Episode 18: Year A – Fifth Sunday of Lent
In this episode of The Sunday Catholic Word, we focus on several details found in the Gospel and second reading for the 5th Sunday of Lent, Year A. The story of the raising of Lazarus in John 11:1-45 and Paul’s teaching on “the flesh” in Romans 8:8-11 equips us with tools needed to engage in conversations about the problem of evil, soul-sleep objections, the Eucharist, Jesus’ resurrection, the doctrine of the resurrection in general, the divinity of Jesus, and the historical reliability of the Bible.
The Readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/032623.cfm
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Hey everyone,
Welcome to The Sunday Catholic Word, a podcast where we reflect on the upcoming Sunday Mass readings and pick out the details that are relevant for explaining and defending our Catholic faith.
I’m Karlo Broussard, staff apologist and speaker for Catholic Answers, and the host for this podcast.
In this episode, we’re going to focus on several details found in the Gospel and second reading for the 5th Sunday of Lent, Year A. The Gospel reading is the story of the raising of Lazarus in John 11:1-45. Most of our reflection in this episode has to do with the Gospel. However, ther eis one detail in the second reading from Romans 8:8-11 that’s relevant.
Let’s begin with the Gospel and the raising of Lazarus. I’m not going to read the whole narrative. So, I’ll just read the relevant verses as they pertain to the particular apologetical theme.
Jesus’ Permission of Suffering and Death to Manifest His Glory
The first detail that I’d like to focus on is Jesus’ consolation of the sisters Mary and Martha: “This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it” (v.4).
This connects to last week’s Gospel reading where Jesus explicitly taught that the blind man’s blindness was permitted so that God’s glory would be manifest through the healing. Similarly, here Jesus explicitly reveals that Lazarus’s illness, and his subsequent death, is permitted for the sake of ordering it to the glorification of “the Son of God.” Jesus even intentionally waits “two days longer” (v.6) where He was to ensure that Lazarus truly died. Raising someone from the dead will generate more faith than raising someone to health from sickness.
So, yet again, Jesus gives us His answer to the problem of evil: God permits it only to order it to the greater good of the manifestation of God’s glory. For us, seeing the manifestation of divine glory may not come until later in our lives, or even until the afterlife. But in this case, the manifestation was immediate.
Now, an interesting point to note is that in last week’s Gospel the focus was on the permission of evil for the sake of manifesting the Father’s glory. In this Gospel reading the focus is on the permission of evil to manifest the Son’s glory. Perhaps a subtle hint to the equality of the Son and the Father? Maybe!
The Use of the Language “Fallen Asleep”
The second detail is Jesus’ exchange with His disciples about whether Lazarus has simply “fallen asleep” or “died.” In verse 11, Jesus tells His disciples, “Our friend Lazarus is asleep, but I am going to awaken him.” John tells us that the disciples took Jesus literally, thinking that Lazarus was only sleeping. But Jesus clarifies their misunderstanding, saying, “Lazarus has died” (v.14). John emphasizes here that Jesus spoke to them “clearly” (v.14).
There are three ways in which this exchange is useful for doing apologetics.
First, it’s helpful for when we’re talking to folks about the “fruit of the vine” objection that’s posed to our interpretation of Jesus’ words of institution at the Last Supper. I deal with this objection in my book Meeting the Protestant Response: How to Answer Common Comebacks to Catholic Arguments. So I’ll just summarize it here.
Some Protestants appeal to Jesus, after the words of consecration, calling the contents of the consecrated chalice at the Last Supper the “fruit of the vine” (see Matt. 26:69; Mark 14:25). The argument is that if the contents of the chalice were really Jesus’ blood, Jesus wouldn’t have called it “the fruit of the vine.” Since He does call if that, the stuff in the chalice is not Jesus’ blood.
Now, there are a few different ways in which we could respond to this objection. Again, see my book for further details. But there’s one response for which Jesus’ statement about Lazarus sleeping can be used: Jesus uses phenomenological language.
Phenomenological language is language that’s used to describe things according to their appearance. We use it even today. For example, the weatherman says the sun will “rise” at six A.M. and “set” at seven P.M. Should we conclude that the weatherman is an advocate of geocentrism, who believes that the sun moves up and down over the earth? Of course not! He’s simply describing something according to the way we see it.
