Our Lord Jesus called us to follow his path of suffering for the sake of the world, and that frightens us even more than death sometimes: when we meet him, risen, he calms our fears by showing us where that path ultimately goes, and how he goes with us.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, the Resurrection of Our Lord, year A; texts:  Matthew 28:1-10 (with reference to John 13 and Psalm 27:1)

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

“Do you know what I have done to you?”  On Thursday we heard Jesus say this to his disciples.  Do you know what I have done to you?  He had just washed their feet, obviously.  But he had a deeper question: did they understand this?  So he went on, “I have set you an example.  You call me Teacher and Lord, and I am, but I have just served you.  This is the example.  This is now what you are called to do.  As I have loved you, so you should love one another.”

When the women came to the tomb, first the angel, and later Jesus, said, “Do not be afraid.”  But only minutes after those words on Thursday, Jesus also had to say, “Do not be afraid.”

Do you understand why?  The women were afraid at the tomb; why?  Because of the rolled away stone, the angel from heaven?  Probably.  The guards were afraid, so much so that they were paralyzed on the ground, as if they were dead.

But I think there is a deeper fear at play for disciples of our Lord Jesus to which we need our Lord to speak.  The women came to the tomb to pay respects to their dead Master, and may or may not have remembered he promised he would rise from the dead.  But what they did know was this: he had intentionally taken the path that led to his death.  He was no victim, he chose this way.  Whatever happened afterward.  And they knew that he had also clearly, openly called them, commanded them even, that if they were to follow him, this was their path as well.

Now do you see, sisters and brothers, why we, who are also disciples of this crucified Lord, might be afraid?  Why we might deeply need to hear our Lord’s comforting voice on the road of our lives?

We return to Thursday and Friday and Saturday, to the Great Three Days (which actually conclude tonight at sundown), so that we can fully understand this day, this morning.  And what comes next.

This path of Jesus, this chosen way he takes, the example he sets before us, is central to all the imagery of the Three Days.  Did you ever notice that all our images of the faithful path we see in these days involve loss?

Jesus on his knees, washing the feet of his disciples and saying, “do this.”  Lose your dignity and pride, get on your knees and serve each other.

Jesus giving bread and wine and tying it to his body and blood, to his death.  So every time we celebrate the meal, as Paul told us Thursday, we “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”  Every Eucharist speaks of his sacrifice, is shaped by this image.

Jesus in the garden that night, doing the Father’s will.  Setting aside what he wants, his way, and willingly choosing his Father’s way.

Friday’s cross is a massive image of loss, but remember the truth of the Gospels: this was a chosen path; this is in fact the very place where Jesus begins to rule in truth, as King of the world.  His rule will be found in giving up of power and dominance, so Jesus gives up all use of power, forbidding the angel armies and Peter to intervene.  His rule will be found in losing oneself for the sake of others, of entering suffering and death to redeem all, so Jesus is, on the humiliating cross of Rome, declared King by his enemies.

And last night, when we turned to stories of deliverance, we saw the same images again and again.

The Israelites have to trust the Lord and go into the sea, risk their death, before they get to the other side.  They have to go into wilderness to find Promised Land.

Jonah sacrifices himself to save the ship, tells his fellow sailors to throw him in, because the storm has come due to his disobedience.  The swallowing of Jonah by the great sea monster – a horrible image – is actually God’s deliverance of Jonah from drowning.

And the three young men, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, go into the flames saying, “We don’t know if God will save us or not, but we won’t bow down to your statue.  So do what you will.”

Christian people often say they are not afraid of death, they are more afraid of dying.  There’s more truth in that that we know.  We mean the process of death, the last hours, days, months, when we say that, of course.  Christians trust in the resurrection of the dead.  But many fear lingering, painful deaths, fear being a burden to loved ones, fear suffering that can’t be alleviated.

But we’ve made sacrificial love, the love Jesus has, the love to which he called all his disciples, such a high standard – to give one’s life – that we have effectively removed it from our daily lives.  And that’s because that’s the dying we really fear.

Because if we truly understood Jesus’ example, it would mean that we would live in our closest relationships losing ourselves for the sake of the other.  Dying, even.  Dying to getting our own way.  Dying to “being ourselves” and acting however we feel like acting.  Dying to being centered on ourselves that we might focus on others.

