I try to remind myself often that faith isn’t merely a head exercise. It is not solely about what we know or how we feel, even what we believe. Nor is it about who has it right, who has it more right and who has it wrong. Faith certainly partly is about knowing in our minds and appreciating in our hearts the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, AND we are to take it further. Jesus did not live and die solely so we could idealize him; as the Messiah, the living and breathing Son of God, he came to show us, role model for us, how we are to live our lives.
Christian faith is about integrating the wisdom of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus into our own lives. Most of my divinity school training and articles I’ve read since then point to how this poignant story about Lazarus and his grieving sisters Martha and Mary is about the foreshadowing of Jesus’s resurrection. and, by all means it is that. And, I think it is a powerful story that illustrates integration of the wisdom Jesus shared with the people he loved dearly.
One of the reasons I like this story about Lazarus and his sisters so much is that it shows the depths of Jesus empathy and compassion for humanity. When Jesus sees Mary weeping, Jesus is greatly diturbed in spirit and deeply moved. We read that Jesus himself weeps. (He knows that Lazarus is not dead. He is not crying because Lazarus is dead.) He’s crying because these people he loves are so very devastated. He cannot help but be moved by their grief and sorrow even when he knows he’s about to change the whole situation. It’s in his capacity and willingness to express human emotion, connecting and resonating with the experience of others, and weeping himself that the people of the town witness his love for Lazarus, Mary and Martha. They cry out, “See how he loved him!” He never says how much he loves Lazarus, Martha or Mary. He embodies his truth of love, compassion and empathy.
Jesus makes it known to his disciples, later to Martha and Mary, and then to all those gathered in the town that the illness that Lazarus has does not lead to death. Rather this experience is about another kind of death. It’s a situation through which God is glorified and the Son of God may be glorified through it as well. Jesus explains to Martha that her brother will rise again. He shares with her that He Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life. That those who believe in him even though they die, will live. Martha believes him, so much so that she goes back to the house and tells Mary to go talk to him too.
According to John this Mary is the same woman who earlier anointed Jesus with expensive perfume and wiped his feet with her hair, preparing him for his own death. Though no one likely grasped the significance of her actions in the moment it was happening, maybe not even Mary, she is the one who cermonially marked and sealed his death and resurrection with oil. His essence, the deepest truth of his life seen and honored so deeply by Mary, Jesus now sees and honors the depths of suffering and sorrow in Mary’s heart. It is when Jesus is speaking to this Mary that he is “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” This is when he himself weeps and the people of the town witness Jesus love for all those grieving.
The people lead him to the cave where Lazarus has been buried for four days now. Jesus instructs them to remove the stone. He has this brief conversation with God right there in front of everyone. Saying to God and reminding everyone else in the process what this is really about- so that they may believe it was God who sent Jesus. Jesus then cries with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out of the cave with his hands and feet still bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth as well. And Jesus says to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Unbind him and let him go.
Many of us are feeling quite bound up lately as we wait out COVID19 and the myriad of ways it is disrupting life as we know it. There are moments in this pandemic when I feel like Martha and Mary and say to God in my prayers, what is taking you so long to intervene? If you would just come on all ready all these people wouldn’t have to die. There is that push and pull of faith- the both believing in a merciful and loving God and at the same time wondering what the hell God is up to in or with all this. Though I don’t believe Jesus is going to come swooshing in, bringing people back to life from coronavirus, I very much sense the presence of God in our midst during this strange and unusual time. A time of uncharted solutions and a skyrocket in fear and anxiety as we live in the unknown and all the ways this is affecting us, the people we love and hold dear, and all the people we don’t know and yet have a depth of compassion for because they too are living is so much uncertainty, fear, and disruption.
When I listen for the whispers of the Holy Spirit in this time, I hear echos of the gospel today. It may not sound like good news on first bounce, but if I stay with it long enough, I can feel the deeper reverberations of a base note of truth, a calling into death so that I may be unbound and live more freely in God’s grace.
Just for a moment, I invite you to place a hand on your chest, closing your eyes, and taking a deep breath. Deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. Really let the out breath move out as long as it can. In and out. Another one. With your hand still on your chest, ask yourself “What within me needs to die?” It is an off question. Likely you’ve never asked yourself this before. Stay with me. Keep breathing. Try to let your body answer rather than your head.
