A homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, March 22, 2026
Ezekiel 37:12-14, Romans 8:8-11, John 11:1-45
Val Kilmer, who died a year ago, is co-starring in a new movie now being shot. The film’s producers aren’t using footage of Kilmer they had from before he died. No, the scenes with Kilmer will be new, generated by artificial intelligence, with the approval of Kilmer’s estate.
For almost 50 years, video games have offered players the option, the purported ability, to play with a string of lives. If a ghost gobbles up Pac-Man, then reset, start again. New life. Even the most sophisticated, intricately detailed first-person games today have a reset button, a rebirth option.
If the game is essentially rigged so that nobody ever really dies, if popular and political culture gives everyone second and third and infinite next chances, is resurrection that big a deal?
If Jesus of Nazareth were to revive a public official’s child today, let alone coax his dead friend Lazarus out of the tomb after a long weekend of decomposing, would we be amazed?
After all, CGI and AI and deepfakes and broadband and Xbox, right?
In Andrew Lloyd Webber’s masterpiece, “Jesus Christ Superstar,” Judas Iscariot asks Jesus:
“Now, why’d you choose such a backward time and such a strange land? If you’d come today, you could have reached a whole nation. Israel in 4 B.C. had no mass communication.”
And there’s the answer. By employing miracles to introduce his divinity to the lesser-educated, simpler-living people of 2,000 years ago, Jesus was able to mystify and, yes, dazzle the crowds. To say and do things so profound and countercultural that they gave the entire Earth a reset. To teach pure truth through words and actions that created what we know today as Western Civilization.
Through word of mouth, to create a buzz that’s swelled throughout two millennia.
(Full disclosure: Yes, I did recently see a production of “Superstar.” I’ll accept inspiration from any source.)
Now, it’s no secret that overall church attendance is declining, that fewer and fewer people claim membership in one religious tradition or another. Or that people claim to be SBNR — spiritual but not religious — because they don’t find relevance in modern organized faith groups.
Maybe — and I’m no expert on the subject — but maybe the attitude stems from some folks’ assessment that our Scriptures and liturgies emphasize the what and how over the why.
The why, of course, is Love.
Jesus loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus, and the impact on him of the sickness and death of Lazarus was captured in the most profound two words in all of the Gospels:
Jesus wept.
Everything Jesus did during his days on Earth, and everything he continues to do throughout this universe and all possible universes, is an act of love. Of wisdom. Of goodness. Of justice and fairness and equity. Of Capital L Love.
If we follow him, if we obey the Two Great Commandments — Love God and love our neighbors as ourselves — then we continue the mission that God sent Jesus to Earth to set in motion.
And done properly, that is, out of Love, every scientific and technological and political and medical and educational and etc. etc. activity takes on a spiritual hue, whether we acknowledge it or not.
A healing surgeon’s hands? Guided by the Trinity of Father, Son and Spirit.
Inventor of a vaccine for a pandemic or a cure for cancers and neurological disorders? Likewise guided.
The meek and humble of heart, the merciful, the peacemakers, the sheep who feed and clothe and comfort and visit, the wise leaders and the bearers of heavy burdens?
The programmers who are shooting for artificial general intelligence?
If they do what they do according to their individual gifts from God for the benefit of every person, and they do what they do in the name of Christ, powered by God’s Love, then they are tuned into the why.
Every advancement in health, wealth and comfort that brought us the 21st century took root only when the multitudes embraced it as being good for them. As being founded in some sort of altruism. As being sourced in Love.
And humankind certainly has taken poisonous detours along the way. That list is long and tear-stained and painfully familiar.
We do run the risk, today, of taking miracles for granted. Or worse, of not believing that real miracles did and can occur, because we can Photoshop or Final Cut sunrises and sunsets, and holograph Elvis and MJ, and Sora or Firefly our grandparents back to life with the flick of a few keystrokes.
Our societal GPS may direct us away from the highway of true belief paved by Love because our technology is so utterly dazzling, and only getting more so.
But when we use these last few days of Lent to pause, to breathe in the spring air, to sneeze from the pollen of the reborn flowers and trees, and to re-recognize and re-thank our divine Creator, the source of everything, the source of Love …
We’ll once again see and feel and believe what’s real, what’s tangible, and why God gives it to us freely and abundantly.
Yes.
We’ll.
Know.
Why.