And in our broken world, sometimes it seems as if the only ones who are dying to self are those who are forced into it by abuse and attack by those closest to them, or forced into it by a system that perpetuates poverty and want in a world of abundance.  This is not the servant life Christ imagines.  He calls us all to a world where all give of themselves to others and so all are whole and served and loved.  But that kind of giving is a dying to self for the sake of others.

That kind of dying we fear.  Because suddenly we’re not talking about a hypothetical situation where we might be asked to give our lives and we hope we’d find the courage to do what Jesus said.

There’s nothing hypothetical about daily life in this world.  And that’s where the dying, the serving, the sacrificial life is lived.  Yes, Jesus died on a cross, the ultimate end of the path he chose.  But before then, he was on his knees, washing filthy feet.  And somehow he thought they were the same kind of sacrifice.

Our Lord tells us we are needed to save the world, to offer ourselves to end hunger, oppression, suffering.  We know this, it’s our call.

But if we cannot learn to die in our daily lives, how will we ever handle the big tasks?  How can we lose what we need to lose to transform our city so that others might have life, if we’re not even willing to start in our own homes, our own relationships?  How can we lose what we need to lose to end poverty and hunger for people we’ve never met around the world if we’re afraid of losing to those whom we love the most?

So make no mistake, we need our Lord’s words today, “Do not be afraid.”

We need to set aside our fears that we might lose in this world.

That is, start finding ways to help each other find courage to become different people in our homes, at work, at church.  Each of us has choices every day where we could be on our knees to others with our lives, and as we walk this path together we can help encourage each other.  And we can repeat Jesus’ words to each other, “Don’t be afraid.”  So that the Spirit begins to change us into people who truly look like Jesus in this world.

We need to set aside our fears of suffering, too.

We’ve bought into the world’s notion that all suffering is bad and to be avoided.  So we even avoid people in grief and pain because of our fear of suffering, or tell them by words or actions that we don’t want to hear about it.  When in fact our Lord has said that when we enter into that suffering and pain of others with them, though it costs, it is the way we live, and they live.  So facing our fear of suffering, learning that there are far worse things in this world, so that we can stand with others in their pain, will need our reminding each other of Jesus’ words, too.

But mostly, we simply need to hear our Lord and trust.

Because we’re not going to be able to get rid of these fears by straining.  Only by trusting.  As a child trusts a parent, simply because the parent says, “Don’t be afraid.”

That’s where we help each other, as we listen, and walk with each other, when each of us fears this servant life and what it might mean for us.  When we speak Jesus’ comfort into that situation, we stand in his name.  And gradually, together we learn to trust that we need not be afraid anymore.

And all this flows from this great joy of today: when the risen Jesus tells us “do not be afraid,” he frees us from paralysis.

Isn’t it remarkable that the armed, armored, trained soldiers are terrified into paralysis and the weak, ordinary women are standing, and able to go and tell?  They are like dead men, the soldiers.  The women are alive.

They’re still afraid, Matthew says.  But they leave the tomb to do the angel’s bidding “with fear and great joy.”  And great joy.

That’s what we are here to know today, why we’ve come, why this day is the day that matters.  Why this is the true day that the LORD has made and in which we rejoice and are glad.

Because this is what Jesus’ empty tomb means: our path may lead to suffering, to loss, to little daily deaths every day.  But we belong to a Lord who enters death to defeat it.  And who rises from that death to new life.

If Jesus had not risen, the call to follow, to serve, to lose, would still stand for his disciples.  But in rising, he tells us that this path that involves dying is ultimately a path of life.  Certainly life after we die.

But life when we die daily, too: resurrection life filled the early Church and ever since, and they lived without fear, changed their community life, their personal life, changed the world.

And resurrection life fills our lives as well, gives us the courage to live as servant disciples, in sacrificial love, fills our lives with meaning and joy.  Which balances the fear we sometimes feel, just as it has for disciples ever since those first women.

This is the gift of “do not be afraid”: we are freed to live without fear, and to follow our Lord’s example and path.

And perhaps we might begin by recognizing we are learning this path together, and it is a path, so we won’t be fully where we are going to be.  Sometimes our paralysis and fear can come from thinking we have to have it all together all at once.

