COME OUT AND PLAY!

Vito…Franco…come out and play!

As kids growing up in Windsor, Canada, my brother and I would hear our friends on Elsmere Street yell out to begin another day of exploring the park nearby, playing baseball or hockey (depending on the season), or Cowboys and Indians. We were being called out of the confines of our little house by the love of our friends to be more fully alive at play.

Today, we hear Jesus, with great compassion, yell to his friend, Lazarus, come out and play! Come out and live!

Our gospel today, and our journey of faith, are about being fully alive.  As Jesus said, I came that you might have life, and have it abundantly.  Perhaps, nothing makes us feel fully alive as kids at play.

If at times we feel entombed, Jesus says to us, Come out and play! Come out and live!  

There are many tombs in life. Each of us can feel entombed at times by the stress or hum-drum routine of our lives, and perhaps most of all by broken relationships that drain the life out of us.

In the movie, Flatliners, medical students begin to explore near-death experiences, hoping for insights. They each have their hearts stopped and revived. During those episodes, they begin having flashes of nightmares from the past, resulting from violent acts they committed or had committed against them. The experiences continue to intensify, and they begin to feel physically beaten by their visions as they try to go deeper into the death experience to find a cure.

The film asserts that the tombs we live in are relational. What drains the life out of us is sin. And all sin is relational. For those medical students, not being able to love or not being able to accept love was at the heart of their near-death experiences.

During our Lenten journey we have been examining our life, pondering who we are and whose we are. Perhaps it has also led us to reflect on our relationships, those that are life-giving and those that enclose us in lifeless tombs.

We all want healthy relationships. We know this demands love and sacrifice, honesty and trust, a desire for the other's well-being. This is the kind of love - the love of God - that Jesus came to manifest and to model for us. He wants us to be a community of friends and lovers.

But, though we know this, we may find ourselves bound-up by self-interest, which cuts us off from others - and from God. Without realizing it, we find ourselves living in tombs where life is drained out of us. 

If we feel lifeless, often, it is we ourselves who dig our graves.

Thus, as much as we want the best relationship with God, with others and with ourselves, we may prefer worldly values to God's, we let friendships wither, we ignore and even resent those who are different, and fall prey to self-pity, not accepting God's forgiveness nor forgive ourselves. Which leaves us like the walking dead.

Just as the actions of our childhood friends made my brother and me more alive, so do the life-giving actions of God, as reflected in our readings today. In love, God made a promise - a covenant - with us, irrevocably and unconditionally saying through the prophet Ezekiel, I will put my spirit in you that you may live.

The Lazarus story tells us not only of the power of Christ over death, but of friendship...and love...which free us from all that entombs us. 

Life not death...play not confinement. That's God desire for us. And it's our desire too.

But we have to do our part. Just as Vito and I had to hear our friends' call, and make the move from the semi-comfort of our home to join them and be more fully alive, we must be willing to hear God's call and be attentive to God's will in our lives, which is profoundly simple - to imitate in all we do and say that same covenant of love: Love one another as I have loved you. 

Today's gospel invites us to challenge all that traps us into separating ourselves from others. As in the Lazarus story, Christ commands us: Untie yourself and be set free.

My sisters and brothers, we are Lazarus, and Christ, our best friend, calls out: Come out and play!