As I move through the last week of this most lenty lent what needs to die? What cave is God calling me out of? What is Jesus calling forth to be unbound? What is God seeking to set free within me? Just stay with it a moment longer. Breathing in and out of your heart space, letting whatever arise that needs or wants to arise. And, if nothing comes, that is perfectly good too. Sometimes nothing arises. The practice of slowing down, checking in, and asking the question of our soul, our heart, our gracious and loving God is a spiritual discipline in and of itself. A discipline that draws us in closer contact with God, ourselves and likely produces a positive ripple effect out towards others.
Have I been harboring a negative attitude that is binding me? Am I tethered to a belief that is harming me? Am I stuck in a pattern that isn’t serving me? Does a thought pattern hold me hostage? Is there a way I blame others that keeps me stuck? Am I constantly raging at someone in my own mind? By your loving grace, merciful God, show me what needs to die, so that I may surrender and be unbound. May you set me free. May my soul be given the chance to rise again.
Taking another deep breath in and slowly blow it out. Breathing in allowing God’s wisdom to resonate within you, breathing out anything that gets in the way of that wisdom and truth. Breathing in freedom, breathing out constriction. Opening your eyes when that feels good and right to you.
I think this is how we glorify God… we live life through little deaths in the shadow of the cross, the Big Death, and we move through those deaths, being unbound and being set free by the grace of God in the shadow and hope of the Big Resurrection. In this way God sets our souls free to rise. Indeed Lazarus rose again. By the grace of God, I have risen many times again. So many of the people I know and love have moved through deaths in their lives- loss of marriage, loss of loved ones, loss of jobs, loss of health, loss of sanity, loss of finances, loss of the way we thought life was going to go, loss of dreams. There are so very many losses in life. And, they are all a death in their own right. They create a situation where as we move forward in life we can no longer find our security and safety in the same ways. We have to learn new ways to ground ourselves, move through our days, find new routines, and ways to stay present to life amidst our grieving.
The collect today aptly says “among the swift and varied changes of the world, may our hearts be surely fixed where true joys are to be found.” With every death comes a time of uncertainty and re-grounding. It’s a liminal space, a space where the veil between heaven and earth is thinner. A time when we (if we choose) can lean more closely into a loving God and possibly even sense His presence with us. These are swift and varied times of changes in the world for sure. The reality is that the world is always in swift and varied changes. Right now it is heightened, palpable partly because so many of us are experiencing the same cause of change in the world.
And, amid these strange and unusual times I sense people leaning in to a loving God. There is a reaching for, a seeking, and leaning in, an attempt to fix our hearts where true joys are to be found. Regardless of what is going on in the world, our grieving hearts, the swift movements of our souls, so many of us are seeking rest in a love, a grounding, a source, a center that is untethered to the world, not influenced by the worldly swift and varied changes. We are seeking an ease in tethering ourselves to the flow of a loving God. Untethering from the fears, frustrations and uncertainty of this time, and rather tethering ourselves in the grounding love of a merciful God. So that as we cope with the world, interact with our loved ones and neighbors, when we listen to the news, we may experience the integration of our faith in our beings, in our words, in the ways we respond rather than react. With our hearts surely fixed on what brings true joy, we may meet the demands of this time with grace and peace. What within me has to die to create the space to get me closer home to a loving God and grow the capacity to stay in God’s flow? What needs to get out of the way?
In the midst of taking my losses during this pandemic and in life in general, dying the little deaths of life, I forget that little deaths are part of the journey. Deaths are part of the adventure. Sometimes in taking my losses I loose perspective of acceptance; the acceptance that losses, little deaths are part of life. And, just like we see Jesus with Mary and the people of the town in their grief taking their loss, experiencing the depths of their grief, Jesus is with us too. I find comfort in knowing a loving God is with me in my times of sorrow. That my loving God is likely greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved by my pain. He may even weep along with me which is saying something because I’m a real crier.
And, the good news for me and everyone else is that given our faith death is not the end of the story. For Christians, in little deaths and in our ultimate death on earth, death doesn’t have the privilege of the last word. Even though things, relationships, situations, circumstances die, by the grace of God we will live. And if we so choose to surrender to being unbound, we may just find that the little deaths crack open an opportunity to be set free. As we take our losses, God can unbind us and set us free. Through The Resurrection, we are given the hope that our soul will rise again. Amen.
Stay tuned as this theme of Soul Rising will continue through Holy Week, Easter and the season of Eastertide. I pray that each and every one of us today and in the days to come among the swift and varied changes of the world, we may find our hearts surely fixes to God, where true joys are to be found.
You can find a 10 minute meditation called Becoming Unbound on Mindful Christians to practice further what we practiced briefly in this episode.