5 Lent A 2017
April 2, 2017
So, remember last week when I said the closer Jesus gets to Jerusalem, the less subtle he gets? Last week he healed the man born blind on the sabbath, which was enough to enrage the authorities… and here we are this week, at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, whom Jesus raises from the dead. There is nothing subtle about that; if we thought the authorities were upset last week, just go home and read a bit further in John’s gospel; it won’t take you long. The plot to kill Jesus becomes known just a couple of verses later.
Ironic, isn’t it? Jesus has tried to heal the divisions around him by accepting the Samaritan woman; he has brought a blind man to wholeness; and now he has raised Lazarus from the dead; and for his efforts to bring God’s people closer to God, those in power are going to make sure they stay in power by destroying this man who tried to show others what God’s love and God’s kingdom looks like. The death and raising of Lazarus begins to prepare us for the rest of the gospel story as a foreshadowing of what awaits Jesus…
Today’s readings are full of human anguish; they are also full of the hope that rests in God. I think it’s important to realize that the hope our readings point to is not just about eternal life with God at some future time; certainly, it is that; and it’s important and comforting (at least I hope it is) for us to realize that death is not final; but really, I think, that’s a message Jesus brings us in few weeks.
If we look at Lazarus and perhaps even the dry bones that Ezekiel prophecies to, what I see anyway, is that Lazarus is changed in the present moment; he is called by name by the one person who can give him his life back; and when he leaves the tomb, Jesus tells them to unbind him and let him go. We are told that his feet and hands are bound and his face is covered by some sort of grave cloth; until he is unbound, he cannot see and I doubt he can walk all that well… of course, in the moments before that, he couldn’t see or walk at all because he was dead; but now he lives; he hears his name called by Jesus, and he responds to the command to come out… to come out of the tomb, out of the darkness, out of the place of death into the light and into life… and, like the blind man, I imagine that Lazarus and his sisters probably aren’t welcome in the synagogue after all this… and so once again, because of an encounter with Jesus, one’s status in society is changed; they are outcasts as far and the empire is concerned, but now they are accepted into the greater community of God’s kingdom.
Do you believe that Jesus can drastically change your life? What would it be like for each of us if we heard Jesus call our names and command us to come out of the darkness into the light? What would it be like to allow ourselves to become unbound?
Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t ask Lazarus to unbind himself; he doesn’t say, “Hey Lazarus, take off the grave clothes and come join the party”. What Jesus does, is he asks members of the community to help unbind him. When Lazarus was dead, touching him would make one ritually unclean for a period of time; I don’t know what it makes you if you touch someone who was dead but is no longer dead; probably didn’t matter; the whole lot of them was probably going to get thrown out of the synagogue; but Jesus involves the community in the unbinding of Lazarus, which I think places a huge significance on community. I don’t think that any of us can be unbound without a community to help us… and there are so many things that bind us, that cause our souls to die… some of those things are less obvious than others, things like fear, inability to forgive, the hate that we feel but may not show towards others, broken relationships, substance abuse…. All of these things kill our souls and separate us from God; and let me be clear, it’s not God that leaves the relationship, it’s us that put up barriers that keep us away from God and each other… but community can help unbind us; sometimes we need to ask for help, and sometimes it’s pretty clear that we are bound up by the situations and difficulties in life. Community can show us what it’s like to be accepted for who we are; community can help us to remove or help to carry the weight of what keeps us bound...community can hold us accountable in our new life of being unbound; and we can do that for each other. If discipleship means that we do what Jesus does, we are to call to each other so that we can each know which direction the light is in; I know when I am bound by my fears or other things, it is sometimes hard to know where the light is, and like the dry bones that receive their flesh, we are all spiritually dead without the breath of God, the breath of hope to bring us back to life…
Jesus calls each of us by name… he calls us from our graves into eternal life; he also calls us from the many smaller deaths and darknesses that we experience in our lives… and he has breathed his spirit into each of us, so that we can be a gift to each other in those times when maybe we need loving hands to unbind us from the messes we have made; community reminds each of us that we are loved and accepted in ways that communities of fear and power cannot even imagine. That’s the power of love… what binding are we each being asked to be released from? Who needs our help to become free?
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