s how he’s present to us. I’ve said many times that he’s present in the Mass in four ways. He’s present in the Word of God: tangible, touchable, these are words, human words, written by human people. He’s present in the priest. He’s present in the people, both touchable, tangible, you can have conversations. He’s present in the Eucharist, bread that you can hold in your hand, wine that you can feel going down your esophagus. Jesus is present in this world. But I think the more profound idea about the presence of Jesus is that when we talk about him being present in the sacraments, most of us think about the Eucharist and absolutely, that’s true. Jesus is incarnate in the Eucharist, tangible in the Eucharist, but the rest of the sacraments, their tangibility is tangible through you. In your baptism, your soul is configured to Christ, which means that you are made in the language (I think even of the Second Vatican Council) an altar Christus, a second Christ, another Christ. It’s not just enough to say that you are like Christ. Our theology would even go so far as to say you are Christ. Your soul is configured to be the soul of Jesus. That soul is configured even more deeply to the Lord in your confirmation. You renew that configuration to the Lord every time you receive the Eucharist. When you marry, you are made Jesus to each other. When I was ordained, I was made Jesus to you. When you’re anointed, you’re made Jesus carrying the cross. When you’re forgiven your sins, you are made Jesus cleansed, perfect, purified. The Son of God claimed to be the member of the family of God. So when we think about how is the second person of the Trinity present? He’s present very powerfully in the Christian people, in you. Saint Augustine very famously said that he looked all over the world for God. He couldn’t find him anywhere. He went as far as he could to look for the Lord, and he only found him when he turned inward. He found the Lord in his innermost being. God was more intimate to him than he was to himself. As a Christian, this is infinitely more so for you. Your soul is configured to Christ. You don’t have to ask, Lord, where were you? Because he was with you. He was you. You bring with you the presence of Christ everywhere you go, including in your own lives. As long as you live a life of holiness and open yourself to his presence.
And then finally we have the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the one who dwells in the Trinitarian relationship, the Father pouring himself out into the Son, and the Son receiving the love of the Father for all eternity. The Spirit is the emergent property of that relationship. Somehow that relationship is so strong and powerful it creates a third person, the person who is the personification of relationship. The Holy Spirit dwells in us. We should think, when we think about the Holy Spirit, of two Old Testament images. Both are really the same image. The first: Moses in the desert enacts a tabernacle (tabernacle is the word in the Septuagint in Greek), the tent of meeting, and the presence of God as a cloud comes down upon that tabernacle. The second is when the temple is built in Jerusalem and it’s consecrated, the presence of God comes down upon that temple in a cloud. Well, you are the temples of God, the temples of the Holy Spirit. After you are configured to Christ, you are made like Christ and you are made worthy of the Holy Spirit. Your temple has been built, and your soul is open now to the indwelling of God like a consecrated temple. And so, the Holy Spirit is present to you by his indwelling in you. Saint Paul speaks very powerfully about this in the second reading, “But you are not in the flesh; on the contrary, you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you” (Rom 8:9). How do you know if the Spirit of God dwells in you? If Christ is in you, which is to say you’re baptized and you’ve been configured to Christ, “although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness. 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 that dwells in you” (Rom 8:10-11).
The Holy Spirit is not just the presence of God, but he is the power of God. The Spirit of Christ, dwelling in you because you are configured to Christ in a temple of the Holy Spirit, is the Spirit of Power. This is the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead. What can possibly stand in your way if this Spirit raised Jesus from the dead? This is the Spirit who has power over life and death. So of course, this is the Spirit who has power over sin, over suffering, over whatever is in your path. When you ask, where was God in this moment well, the Holy Spirit was dwelling in you. The Spirit of Power, of power over life and death, was dwelling in you.
The Lord promises that the presence of his Spirit will have effects. Oh my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them. Then you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and have you rise from them. Oh, my people, I will put my spirit in you, that you may live. I have promised, and I will do it, says the Lord (Ez 37:12-14). Whatever graves you’re facing, whatever manifestation of death you have seen in your life, manifestation of sin, the Lord has promised to open that grave, to raise you from that grave by the indwelling of the Spirit of Power. The Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead. My brothers and sisters in Christ, we are so blessed as Christians to know that the Lord is always present to us. We don’t have to wait for him to journey two days to our location. You don’t have to send messengers to him. We know that he’s present to us as he’s been present to all humanity through our very existence. But as Christians, we also know that he’s present to us in our very selves, that he becomes incarnate in us through the sacraments. And we know that he is present in the Holy Spirit of Power who dwells in us. You never have to doubt the presence of God. He is present in you threefold. His power in you is threefold, which means that your power in the face of suffering and death and sin, is not your own power. It’s not your own efforts. It’s the threefold power and presence of God in your life.
Fr. Moore 