2612AFC032026 – Like a rolling stone? ← PODCAST LINK 😀
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Ezekiel 37:13 – 13 And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people.
Psalm 130:7 b –
For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
and with him is great power to redeem.
Romans 8:10 – 10 But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit[a] is life because of righteousness.
John 11:39 a (GNT) [1]– 39 “Take the stone away!” Jesus ordered.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And from the hymn called Immortal, Invisible God we proclaim (↔ Music Link) –
Great Father of Glory, pure Father of Light
Thine angels Adore Thee, all veiling their sight;
All Praise we would render, O help us to see:
’Tis only the Splendor of Light hideth Thee.
Aloha nui loa, ʻŌmea! I’m back – sort of – let’s say around 90%. Two serious infections requiring high-powered antibiotics kind of take a toll on a guy! Today, I want to get past that and share something about some very important rocks. I’ll start with one we all have experienced: the one that gets into your shoe. Usually it’s just one, but it can be several, too. That little stone sneaks in unnoticed – until we step on it! We may end up hopping round on one foot trying to get that shoe off and shake away the stone. Even though it’s irritating, we sometimes end up laughing about it because it is improbable and yet somehow comical because it is so common.
In the readings for this coming Sunday, the Fifth Sunday of Lent, we read about being dead, and in a grave, and also about God’s Power to redeem us. Now, what is redemption? The main gist of that in Scripture is the idea of being bought back, of being released from bondage by someone else’s sacrifice – a purchase out of their wealth to pay for our freedom. For example, in our Key Verse at Psalm 130:7, the Psalmist declares that For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem, which is to say, “With God there is plentiful Mercy and great power so save us from our bondage.” The Hebrew word used there is פְדוּת peh-DOOTH, which is to rescue, or redeem, or even to set apart as distinct and therefore consecrated.
I suppose I have an odd way of thinking about redemption, but to me it is kind of like buying back something that was stolen. Now, if we apply that to ourselves, our lives were “stolen” from God in Eden, but Christ eventually bought it back by God at Calvary. And oh! what a price was paid!! You may remember we talked several times about the Greek word for Jesus’ dying acclamation on the cross – “It is finished.” That word is Τετέλεσται, (Tetélestai) {teh-TEH-les-tie} which means “paid in full,” consummated, completely fulfilled; or to complete a process all the way through the final step such that everything that needed to be done has been done.
If we apply that to the word “redeem,” it might sound like “completely, irreversibly, and unequivocally set free from captivity. God and God alone can do that – even for us (etiam pro nobis) (↔ Learning Link) Now, some may protest that Jesus certainly didn’t say that in Greek and that most likely it was in Aramaic, or even Hebrew. Fair enough, then, the Aramaic word for “it is finished” (See John 19:30) is משלם Mashelem. In Aramaic it can be construed to mean complete submission, e.g., “everything that needed to be done has been done” and all proper relationships have been completely restored. I definitely like that notion!
God and God alone can make that restoration when it comes to our eternal souls. It would take that Power of God to fulfill the Prophecy in Ezekiel 37, And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. We express that idea every time we pray The Apostles’ Creed when we pray the Rosary, or the Nicene Creed at Mass – The Resurrection of the dead. Of course the deep-seated question truly is come, “Is that what we truly believe?” Sometimes I think we might be tempted to say to ourselves, “Well that’s what the Church believes, but we’ll see what happens when the Time comes.” Adelphos, if we wait until then, we will be too late! To redeem us from that outcome God, in his Irreproachable Wisdom, gave us some examples – Lazarus, Jesus, and “Many Holy People” (Matthew 27:50–53) (← Check it out!) see what I mean? Look at these two scenes:
Do we BELIEVE God has that sort of Power? If we do not, then our Faith is hollow and therefore useless.
If, however, we DO believe God has that sort of Power, then the event in Sunday’s Gospel is believable. Jesus did raise Lazarus from death by commanding his resuscitation, not his Resurrection which is the transformation to a Glorified Body like Jesus’ Body in Heaven. Gospel is about Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha. The account of Lazarus’ death and resuscitation is powerful both emotionally and spiritually. This family was one of Jesus’ favorites. You can tell by the intimacy he enjoyed there that Jesus loved this trio of believers. Jesus was at their house often, and perhaps they had known each other since before he began his ministry. We can imagine how these three people lived in their home in Bethany. These three, then, were people Jesus really, really cared about. He loved them in a very special way. Jesus raised Lazarus, but who took away that stone covering his grave?
