We are now a couple of weeks away from the Easter Vigil when we’ll again stir the waters of baptism, so it’s time to practice resurrection. Today we do this by taking up the story of Lazarus and turning it over in our hearts, noticing its curves and angles and edges, its shades and textures, its emotions, sounds, and smells.
If we can pay attention to what happens in this story, and find our own place in it, we might get a glimpse of how resurrection works both in our own lives and in the world around us.
A man falls sick, then dies, then lies in a tomb. Those who love him wonder how this can be happening. They weep. They lose hope. Up to this point in the story, death, tears, and sadness are in control.
Then Jesus enters. What follows is a collaboration, a dance if you will, between Jesus and Lazarus and the community.
Notice: Jesus does not stand aloof. Before he says or does anything, he draws near to the ones who are grieving. He weeps with them. Jesus, who came to share our lot, does not wipe our grief away without fully entering it himself.
Then, through his own tears, Jesus cries out three commands.
The first is to the community. “Take away the stone.”
Sometimes the stone that entombs a person is so great, so seemingly unmovable, that the person can’t budge it by themselves. If they are to ever escape their tomb, they need other people working shoulder-to-shoulder in a community to roll away the stone.
Moms and dads mourning the loss of their kids to gang violence, little kids losing their parents to deportation, elders living in isolation and fear of eviction, victims of an unjust war. People become trapped in tombs like these. They can’t escape these tombs by themselves. It takes a community to roll back the stones.
Communities have done this, have rolled back huge stones. Think of the village in southern France, Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, an entire town that at great risk sheltered 5,000 Jews during the Holocaust. Or the wonderfully diverse community that surrounded Dr. King at Selma, or Cesar Chavez in his pilgrimage from Delano to Sacramento. Communities of people working shoulder-to-shoulder to remove the heavy stones from the tombs of their brothers and sisters.
“Take away the stone,” Jesus says to the community gathered at Lazarus’ tomb.
Then Jesus gives a second command, and this one is to Lazarus. “Lazarus, come out!” Now it is Lazarus who must act.
Jesus calls him by name, calls to his friend in all his uniqueness, knowing what makes him laugh, what makes him cry, his favorite recipes, and songs, and hiding places. Loving all these things about him, he calls his friend by name--to come out of the death and darkness that surrounds him; out of the despair, the lack of joy, the loss of purpose.
There is a choice Lazarus must make here, a determination and a faith he must muster despite all evidence to the contrary. He must pry himself loose from the darkness of the tomb, his old ways of thinking, his old ruts, and imagine new possibilities, gently turning a new way, toward life.
Lazarus must choose to live.
The poet Mary Oliver captures what this turning from death to life can feel like in her poem “The Journey”.
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.
It’s true, as philosophers say, that one of the fears that can cripple us is our fear of death. But there is another fear that can cripple us even more: the fear of life. The fear of fully entering into life with all its risks and rewards, its great pleasures and great pains, its loves and losses. The fear of life. It’s this fear of life that Lazarus must now come to terms with as he hears Jesus cry out to him, “Lazarus, come out!”
Slowly, courageously, Lazarus takes his first steps out of the tomb. And as he moves into the sunlight, Jesus utters one final command. Like the first command, this one is to the community: “Unbind him, and let him go.”
It’s as though the community is needed not only to begin but also to complete the action of resurrection. Jesus has called forth new life: “Lazarus, come out!" But Lazarus still has burial clothes on. His hands and nose and eyes and mouth and ears are bound. His feet are bound, too, so he can’t walk easily.
Now that he is back among them, the community must unbind him, so he can return to his rightful place among them.
Pastors in the Bayview tell me that when a young man is released from prison, his future, especially right at first, is often in the hands of his family and his community. Will they welcome him home, equip him with skills to find a job, give him back his citizenship, his place in society, his dignity? If his community is not there for him, does not unbind him from his past mistakes and from all the ways the world has conspired against him, then his chances of making it in the world are slim and he is likely to return to the tomb of prison.
The work of resurrecting Lazarus is not complete until his community unbinds him.
So where are you in this story?
Maybe you identify yourself with Lazarus. Is there a tomb you find yourself in at this time in your life? What is it like to hear Jesus call you by your own name, call you out of that tomb? What would it mean for you to respond to that call? Would it require anything of you?
Maybe you see yourself as a member of the community that surrounds Lazarus. Is there someone or some group of people you know who are slowly emerging from their tombs? How do you, in your own way, as a member of this community, do your part in taking away the stones, how do you help to unbind them?
Maybe you, as a follower of Jesus, feel called to do as Jesus does in this story: weeping with those who mourn, calling out to those in the tombs and to those that love them with words that give life. What are the words you must speak to them?
Let’s spend a few moments turning this story over in our hearts.
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