But we certainly can start with what we might call baby steps.  Start in our homes and lives, at work, here in this place.  We can start learning what it is to walk the path of dying there, where we spend most of our lives, knowing that we are filled with the life of the risen Lord always.

Then, as we learn this, we can also begin to learn what that means in this city, in our neighborhoods, in our nation and world.  We are called to bear in our bodies the love of God for this world, love as Jesus has.  There’s no limit to where we can be useful.

“Do you know what I have done to you?” Jesus asks us.

And we answer today, “yes, though we’re kind of afraid of what this might mean.  But we see you are alive and ruling through this losing, this serving, this giving, this loving.”  We hear our Lord say, “Do not be afraid,” and that gives us the courage we need to go out and be like our Lord ourselves.  And yes, we go out a little afraid, still.  We will need to look for our Lord on our roads so he can continue to meet us and continue to say, “Do not be afraid.”  We go out a little in fear, like those women.

But we also, like those women, go out in great joy.  Because our Lord is risen; the Triune God has entered the death and suffering and evil and pain of this world and of our lives and changed it into life and wholeness and good and joy, and that is a gift we know now, even as we long for its fullness when we make our final journey through death.

Do not be afraid, my friends, for we belong to the Lord of Life.  It is a path he has walked already to which we are now called.  And since the risen Lord is our light and our salvation, what shall we fear?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

In the Word, water, wine and bread—and now through us—Christ pours out his love for all the world. 

Vicar Emily Beckering; Maundy Thursday; texts: John 13:1-17, 31b-34; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”

In tonight’s gospel, and in our own journey through Holy Week, we are nearing the end. We are drawing closer to Jesus’ crucifixion and death. In these last hours, Jesus works intently to show and form his disciple by his love. Through everything that happens in tonight’s gospel, and through everything in our liturgy this evening, Christ is pouring out his love for us and for the world.

Christ pours this love out in water, Word, bread and wine. 

Jesus first pours this love out upon his disciples by washing their feet. Their master and teacher is now the one who kneels before them. They do not know what he has done to them, or will do for them, nor will they until his resurrection. He is not only cleaning their feet, or even reversing their roles, but rather expressing his deep love for them; it is a tangible experience of that love for them to cling to in the days ahead that will stir up doubt and fear. As he pours the water out over their feet, he pours out his love over them. In doing so, he shows them the love that he will ultimately pour out on the cross.

He also points to this love as he pours the wine and breaks the bread. In this same night in which he will be betrayed, as we hear from Paul, our Lord Jesus took bread, gave thanks, and broke it, saying, “This is my body for you.” And he took the cup saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.”

This evening, in these same Words, water, and wine, Christ pours out his love upon us as he did for the disciples. Jesus is also the one at our feet. When we watch the water being poured out over our sisters’ and brothers’ feet later this evening, we see Christ’s love.

When we dip our fingers into the font, the water which made us God’s own and united us with Christ’s death and resurrection, we touch Christ’s love. By this water, we too have been washed clean.

Through the absolution given to us at the beginning of worship, we heard Christ’s love saying, “I forgive you all of your sins.”

These same words are given to us tonight at the table. When we watch the wine poured out, drink it, and eat the bread, we are fed by Christ’s love. With, in, and under the bread and wine, Christ says to us, “Out of the deep, unfailing love with which I love you, I promise the forgiveness of all your sins and eternal life.”

It is as if through all of this, the Triune God is saying to us, “are you beginning to see how much I love you?”

If we are just beginning to see, then we see the full extent of Jesus’ love by his death on the cross, where he literally empties himself, pouring himself out for the sake of love.

As such, Jesus Christ is the Triune God’s love poured out, wholly and completely for all.

This is how we know what love is: that Christ laid down his life for us. In him, we see God’s aching passion for the world, God’s desire to be united with us, and the lengths that God was willing to go to make that relationship possible and to show us the depth with which we are loved. God the Son would rather die than lose us to disobedience, distrust, or fear of death. By his death and resurrection, he has conquered sin, death, and everything that would otherwise prevent us from loving God or one another so that we need not fear anything; anything that we could lose—even our life itself—has already ultimately been won.

