“Unbind him, and let him go,” said Jesus to Lazarus who had just emerged from the tomb. That’s from the 11th chapter of John’s Gospel. And then from the 20th chapter: “Do not hold on to me” said Jesus to Mary Magdalene when he himself had emerged from the tomb. While our Christian scriptures insist—from beginning to end—that death does not have the final word, John makes it clear that the life that emerges from the tomb is not the same. We don’t control it. We have to release the bandages we carefully wrapped it in, we have to loosen our grip, we have to let go.
It’s humbling for a preacher to have to follow these long vivid narratives that the lectionary provides from John’s Gospel. I have to ask myself, what is there to add to a story as rich and full as the one we just heard? We have Jesus taking his sweet time crossing back over the Jordan, we have Judeans plotting against him, we have anxious disciples, we have Jesus disclosing himself, we have Martha’s confession of Christ, we have weeping mourners, we have a guy four days dead suddenly emerging from the tomb, dragging his stinking bandages. Which is an image surely as disturbing as it is miraculous. For those of us who have not yet seen the revival of a person four days dead—or who have legitimate scientific doubts about the very possibility—we well might ask. What life can emerge from this story?
One way I think of my job as a preacher is to unbind —so to speak—Biblical stories from their historical context, so that they might serve as Good News in our own time. That’s not to say that context isn’t necessary and good. For example, it’s helpful to know that Jesus’ miracles—which John calls signs—are public actions that may seem miraculous by our standards. But they are symbolically rich far beyond the specifics of the miracle, and their purpose is always to display or reveal God’s glory in Jesus. So you might think of them as stories in which the specific points to something more general that John wants us to know about God. “This illness…is for God’s glory,” said Jesus, “so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
That which is personal has a plenary purpose. The Fourth Gospel goes to some length to instruct us that Lazarus was a very particular case. For one thing, we’re told that Jesus loved Lazarus and his sisters “very much.” But Jesus did not just comfort the mourning family. In fact, he barely comforted the sisters at all, although he did host a very respectful theological conversation with Martha. From which it becomes clear to us that his mission is larger than healing their grief, although it does include that. Ultimately, his mission is to heal all of our grief.
Because the Gospel of John is intended to be read symbolically, we can think of Lazarus and his family are symbols of ourselves. Jesus loves each of us enough to meet us at the point of our particular sadness, and call forth life from what we have lost. But the story of also reminds us that that sometimes we’ll have to sit with our grief for longer than we want to. Which we’re all doing plenty of these days, no? There is an unusual amount of death, and even more fear of death, in our midst. And we know that God will not shield us from our mortality, any more than God shielded Lazarus. This reality regularly brings us to tears, just as Mary and Martha and Jesus were brought to tears by death.
And at an even more mundane level, we are grieving the way things used to be. The rhythms of work and worship and friendship by which we normally measure our days have all been disrupted. And we honestly don’t know if they will ever return to exactly what they were. What we do know is that—when we are experiencing grief—the only way to get through it is to go through it.
Understanding the stages of grief may provide some kind of map to this unknown territory, as long as we remember nobody really experiences them in the linear order that Dr. Kubler-Ross first described them. But perhaps this this description, from her colleague David Kessler, will sound familiar. “There’s denial, which we say a lot of early on: This virus won’t affect us. There’s anger: You’re making me stay home and taking away my activities. There’s bargaining: Okay, if I social distance for two weeks everything will be better, right? There’s sadness: I don’t know when this will end. And finally there’s acceptance. This is happening; I have to figure out how to proceed.” That’s kind of a contemporary way of saying “unbind him.” In order for Lazarus—or for ourselves—to lead the life we have been given now, we have to leave aside our bondage to the past.
And we can. If Lazarus could live out the remainder of his human life, having been enclosed in a tomb and having bourn death in his very body, then we can live though this pandemic season. Our homes may feel claustrophobic, our families may cry, but we know that Jesus cries with them and with us. And when life roars back—which it always does, even if not in time for us all to be in church on Easter—we can prepare ourselves to live in freedom. Remember that in John’s Gospel the particular story always points us the plenary truth.
Over these past four weeks of Lent, our adult education program has been studying the Baptismal Covenant. That is, the commitments to Christian ethics that we make anew at every Baptism. Last Wednesday, our own Lorenso Arciniega told us how he lived out his commitment to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving his neighbor as himself. His story surprised me; it surprised just about everyone who heard him, I think. That’s because we already know him as a person with a big heart for people, especially the most vulnerable. He’s one of the handful at Trinity who I know to be right there when someone needs an ear or some encouragement. But what many of us didn’t know is that Lorenso is also a social justice leader. As a high school freshman, he organized the 8000 person march on Cesar Chavez Park, opposition to the anti-immigrant California State proposition 187. “This initiative was difficult to accept as several of my friends and family members would be affected,” Lorenso said. “As a citizen of the United States, I felt it was my duty to stand up and speak on behalf of those who were being oppressed.”
That’s what serving Christ in all persons looks like. When we start by loving one neighbor, we may be surprised by how God calls us to love all our neighbors. For those who would truly risk love, the personal is always political. I think that’s one way we are supposed to understand the miraculous signs of Jesus as John recorded them. They were manifestations of God’s love in particular settings, but they always had plenary purpose. They were revelations of God’s compassionate intentions intended for all of humanity. Even though we may have to wait for their fulfillment. Even though we may have to let go of our timetables. Even though we have to get ourselves free from the bonds of grief that hold us back. God’s unrelenting love is always both once and for all. And in this season when the shadow of death looms near, there may be no more important thing to remember. At the tomb of Lazarus, death was denied for a particular time. But the tomb of Jesus, death was overcome for all time.
