The Journey Is the Thing

5th Sunday of Lent

Martha and Mary came to Lazarus with a question about five days before Christ arrived in Bethany: “Brother, are you afraid to die?”

Lazarus replied: “I am afraid to die.”

Mary asked him: “You have no hope of salvation?”

Lazarus said to her: “I do have hope for salvation, but I fear the Lord and I do not know what will come after death. I am afraid to die.”

Martha said to him: “God made promises to our ancestors—salvation, a chosen people, resurrection of the body. We have cause for hope. Why do you fear death?”

Lazarus replied: “I fear death because I fear the Lord. I am not a perfect man; no one is perfect. There is sin in me. And my sin is a choice against the Lord, who is life. I came from nothing. You came from nothing. I exist only because the Lord wants me to exist. And there is sin in me. I have turned toward the nothingness from which I came. I am dust and to dust I will return. I have turned from the Lord, and now I fear him. I do not know what will happen after death.”

Martha asked him: “And what of Jesus? The man is special, he is from God, and he loves you.”

Lazarus replied: “What about him?”

Martha said to Lazarus: “Jesus will save you. We have sent for him, and he will come to us. I have come to believe that he is the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”

Lazarus replied: “I do not know that Jesus will save me. I agree with you: Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. I believe that he can save me. I have hope that he will save me. But I do not know that he will save me.”

Mary said to him: “Why do you talk of hope when you say you do not know that Jesus will save you—there is no hope without certainty, knowledge, facts, truth.”

Lazarus replied: “My faith is certain. I have come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. I do not doubt that he loves me. I do not doubt that he is from God. My hope for salvation rests in Jesus. But I do not know that I am saved; hope for salvation is not the same as knowledge of salvation. And I fear the Lord because there is sin in me, and sin is not from God and only God knows with certainty who is and is not saved and I am not God. I fear the Lord.”

Martha said to Lazarus: “I do not understand why you say you have hope when you also say you fear the Lord.”

Lazarus replied: “I came from nothingness. I exist only because God wants me to exist. Behind me there is nothingness and before me there is the promise the God will save me—the promise that Christ will save me. I want to live with the Lord forever. I have hope that I will live with the Lord forever, that I will reach my destination: eternal life with God. But behind me is the nothingness, and my journey to God is not complete, and the promises of God are not yet fulfilled for me, and there is sin in me. My fear of the Lord reminds me each day that I have not yet reached my destination. But my hope tells me that one day I might. So, these two, fear of the Lord and hope, these two belong together—my fear reminds me that I must hold fast to hope. My hope is not real if there is no fear of God in me. My fear is the warrant for my hope.”

Martha and Mary stayed with Lazarus as he died, holding onto hope in Jesus, but with hearts now fearful of God, and their hope, for the first time, was real.

I do not know if that kind of a conversation ever took place between Martha and Mary and Lazarus. I doubt that it did, but the content of that conversation matters for each of us who want to hold onto hope in Christ Jesus.

We talk a lot about hope in Christ during the Easter season: death is conquered, eternal life, salvation, is now possible for us. St. Paul tells the Colossians that Christ living in us is the hope of glory. But we almost never talk about fear of the Lord—and that is a mistake. Hope and fear of the Lord belong to one another, compliment one another.

The kind of fear we are talking about is real fear. No matter what bad teaching you might have picked up from a confirmation class over the years, we are not talking about reverence for God, or respect, or wonder and awe. We are talking about fear. You are supposed to fear God.

Why must we fear the Lord? The deep reality of human existence is that God creates us from nothing, out of nothing, but wants us to live with him in an eternal relationship. Behind us is nothingness, non-existence, the real possibility that we do not need to be alive. And before us is God, our real destination, the promise of eternal life and salvation. We are on a journey toward God in life, away from nothingness.

St. Thomas says that the object of our hope—what we hope for—is in the future: eternal life with God. And he says that our future life with God is “arduous but possible to obtain.” What does St. Thomas mean? He means that the reality of sin makes it hard for us to achieve our goal and reach our destination. The journey to God is hard. Hope is a virtue given to us by God in Christ Jesus that helps us hold onto the conviction that one day we will reach salvation. But the reality of sin tells us that it is always possible for us to turn away from God, to choose the nothingness from which we came—we are dust and to dust we shall return—and because there is for us the real possibility that we might choose against God, we need to fear the Lord.

God wants to save us, and there is the cause for our hope. But sometimes we do not want to save ourselves, and there is the possibility that God will honor the choice we make against him, that one day in the future we will cease to exist, and there is the cause for our fear.

Hope and fear of the Lord belong to one another, make one another possible. Without fear of the Lord, our hope would not be real hope. If what you want in life is a guarantee of salvation, then what you want is not hope. Hope is not knowledge or certainty of what will happen in the future. Hope is a virtue that makes us good and helps us to keep moving toward God with the conviction that even though the journey is hard, because of Christ we will reach eternal life. But our conviction is not knowledge or certainty. We do not know the future, and the reality of sin confronts us every day. Fear of the Lord makes hope into real hope.

Though we talk about hope all the time, we do not talk about fear of the Lord much in the Church today. The sin of presumption is now commonplace for many of us, the sin that tells us that our salvation is guaranteed, known, certain. You go to a funeral today and what you usually hear are people talking about guarantees, known facts, certainties, about eternal life. Many people do not want to confront the truth that nothingness, non-existence, is possible for us. And so, we distort hope for salvation into something guaranteed, known, certain. But that is not real hope.

Presumption is a sin of pride, telling us that we have already reached our destination, or that we will reach our destination with certainty, without doubt— because of presumption, salvation becomes a fact for us. The sin of pride tells us that we are God, that we know everything and that we control everything, and when you are God, you do not need to fear death, and when you are God, you do not need to have hope. If you presume your salvation, you claim that you are God, and that you have no need of hope.

I want to say that there is more than sin at stake with talk of presumption; there is also sadness. Hope is good and necessary for a meaningful human life. The youthful joy that comes from the journey toward God, holding onto salvation in Christ as a real possibility, living each day with the knowledge that God loves you and wants to save you, but that you still have not reached your destination—that kind of life is better and more meaningful than a life burdened by the boredom and the certainty of having already gotten to where you want to go.

Presumption robs us of our fear, and our absence of fear robs us of our hope, and our absence of hope robs life of its goodness and meaning. The real possibility of salvation in Christ, the journey toward God, there is the meaning of a human life.

We talk a lot about hope during the Easter season. Jesus tells Martha in the Gospel today that her brother will rise from the dead, and there is the salvation that we all desire. Martha will say to Jesus: “I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” And she says those words while her brother is dead in a tomb.

Martha makes a claim of profound hope against the background of death, and the possibility that life is not eternal. Hope and fear of the Lord belong to one another, complement one another, and our hope is not real hope unless we fear the Lord.

Homily preached at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Sunday, 17th, 2024.