This is also how we know who God is: that Christ laid down his life for us. In him, we know for sure that God is merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. The Triune God did not choose to be revealed through legions of angels, through earthquakes, wind, or fire but through the silence of a tomb entered because he loved us to the point of death while we were still sinners. God did not deal with this sin and brokenness by punishing us, abandoning or giving up on us, or destroying us, but by taking it all on through Christ and offering us forgiveness, relationship, and everlasting life. Even in the night in which he was betrayed, he gives himself fully to his betrayer.

We see God’s full intention in Christ—the one who was born that all might know God’s love, died that no one be separated from it, rose again that we might have life in his name, prayed for us in the garden of Gethsemane before we were born, and comes to us tonight in the bread and wine so that we might trust that all of these promises are for us—we have been loved since the very beginning and that love will never waiver.

Now that we know that we are his own and loved to the end, we are given a new commandment: to love as Christ has loved us.

Now we become Christ’s love poured out.

Through the love with which he loves us, Christ unites us at his table. As we eat the bread and drink the wine, Christ makes us into his actual body and blood. As his body, we will live, love, and die like Christ. As his blood, we will be poured out where God’s love is needed. God will place our neighbor’s feet into our hands and ours into our neighbor’s. This is not done figuratively, but in real and profound ways.

Just as washing the twelve’s feet is physical expression of the love that Jesus will pour out for them on the cross, the disciples are to wash one another’s feet as way to act out laying down their lives for one another. It is a practice meant to train their hearts, minds, and bodies to love one another, first in humble service, and then by giving of themselves for each another.

In the same way, we know that the washing of feet once a year is not the fulfillment of Christ’s command, but we do this to train our hearts, minds, and bodies in the posture of giving of ourselves to care for, support, and love one another.

We do the same when we pass Christ’s peace, so that we learn to live our whole lives sharing Christ’s peace with others through words, service, and presence. We share the peace intentionally before we go to the table so that we make a habit of seeking and offering forgiveness and reconciling relationships in order to prepare for Christ to make us into the one body, without divisions.

In all of this—the washing of feet, the passing of peace, the breaking of bread, consoling one another—the Holy Spirit forms us to love one another as Christ. All of these actions are an acting-out beforehand, an internalization of the new commandment so that this love becomes so much a part of us that when the occasion arises to lay down our lives for one another, we do it without hesitation.

We know that we are to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome strangers, and visit the sick and imprisoned—and we do do this, with grateful hearts. But the new commandment that we are given to love one another as Christ has loved us pushes us even further: to love so fiercely that we let go, lose, forgive, die.

This call often comes at the most inconvenient times; the Holy Spirit has a way of putting people on our hearts. When we find ourselves resisting these nudgings, dragging our feet, avoiding—whenever we find ourselves asking, “Lord, let this cup pass from me,”—these moments are when we need to pay the most attention because it is to these places of difficulty and death that we are sent. These are the places where Christ’s love is most needed.

But we are also promised that the Holy Spirit will keep working in us until we become so secure in Christ’s love that we no longer fear death…until we trust that in dying, the Triune God will bring new life: restored relationships, forgiveness, hope, and Christ’s love will show forth. Just as we know who God is through Christ’s love, the world will know Christ through our love. As often as we eat of this bread and drink from this cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. As often as we give of ourselves for one another and for the world, then we proclaim the Lord’s love until he comes.

This day, this week, this whole life—even the new commandment that we are given—is an outpouring of God’s love. All that the Triune God has done through Christ has been done in that love, poured out in water, in wine and bread, in Word, in death, and now through us, in order that all may know that they are Christ’s own, loved without end. We were made and saved in love, by love, for love. That love was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.

Amen.

It is in this Passion of our Lord that Christ Jesus becomes king, shows the depth of divine royalty, reveals the shape of God’s plan to regain rule over this disobedient planet: God, and so also we, will enter into the depths of evil to redeem it from within.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, the Sunday of the Passion, year A; texts:  Isaiah 50:4-9a; Matthew 26:14 – 27:66

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

You want to know what we’ve been missing about today, and this whole week?  This is not a day that begins in triumph and ends in tragedy, it is a day that from beginning to end is about seeing the kingdom of God come to be.  The cross isn’t a setback; it’s the whole plan.  It’s where Jesus acts as the true king.