“Take the stone away!” Jesus ordered. Jesus didn’t roll away the stone. Lazarus’ friends did. Then Jesus prayed aloud a prayer that revealed the purpose of his Presence there: To reveal the Power of his Father. Belovéd, that is the whole purpose for everything Jesus did – to Glorify The Father so that we could regain a proper perspective about Life, Death, and Eternity. Then, after Jesus’ prayer, John’s Gospel gives us this from John 11:43-44 (GNT): 43 After he had said this, he called out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 He came out, his hands and feet wrapped in grave cloths, and with a cloth around his face. “Untie him,” Jesus told them, “and let him go.” The people who helped Lazarus also helped Jesus Glorify Our Father in Heaven! In like manner, we, too, are called upon to help Jesus, our neighbors, our Church, The World to Glorify Our Father in Heaven.
Certainly, Lazarus had to do his part, too. He was the one who had to obey that command from Jesus. I firmly believe that because I know and understand the relationship he had with Jesus that, in the parlance of the early 20th century, we might say Lazarus and his sisters “got right with God.” We can (and definitely better) get right with God by frequently consulting the M.A.P. (←Stop here and read this.) – our Measure of Actual Progress – to see just where we are on The Long Road to Home. “Ah, man! What’s the point of that? All of us are wandering around back and forth or up and down that road, and not a few of us are on the wrong road – the bad road.” Well, Adelphos, that’s what our M.A.P. is for – not for finding ourselves like the gurus do, but for finding our Way in the Light of Truth. Pretty cool, I’d say, that God would allow us to carry such a fine apparatus as that! That’s good because God is good. All the time (and you know the rest of that).
We know someone else who had help rolling away the stone in front of their tomb. “Who is that?” we might ask. Jesus of course. While we’re contemplating the glory of the Resurrection, we sometimes might forget this in Matthew 28:1-4 – 1 After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone (↔ Music Link) and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4 For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. This amazing and beautiful passage underscores the importance and magnificence of Divine Intervention. The event was initiated by the Christ of God, Τετέλεσται by the Angel’s functions, and witnessed by True believers. This help from others – this time Divine, not human – was not given so that Jesus could exit the Tomb, but instead to prove that he was no longer there because he’d left after his Resurrection! Only God could conceive of such a perfect solution to the problem of sin. There’s an APP for that, you know.
My heart aches for the misled souls who deify the universe and say things like, “Well, the universe needed something like that.” Nope. Absolutely not! There are significant and eternal consequences for deifying the universe; it has no power of Resurrection. Only God has that power, remember? 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. Christ, who is God, is Resurrected. We sometimes think of persons “raised from the dead” as being resurrected, but that is as false a notion as believing the universe can have its own volition. Lazarus, for example, was resuscitated – he experienced the reanimation of his natural, physical, mortal body. Jesus is RESURRECTED. The Apostle Paul amplifies that in Sunday’s Key Verse from the Epistles.
He speaks of the effect, the efficacity, of being a follower of Christ, a Christian. But you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. Can you, can I, can we attain righteousness without the help of God taking away the stone that is our heart? “Church-ianity” ain’t gonna cut it, folks. We‘d better be Living for Jesus (↔ Music Link) every moment of every day. I want to be a Christian (↔ Music Link) with those Wonderful Words of Life (↔ Music Link) in my heart! The next time I see that long, dark tunnel with the light at the end, or the endless hallway of doors (← Check it out!), I want to be able to know and understand, “It is finished.” I’ll look to the Angel God has committed to me here – my Baruch (Hebrew word for A Blessing) – to roll that stone way, and when the time comes for my own Resurrection, my Baruch might also lift that slab separating me from All That Is New. Let the Good Times … be just beyond the Corner Stone that commands us, “Enter in to your Master’s Joy.” It’s the Absolutely Perfect Plan, Start to Finish, and each of us has to do our part. Sometimes it’s getting rid of the pebble in our shoe, and sometimes it’s rolling away a burden that’s keeping someone from sailing into New Life. Or, following in Jesus’ Way, laying down our own burden of hurts and slights by saying, “It is enough. All is forgiven and paid in full.”
Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever —
at your service, Belovéd!
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Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Biblical languages inserts from Bible Hub (Bible Hub: Search, Read, Study the Bible in Many Languages) Visit at http://biblehub.com
Aloha Friday Messages by Charles O. Todd, III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
[1] Passages marked (GNT): Good News Translation (GNT) are from the Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition)© 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved. For more information about GNT, visit www.bibles.com and www.gnt.bible.