In the Bible, angels and even God are described according to how they are revealed to the senses. The book of Genesis describes the Lord and his angels as men since that is the form they took when they conversed with Abraham (Gen. 18:2; cf. 18:10, 19:1). Tobit does the same thing with reference to an angel in Tobit 5:2-4.
These authors were not trying to say God and angels are actually men. They simply described phenomena in a common way as they were observed according to the senses.
Similarly, the Bible often refers to death as “sleep,” as evidenced by Jesus’ exchange with His disciples here in John 11:11.
Second, it’s helpful when we’re arguing for a realistic interpretation of Jesus’s command to “eat His flesh and drink His blood” in the Bread of Life Discourse recorded in John 6. One Catholic argument starts from the fact that Jesus’ audience, both Jews and disciples, interpreted Jesus’s statements about eating His flesh and drinking His blood literally. The argument is that if His audience were misunderstanding Him, in which case Jesus would have been speaking metaphorically, then Jesus would have clarified their misunderstanding. Since He doesn’t do this, we conclude that He wasn’t speaking metaphorically.
Now, one of the reasons why we argue that Jesus would have clarified their misunderstanding is that it was common practice for Jesus. In John 4, for example, Jesus clarifies His disciples’ misunderstanding that the “food” He was talking bout was real food when it was to do the will of His Father. In Matthew 16, His disciples thought that Jesus’ statement about the “leaven” of the Pharisees and Sadducees referred to their bread when it really referred to their doctrine. This Sunday’s Gospel is one more example in the line-up. Jesus’ disciples think that He’s saying Lazarus is literally sleeping. But that’s what Jesus meant. So He clarifies it.
Third, it’s helpful for when we’re talking to folks who believe in “soul sleep.” Some Christians and quasi-Christian sects claim that we’re not conscious between the time of our death and our resurrection but that our souls sleep. They often cite verses in the Bible where it speaks of death as “sleep,” like Jesus does here in John 11.
But here Jesus explicitly uses the “sleep” language as a metaphor to refer to death. Again, this is phenomenological language, the language of appearances. This passage, therefore, gives us evidence that when the Bible speaks of death as “sleep” it’s simply referring to death and is not making a claim about whether the souls in the afterlife or conscious or not.
Jewish doctrine of the resurrection
The third detail that’s relevant for apologetical discussions is the hint at the Jewish belief in the bodily resurrection. Jesus tells Martha, “Your brother will rise” (v.23). And Martha immediately responds, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day” (v.24).
The Church emphasizes this Jewish belief in the bodily resurrection by giving us Ezekiel 37:12-14 for the first reading. There, God promises to raise the Jews from their graves and bring them back to the land of Israel.
But how is this relevant for apologetics?
It provides an opportunity to reflect on the Christian mutations within Second Temple Jewish belief about resurrection. Anglican New Testament scholar N.T. Wright, in his books The Resurrection of the Son of God and Jesus, the Final Days, has done a great deal of work on such mutations and appeals to them as evidence for the early Christian belief in Jesus’ resurrection.
The argument is basically this: Why would these early Christians, many of whom were formerly practitioners of Judaism, suddenly begin believing and preaching things about the doctrine of resurrection that weren’t part of their former Jewish theological belief system? Why the change? Wright argues that Christ’s bodily and glorious resurrection best explains such mutations.
Martha’s statement about Lazarus rising on the last day highlights one such mutation. As Wright points out, in Second Temple Judaism—the Judaism of Jesus’ day—no one was expected to rise from the dead before Yahweh’s initiation of the final age of the new heavens and new earth. Martha’s statement supports this. Moreover, it was an event that would happen to everyone at the same time. In the words of Wright, it was an “all-people event” (Jesus Final Days).
But yet Christians claimed that the resurrection had already begun with one particular person: Jesus Christ. And with His resurrection, the new creation was inaugurated.
For Wright, the reality of Christ’s resurrection is the most plausible explanation as to why these Jews suddenly change their beliefs about the resurrection and the timing of the new creation.
“I am the Resurrection”
There’s a fourth detail that’s related to this topic of the resurrection, and it’s Jesus’ statement, “I am the resurrection” (v.25). Notice He doesn’t just say, “I will rise.” Here, Jesus identifies Himself with resurrection itself. What is a resurrection? Victory of life over death! For Jesus to say that He is the resurrection is to say that He possesses absolute sovereignty over life and death. But, according to 1 Samuel 2:6 and Wisdom 16:13, the absolute sovereignty over life and death belongs to Yahweh. Therefore, by identifying himself with resurrection itself, Jesus is claiming to be God.