Matthew, along with Luke and John, reminds us that Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem this week was the coming of a king.  Riding on a donkey, with palms and shouts, this evoked the prophet’s promise that this is how the king would arrive.  So there’s nothing humble about Jesus’ actions on this Sunday, at least not in the sense of the symbolism of his ride into town.  He was declaring himself king.

But we also just heard Matthew tell us that on Friday of this week the soldiers also hailed Jesus as king, and gave him royal appointments and clothes, and the religious leaders also called him king, on the cross.  At the same time, the Gospels all agree that over Jesus’ head at his death was a sign – the same sign all criminals received over their crosses, the sign announcing their name and their crime – and that on Jesus’ sign it declared him a king, the King of the Jews.  Now, Pilate likely intended that as mocking – his crime was his kingship – and the religious leaders certainly read it as such.  And the soldiers and religious leaders also were mocking when they named this of Jesus.  But actually, they all, unknowingly, were proclaiming God’s truth, that here, on this cross, the King was beginning his rule.  And the Gospel writers all understand this.

Jesus becomes king on the cross, that’s what the Gospels say.  The reason for our walking through the events of this week every year, as we’ve done for 2,000 years, is that we more and more understand what happened and why and what it means for us.  But we seemed to have missed this point.

There is a disconnect in our thinking between Jesus’ ministry before this week and the week itself and that has misled us.

We’ve always considered Jesus’ teachings and miracles and ministry as good and worthy of consideration, the start of a great story.  And then we come to this week and we think that it all ends badly.

We blame Judas for his betrayal, the disciples for their fear, the Jewish authorities for their blindness and jealousy, the crowds for their fickleness, or the Roman governor for his cowardice.  If only people would have seen the truth about Jesus, we think, none of this would have happened.  This week is a tragic mistake, an accident.

Or sometimes we see the events of this week as a divine court judgment where the Son of God is tortured and punished because of our sin.  Sometimes it almost sounds like we think almighty God has a blood lust that has to be satisfied, and since our sins are deserving of death, if we’re to avoid that, someone needs to die, someone’s blood needs to be shed.  So in comes Jesus.

But in fact, the Gospels tell us from the beginning that Jesus, the Son of God, will bring in God’s kingdom, will inaugurate the rule of the Triune God, in losing and dying, in entering evil and suffering personally in order to overturn it.

From the beginning of his ministry, Jesus says “the kingdom of God is near, is at hand.”  And he says that in that kingdom, the blessed ones are the meek, the sufferers, the peacemakers.  He says he will rule as king, but that he didn’t come to be served, but to serve.

He declares that in him God has come to be with the broken, the weak, the sad, the dispossessed, and will take on all of that with them, and so bring them to life.  He says that in the kingdom, you lose your life instead of trying to save it, and that you pray for your enemies, love your enemies, even.

How could anyone have expected anything other than the cross from someone who talks like this?

We talk a lot about how the people of Jesus’ day had expectations of Messiah that Jesus didn’t fulfill, that he’d be a political leader, and we smugly note how misguided they were.  We ignore that we have the same expectations post-Easter.  We expect now that he’s risen, now God ought to clean house, rule with power, take care of all this evil, these problems.

We pray as if God’s whole role is to remove suffering from our lives and our world by magic or miracle.  And we act in the world like people always have acted, seeking our own way, using power whenever we can to make happen what we think needs to happen.

And we expect that is how God is supposed to work in the world.  But that’s because we haven’t seen that the cross was the beginning of Jesus’ rule.  We’ve learned nothing from the mistakes of 2,000 years ago.

The Hebrew prophets actually saw the truth coming.  We heard today the first part of the servant songs of Isaiah which speak of God’s anointed servant offering his life for the people, and not just for Israel, but to bless the whole world.  That it would come by God’s anointed taking on suffering and pain, undeservedly, in order to transform it.  Why else do you think the Evangelists persist in saying that all this was told in the Scriptures already?

If this week’s events are a tragic mistake, or Judas’ (or anyone’s) fault, how do you make sense of the prophets, of Jesus’ teaching?  If this week’s events are God’s need for blood and punishment of someone, and Jesus is going to get it instead of us, how do you make sense of the prophets, of Jesus’ teaching?

