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November 1, 2015 - All Saints' Day
“Love Unbound”
John 11:32-44
33When Jesus saw Mary weeping, and the Jews who came with her also
weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34He
said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come
and see."35Jesus wept. 36So the Jews said, "See
how he loved him!"37But some of them said, "Could not he
who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"38Then
Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone
was lying against it. 39Jesus said, "Take away the stone."
Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a
stench because he has been dead four days."40Jesus said to her,
"Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of
God?" 41So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and
said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me.42I knew that
you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing
here, so that they may believe that you sent me." 43When he had
said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" 44The
dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face
wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."
Sermon: “Love Unbound”
There’s
a moment in childhood that is the most terrifying. It’s a moment when your reality is shaken,
when you feel powerless, afraid and deep in sorrow. (I’m not talking about the moment your
parents made you eat your vegetables.)
I’m
talking about the first time you saw a parent cry.
Can
you remember that moment?
It
is deeply unsettling seeing one who you believe to be bigger than life
overwhelmed by sadness.
One
moment of my life sticks with me in the same way.
It
was when I saw God cry.
I
was there for the resurrection, you see.
No,
not that resurrection, the one before
that. I mean I was there when Jesus
raised his friend Lazarus from the dead.
I was a neighbor to Lazarus, Mary and Martha and, like good neighbors
still do, I took them a nice kosher casserole and stayed close by to take care
of anything they needed. You could say I
was in the ground zero of their grief. I
heard it all.
I
heard how Mary, who had anointed Jesus with expensive oil, burial oil to be
precise, went to him, trusting him to help.
“Lazarus is sick, you must come,” she told him. But she didn’t get the answer she
expected. Apparently, he told her it
wasn’t a life-threatening illness and left it at that. But Mary knew differently. Soon, we all did.
Jesus
didn’t come to Bethany, and the worst happened: Lazarus died. Martha was stoic and expressed her grief
through organizing everything: the Jewish funeral, the prayers, where family
would stay, what everyone would eat. But
Mary was inconsolable. It seemed she had
lost not only her brother, but also her faith in Jesus.
It
took four days for Jesus to come after Lazarus died. But he did finally come. Martha went to meet him, but Mary
wouldn’t. Jesus then called for Mary to
come meet him, and she reluctantly did.
The first words out of her mouth were what all of us were thinking, but
were afraid to say, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have
died.” And then she wept at his feet.
If
you watch someone you deeply care for cry, and you don’t even get misty-eyed,
you’re not really human. So, this next
moment, the next two words in your Bible, say it all: Jesus wept.
Jesus wept.
And
like watching a parent weep, I never saw him the same way again. He was suddenly human to me. I don’t think
we’ll ever understand the mystery of Jesus being both fully human and fully
God, but I think that mystery lies somewhere in those two words.
Tears
still streaming down his holy-and-human face, Jesus went to Lazarus’ tomb. He told people there to roll the stone in
front of it away. But he did not enter.
Perhaps
he knew there was another time in his life, soon, when he would have to enter a
tomb, and was hesitant to do it now.
Perhaps he was overcome by grief for his friend. We’ll never know. But he did not go in, and instead shouted to
his friend, “Lazarus! Come out!”
What
happened next sounds like some sort of Halloween mummy scene, and it kind of
was. Lazarus came awkwardly bumbling
out, all wrapped up in his funeral cloths.
Jesus did not run to him. He did
not embrace him. Instead, he spoke only
six words, to us gathered there, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
We
knew that word “unbind” well. It was
used to describe setting prisoners free, releasing them from captivity. Jesus wanted us to play a part in Lazarus’
resurrection. Because, you see, sometimes
you’re out of the tomb, but death still seems all around you. And sometimes, you just need someone else’s
help to get untangled from all that despair and darkness. You simply can’t unbind yourself.
I
tried to teach this to my children, to help them see their need for other
people and for God. But when I told them
about Jesus, I didn’t focus on the resurrections, though that is certainly an
essential part of the story. Instead, I
told them those two words, words that changed it all for me, “Jesus wept.”
We
all want many things from God. A God who makes us feel strong and resilient
and safe. A God who makes us feel right
and validated and important. A God who
makes us feel like it’s all going to be okay.
But I’ll tell you what we need
from God. We need a God who weeps.
A God who chose to be
bound by this fragile flesh-and-blood we wear all the time, so that we might
know unbound love. The love of a God who becomes
one of us in order to weep with us. The
love of a God who teaches us how to be saints to one another, to wipe away each
other’s tears, and unbind each other from all of the rags of despair we are too
accustomed to wearing, until we’re all set free.
So
I ask you the same question I asked of my children after telling them this
story: what binds you? What things of
death cling to you today? Perhaps you
wear grief from never getting to be reconciled to someone before they died. Perhaps you wear anger at an injustice
someone else has done to you, one you are still paying for. Perhaps you wear pride, telling yourself you
have earned the right to think only of your needs at this stage of your
life.
Jesus
says those same six words to you. You
need to be unbound and set free. But
here’s the thing (something essential to realize): you can’t set yourself free,
not even with the best books or understanding or prayers. There’s a reason Jesus told us in the crowd
to unbind Lazarus. He couldn’t do it for
himself. We have to have community set
us free. So don’t be afraid to ask for
help when you need it. Faith was never
meant to be a solitary activity.
The
second question I ask is this: who does
Jesus want you to unbind and set free?
Perhaps you’ve held a grudge for decades, one you maybe even inherited,
and are holding someone captive in your anger.
Unbind them and let them go.
Perhaps
you see the same person in need every week, and never look them in the eye or
learn their name. Set them free, and treat them like a human being.
Perhaps
you hold political or religious bitterness towards someone who thinks
differently than you do, maybe someone you’ve never even met. Admit that none of us have all the answers,
and set them free from division and competition by loving them as best you can,
just as Jesus calls you to do.
Jesus
wept. It really does all come down to
that shortest verse of your Bible. If he
truly weeps with us, if he was truly one of us, then nothing can hold us
captive, not even death. Thanks be to
God! Amen.
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