The Cluster of Details for Historicity
There’s one last thing to note about this Gospel and its relevance for doing apologetics: the cluster of details that support the story’s historicity.
Notice the detail about “Bethany”: “Now a man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany.” Bethany here has no relevance to the endgame of persuading others to believe in Jesus. It’s non-apologetical or catechetical. There’s no reason to include it except that its true. For historians, non-apologetical or catechetical details like this is a good indication of the story’s historicity.
Also relevant are the details about the relationship between Lazarus, Mary, and Martha, along with their place of residence. First, these details make John’s claim subject to historical verification. If he were making this stuff up, he wouldn’t choose a real place and drop names of people who were relatives. That’s stuff that could be checked out by the readers of his day. They could inquire whether there was a family in Bethany with members by these names.
Second, these details, again, are non-apologetical or catechetical. What relevance do the names of these people and where they live have regarding the goal of persuading readers about who Jesus is and the power that he has? There’s none!
Third, and final, notice that there’s no description about Lazarus’ experience of being dead and the afterlife. This noticeable restriction in details and embellishment indicates the strong probability of historicity.
So, we have good reason to think that this story is historical.
“The Flesh”
Well, that does it for the Gospel. Let’s now move on to the second reading, which, again, is taken from Romans 8:8-11. Paul writes the following:
8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9 But you are not in the flesh; on the contrary, you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11 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
The key detail here is the phrase “the flesh.” What does Paul mean by it?
First, as St. Thomas Aquinas comments in his Commentary on Romans, he can’t be referring “the nature of the flesh”—that’s to say, the body. The reason is that he says to the Roman believers: “but you are not in the flesh.” Clearly, Roman believers were mortal men with bodies.
What Paul means by “the flesh” is having a this-world viewpoint or perspective of reality. Consider that in verse 7 Paul speaks of “the concern of the flesh.” The Greek word for “concern” there is phronēma, which means “mindset” or “a way of thinking.” So, what Paul has in mind here within the context is a way of thinking that’s focused solely on the flesh—that’s to say, it’s restricted to thinking about the things of this world as opposed to, in the words of Paul, “the things of the spirit” (v.5).
This idiom of “the flesh” as connoting a “this-world” perspective is confirmed by John 8:15, where Jesus tells the Pharisees, “You judge according to the flesh [Greek, sarx].” What Jesus means here is that they’re making judgments about Him solely from an earthly perspective.
The bottom line is that to perceive the things of God we have to judge according to the mind of God; to perceive spiritual things we have to judge according to the Spirit.
Now, how is this relevant for apologetics? In discussions about the Eucharist, and in particular Jesus’ language of eating his flesh and drinking His blood in John 6, many Protestants appeal to John 6:63 as evidence that Jesus is clarifying the literal thoughts of His disciples concerning his language. There, Jesus says, “It is the Spirt that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.”
“The flesh” being of no avail is sometimes appealed to as evidence that Jesus couldn’t have intended us to take Him literally speaking about His flesh. This assumes “the flesh” here in verse 63 is meant to be taken as a reference to Jesus’ flesh, which He speaks of in verses 53 through 58.
But given what we read in this upcoming Sunday’s second reading this assumption is false. “The flesh” is a Hebrew idiom that refers to a mindset that is restricted to a “this-worldly” perspective that is divorced from a mindset that is governed by the Spirit of God.
This interpretation of “the flesh” fits perfectly with the context of Jesus’ teaching in John 6 and provides a better explanation as to why Jesus says “the flesh is of no avail” in response to the difficulty that His disciples were having with His teaching about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Such a teaching cannot be accepted if we have a mindset that this restricted to a
“this-worldly” perspective. “The flesh [a this-world mindset] is of no avail” when it comes to believing Jesus’ teaching about eating his flesh and drinking His blood. We need the Spirit to accept such a teaching.
So, Paul’s teaching about “the flesh” in this upcoming Sunday’s second reading relates to conversations about the Eucharist.
Conclusion
Well, that does it for this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word. This Sunday’s Mass readings is yet again an apologist’s treasure chest. It provides details that are helpful for talking about the problem of evil, soul-sleep objections, the Eucharist, Jesus’ resurrection, the doctrine of the resurrection in general, the divinity of Jesus, and the historical reliability of the Bible, at least John’s Gospel.
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I hope you have a great 5th Sunday of Lent.