So this is what we know from Scripture: Pilate’s sign is the hidden truth of God.  This is the way God will rule in the world, not through power and might and destruction of evil.  We just heard Matthew tell us Jesus had 72,000 angels to command should he have wanted a way of power and dominance.  He could have avoided the cross.  That he did not needs to teach us something.

By entering into evil and losing all power to it, by offering himself to restore all things, the Son of God begins God’s rule.  The cross isn’t the Father’s bloodlust being answered by the Son’s death, because in the Triune God, Father, Son and Spirit are offering God’s own life for the sake of the world.

The cross isn’t a tragic mistake, or the blame of any ancient or modern sinners, but God’s ultimate and final way to deal not just with my sin or yours, but the sinful disobedience of this entire world.

God rules by losing, at the cross, and still today.  That’s what this week needs to teach us.

So this is why we do what we do today, and for the next seven days.

We face this week as a solemn contemplation, not as our seeking maudlin pantomime, trying to re-create emotions from 2,000 years ago.  We contemplate the events of today, and each day, that we might learn the truth about God’s rule in the world, a truth we’ve lost by not seeing this week as God would have us see it.  We walk this path each year because we need to take evil as seriously as God does, and because only by regular contemplation can we begin to learn what God is doing.

If we avoid such contemplation, we take great risks.

We risk missing the whole point about God and evil even for today, how God is actually working, not how we want God to work.  Knowing that this is how God did and does deal with it is critical to our understanding of how God acts in the suffering of the world today.

We also risk missing the whole point about how we are to engage the world and evil, how this completely sets aside any question of power/over and dominance for us as well.  Isaiah’s servant songs are famously ambiguous: you can’t tell by reading if it’s God’s anointed, one person, who enters suffering to redeem all, or if it’s God’s anointed, the whole people of God, who do.  I think the answer is both.  Baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection, this path of loss and sacrifice, of entering evil and suffering, is not just Jesus’ chosen path.  It’s our called path.

The Son of God says that suffering is not necessarily the worst thing that can happen, that by sharing the suffering of others we redeem it, that by offering ourselves to stand against evil, though it will cost us, we take the path by which all will be restored.  This is not what the world thinks.  And we can’t know this, believe this, live this, if we don’t take seriously our contemplation of God’s work in this week every year.

This is the truth about this week: we see how God is truly King over all things.

We just sang, “Here might I stay and sing, no story so divine; never was love, dear King!  That is the truth: there is nothing more divine, nothing more loving, nothing more kingly, than this story, this truth, this week.  This is the true love of the true King and God of the universe.  This passion and death are the point of how God will be in the world.

That’s why we “stay and sing.”  So we can learn this.  Trust this.  Begin to understand this.  And so we are ready to follow in the same path when our King calls to us.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Today, Jesus calls us out of our tombs and releases us from everything that binds us so that we may live anew and set others free in Jesus’ name. 

Vicar Emily Beckering, Fifth Sunday in Lent, year A; texts: John 11:1-45, Ezekiel 37:1-14

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Before we get to what God would have us hear today, I’d like to share how the Holy Spirit has been at work for us this week.

Last Sunday, after praying for God to reveal what we would need to hear in worship today, something very clear and specific emerged from John’s gospel. It was such good news and so life-giving that I thought, “Wow! That’s worth sharing!” So I did share it with some of my friends at seminary during Bible study on Monday. Afterwards, based on how the news affected them, I felt even more convicted about what God wanted us to hear.

Then, on Tuesday morning, I felt nudged, drawn—compelled, really—to read ahead in Journey into Lent, by Susan Cherwien, to her reflections for the upcoming Saturday, which was yesterday, April 5th. Upon reading it, I discovered that she and I had heard the same thing from today’s Gospel. And I thought, “Shoot! Do I really need to say it again when it’s already been written so beautifully?”

Through the people at Tuesday noon Bible study, however, and through more conversations throughout the week, it became evident that the Holy Spirit had led me to Susan’s devotion. It was as if God was saying, “Look, this really needs to be said.” Through all of this, the Holy Spirit was at work to make sure that we could all hear God’s word for us multiple times and in multiple ways if need be. Apparently, God has something very important for us to hear today, and it’s just what we need.

