Disbelief can come from outside of our personal experience: from the events that occur around the world. The 8 seminary students murdered in their seminary library on Thursday is an example. On the same day, in Baghdad, 69 people were killed in an open air market by a massive car bomb. It seems natural for the parents, family and friends of those people murdered to want their loved ones brought back just as Jesus brought one of his loved ones back from the grave. Resentment, anger, simmering rage even, can all fester into and concretize disbelief in what we hear in the Gospel today.

Yet, setting aside disbelief is what we are asked to strive for today, to help us prepare for Easter Sunday morning. This Gospel is asking us to look at death in a different way and is really pointing us in a new direction. The raising of Lazarus from the dead is a precursor to, and has direct correlation to Jesus on the Cross, Jesus in the tomb and Jesus arisen on Easter Sunday morning. The account of Lazarus being raised is preparing us for Jesus' triumphal resurrection. Jesus' actions in regard to Lazarus, in the Gospel of John, are the essential causal elements that moved the Jewish authorities to seek Jesus' death....Gail O'Day says "Because Jesus gives life, the Sanhedrin seek to take his" (this plotting occurs right after today's Gospel.)

And this juxtaposition of Jesus giving life to a dear loved one being a precursor of his own death and resurrection, as well as being the pivotal point, the tipping point that caused his enemies to finally take the ultimate steps to have him be put to death are critical things for us to recognize today. And by recognizing this we can then address a fundamental question asked by today's Gospel: Aren't we, all of us sitting here, the embodiment of Lazarus: Jesus' loved one? We are Lazarus in the tomb for whom Jesus wept. We are Jesus' loved ones.

And from that question we can think about whether or not we believe that we might actually be able to be so unconditionally loved. Or do we think that we need to earn Jesus' love...to do something to deserve it, to be worthy of it? Consider this: every event we have heard in these marathon Lenten Gospels these last five weeks is leading us to believe and accept this extraordinary truth: that we are profoundly loved...that we are indeed God's beloved....this God who is defined as that which nothing greater can be conceived. This mighty and unimaginable love is right there for us, in all that we are and in all that God has made us to be.

Although Aquinas' definition of the mysterious nature of God may be murky, we know this mighty and unimaginable love is not murky, it may be a mysterious gift, but this gift of love is not murky. Jesus, who we hear weeping at Lazarus' grave, is weeping for us too, weeping for the love of us. Jesus is calling us, each of us, from death's door by accepting this love, by living into it, by rejoicing in it, by allowing it to transform us and through that transformation, changing the lives of others as well. Jesus is weeping for us to move from darkness to the light that is his to bestow: moving from being overwhelming negative in our outlook to a positive and loving embrace of life and each other. Jesus is inviting us into this new world with a promise of another life to follow this one.... Each and every day we need to remind ourselves of this impossible love that is ours; by doing so the events of Holy Week and Easter will be for us more powerful and significant than they have ever been before, as we will be encountering and embracing this mighty and unimaginable love, free of our bonds and our blindness and fully embraced by God.