This morning I listened to Bishop Robert Barron’s homily on the Gospel for what is traditionally known as Passion Sunday. Today’s Gospel is the third of five long Sunday readings, increasing each week until Palm Sunday, on which we will hear the entire Passion recited or chanted in parts. Finally, at the Easter Vigil in two weeks, we will hear nine long readings in the darkened church, a true night watch of prayerful Scripture.
Bishop Barron is one year older than me, although his hair is not yet white like mine. I have known of him, and met him several times, since we were both in our late thirties, and now he is 65. His inspired homily https://www.wordonfire.org/videos/sermons/jesus-wept-2/ on the death of Lazarus manifests the deep beauty of growing older. It’s great to be young, but it’s also great to be old.
Bishop Barron understands the human condition—its limitations and its possibilities—in a way he could not have understood thirty years ago. He understands the tragedy and the glory of being human as an “old man” who has suffered “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” for sixty years. I say he is an “old” man as I say I am an “old man,” which makes my parishioners laugh, because both of us are mostly still in command of robust physical and mental vigor. In fact, however, Bishop Barron and I are priests, a word from the Greek “presbyter” which means “old man.” In this sense, we were already old when we were ordained in our twenties. But sixty-five used to be “old,” and still is old, even for those in tip top physical health, because from 65 years one can peer directly into the 70’s and 80’s and 90’s. From the mid-sixties we get used to peering into our own death, which is now not so far away. And that is a bracingly beautiful perspective, given only to the “old.”
In the Scripture this Sunday, Lazarus dies, and Jesus lets him die. He lets Lazarus rot in the grave for four days, which as Bishop Barron points out was the Jewish legal definition of truly “dead.” Both the dead man’s sisters, Martha and Mary, accuse Jesus of letting their brother die in precisely the same words: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Where were you when we needed you? I thought we were friends, but you didn’t even bother to come as our brother lay dying! The two women are confounded, in deep anguish over what feels like the betrayal of God. Why do you let these things happen when you can prevent them?
As I type these words into my old computer in the predawn dark, I hear one of San Francisco’s many mentally disturbed people outside my window, shouting into the night, a furious string of “F*#@ you’s.” A friend in New York City tells me he hears the same cries of rage outside his window, and from the sidewalks as he strolls down Park Avenue. Why does God allow the modern world to fall into hateful darkness?
Martha and Mary are both weeping, and God weeps with them. “And Jesus wept” is the shortest verse in the Bible. It says everything we need to know about God in three words. He came from heaven, where there is no crying out in pain or weeping, and He cries out from the Cross: “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?” But Christ does something more: he says to Martha, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” And He says to Lazarus, “Come out.” And He says to the mourners who see the dead man come out, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
Why God lets us suffer is certainly confounding. No one can say why the all-good God does not render justice and bring healing to his suffering children when we cry out for help. In the end, we must acknowledge that we are not God, and we don’t tell God what to do. It is He who tells his friend what to do: “Lazarus, come forth!” I suppose Lazarus could have stayed comfortably in his final resting place, but his Lord and Friend’s voice drew him out into the sunlight. It was not time for Lazarus to rest, and by the grace of God, Lazarus obeyed the Lord’s voice.
Lazarus would grow old and die again, but not now without the certain hope, confirmed with his unique experience of resurrection, that “those who believe in me, even if they die, will rise again.” When I saw Robert Barron deliver his weekly homily on my computer screen this morning, I saw an old man who believed in the resurrection with a certain hope. His many years of suffering on earth have confirmed this hope, and he is able to bring that hope now to others. That’s the greatness of growing older. It’s great to be young, but it’s greater to grow old!
Five "old men" still skiing last month at Lake Tahoe
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