In order to hear it, we must first recognize that Lazarus is not the only one who is locked in a tomb; he isn’t the only one who needs to be unbound and set free.

There is much in our own lives that holds us captive, that binds us, that prevents us from being who God has made us to be. We can feel like prisoners without choices or power: we are in bondage and cannot free ourselves.

Some of us are in bondage to productivity, to accomplishment, to feeling like we always have to do everything perfectly, to have everything under control. Others of us are in bondage to other people’s opinions about us; it can be difficult to make decisions without feeling the need to please or to look good in others’ eyes.

Some of us are chained to defining ourselves by our talents, intelligence, or our perceived lack thereof. These chains can weigh so heavily upon us that we always feel the need to prove ourselves to others.

There are economic binds which we face: we worry if there will be enough, if we will be able to pay the bills and are uncertain about which decisions to make. We are also bound by unethical systems: systems in which we contribute to environmental destruction, to racism, to prejudice, to poverty. We can even be chained by anger, bitterness, unfaithfulness, and comparing ourselves to others. Although we wish that we could live differently, we may find ourselves doing that which we do not want to do; time and time again we hurt those who we love.

Sometimes, these worries and patterns of thought and behavior can become so all-encompassing that we are literally entombed: we can be locked away in a tomb of feeling helpless, of guilt or shame, of insecurity, of hiding who we are in order to win love. We can feel trapped in a grave of sickness, of mental illness, of an abusive relationship, of addictions, of perfecting our body. And of course, there is fear; fear in all of its forms. Fear of what tomorrow will bring. Fear that the end is near or nowhere in sight. Fear of failure: of failing as a partner, a spouse, a parent, a friend, a disciple. In the darkness of the tomb, we may begin to doubt whether Christ’s promises are true or are for us.

Although we are afraid, we can also be terrified by life outside of the tomb that we have come to know so well, and so we may retreat even deeper into the darkness. We may wrap ourselves tighter in that which binds us because we are afraid to deal with it. We can lock ourselves away in the tomb rather than risk exposing that which with we struggle.

All of this can feel too overpowering, too big for us to handle, too shameful for God or for anyone else to know about. Like Martha who says, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days,” we can find ourselves saying, “Lord, don’t go there. Don’t bother. It’s too late. There’s only death.”

We look within our tombs and like Israel say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” “We’ve messed up too much this time, gone too far. There’s nothing left to do, nothing left to say.”

But God does have something to say, and yearns for us to hear it! 

God’s word to us today is this: “I am the Lord your God: I am going to open you graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people: and I will bring you back to the land of the living. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people.”

Jesus is calling each of us by name saying, “Come out! Come out of ¬fear and out of shame. Come out of loneliness and self-hatred. Be free of the guilt, you are forgiven. Let go of doubt, you are mine!”

See how Jesus loves us!

There is no darkness too thick, no grave too deep, no stone, no sin, no tomb—nothing— that can prevent Christ from getting to us.

The resurrection is not only a future promise that we will be with God in eternity; resurrection is happening right now! Christ is making us new. God would have us live anew, live again today!

But the resurrection is not for us alone; it does not stop here with us.

Jesus speaks to Lazarus and to all who have gathered around him. He says to the crowd: “Unbind him and let him go!”

Sometimes we are so tightly bound in our wrappings that we need the community around us to help set us free. This is why God has given us one another: so that we can surround each other with love in our suffering, remind each other what Christ has promised us, and help each other be on the lookout for what God is doing in our midst. We are at once Lazarus and the community at the tomb. There are many other people already in our lives and some whom the Holy Spirit has yet to lead us to who also long to hear Jesus’ words: who need to be released from everything that ensnares them, from everything that weighs on them.

The Spirit of the Lord has been poured out upon us in our baptisms; God has anointed us to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, to let the oppressed go free, and to preach the Lord’s favor. We do this when, with actions and with words, we sow love where there is hatred, seek union where there is discord, and offer forgiveness in response to wrong. Jesus is sending us out today saying, “Unbind them, and let them go!”

When we do this in Jesus’ name, then by the power of the Holy Spirit, out of the tomb of darkness shall come light, out of despair, hope, and out of the tomb of death, God will bring life for all.

Amen.