In my last sermon, I stated how I feel less like a shepherd, and more like God’s border collie. My job as a pastor is not to be a stand-in for God but to point the flock toward Jesus, our good shepherd who calls us each by name.

Today, we come to the story of the Raising of Lazarus. This is the second to last sermon in our worship series, Looking for Love in All The Wrong Places… And here’s the thing… There are lots of wrong places in our lives where we look for love.

We are oppressed. We, like Lazarus, might be bound and in a tomb. You, like Mary and Martha, might be outside a tomb, feeling like help will never come. That there is no hope. That this world is a cold, dark, uncaring place.

Some theologies and churches preach that the world can’t be trusted. The world is a cold, hard, dead place. Death has the last word. Our only hope is heaven. And the path to heaven is paved with correct belief.

Given that there are some 37 million churches in the world and over 30,000 denominations, the chances of getting every brick in that path exactly right are slim to none.

Sometimes theology binds us. The same theology that kept the religious in Jesus’ time from seeing God-in-the-flesh is alive and well in our day. I’m not immune from this.

It’s easy to be cynical. I used to think all Christians were a certain way. They were too heavenly focused to be of any earthly good. Too conservative. Too literal in their reading of the bible. And some are. That’s true. But not all. Some Christians celebrate everything. Some are actively trying to do what Jesus prayed in the Lord’s prayer… that God’s will be done ON EARTH. As it is in heaven. The goal of a Christian is to bring heaven here. To point to God in each and every act of kindness, art, in every fair and honest act of business. This life matters… This body that we inhabit, matters. This world… matters!

In The Gospel of Luke, Jesus’ first sermon is about Isaiah, bringing good news to the poor to free the oppressed and let the prisoner go free.

We are oppressed, often… And we don’t even see the bars. Bad theology is a form of oppression. Cynicism is a form of oppression. We are bound by attitudes and ideologies. And these are the individual things we are bound by.

We are also bound by corporate things. Societal assumptions. We are bound by notions of class, race, gender, and more. Things we don’t even know bind us. Things we rarely examine. Usually, if pointed out directly, we deny it. We can’t face the truth. If we just keep moving, we grow used to the rattle of the chains that bind us. The best way, I think… is to tell stories. People are always telling stories but I was moving too fast to listen.

I find in this time of staying in and not meeting in person just how many meetings I actually had. I had a squirrel brain. One thing then onto the next. My thoughts were scattered, I was hurried and harried. In this slowdown, I’m spending each night at home with my family. Taking in Sam and Eve and how much they’ve grown and what interesting personalities they have. I appreciate my wife and her gifts at organizing and arranging really good ideas. She started Operation Reach Out, a letter writing project for our seniors.[1] These precious things would have gotten lost in the hustle and bustle.

I am also conscious of the layoffs. This slow down isn’t all rosy and relaxing. In fact, while these things slow down, we as a culture are realizing just who carries us: the health care professionals and first responders. We mention them a lot here in church because we have so many among us. But we also have vet techs and animal shelter volunteers. We have grocery story workers and shelf stockers. We have truck drivers. We are noticing them and valuing them. We have the unemployed. Those laid off. And we worry for them, and we are seeing them in a new way because they are us.

We are hearing their stories because we are no longer bound by our old routine. Sometimes the things we think offer love actually seek to bind us, preventing us from being whole, seeing our neighbor, and offering our best love to the world. That’s what it’s about, the living water of God’s love. Yet we often try to damn up that stream. We try to take the vitality out of the Good News of God’s grace because we can’t believe it flows to THEM. Whomever they are. Our enemies. Those not like us. Those of different races, religions, gender expressions and orientations.

I recently read a story of liberation and love in Reader’s Digest. The author writes, “I used to manage an LGBT bookstore. One night, a caller says he things he might be gay and is considering self-harm. We were not a crisis center! But as long as we’re talking, he’s safe, right? So I talk to this guy and I answer questions, and I try to be encouraging, and I’m maybe sounding a little frantic, and I’m definitely ignoring the customers in the store.

Suddenly, this angel of a woman puts her hand on my shoulder and asks for the phone. ‘My turn,’ she says. And she, this 50-something  woman, talks to this stranger on the phone. And A LINE FORMS BEHIND HER. Every customer knows that call, knows that feeling, and every person takes a turn talking to that man.”[2]

This man didn’t know he was bound. Bound by homophobia, depression. And that community in that story points him to resurrection.

Is there something that has you bound in a tomb? What fear keeps you from being the person God has called you to be? Fear? Grief? Isolation from other people in this time? What would it take to unbind you?

The story of Lazarus, whose funeral shrouds trail him out of the tomb, offers us a metaphor of new life as we recognize that true love is that which unbinds us, that wants more for us, not less, that wants freedom and life for us. Jesus is calling us out of the tomb.

Maybe we were cocooning in our routines or homes. Cocooning in our ideologies. But this COVID-19 has shown us our cocoons. Now that we HAVE to stay home, we miss the option of going out. We are more aware of what we have given up.

Maybe we can hear more clearly Jesus saying to us, “Come out!”  Walk!  Live!  Love!  In the words of one of my favorite songs of late, “We don’t need no mournful sounds. Shake your grave clothes to the ground!”[3] Offer your deepest self, your deepest love, for the world.

Of course this kind of liberation can be dangerous, as we will see as the events of Holy Week loom closer. Jesus chooses to live a liberated life, boldly, in the face of all the death that tries to stop him…. And… spoiler alert… death loses. Jesus wins. “Come out! Walk!  Live!  Love!”

And if you feel you can’t do that… If you’re worried. Then make a call. Post online. Send a letter or email. If you feel like you’re not going to make it…. Say something. Because then you’ll see a whole line of people waiting to talk. Every church member knows that call, knows that feeling, and every person is ready to take a turn talking to you, saying… “Come out! Walk! Live! Love!”  Amen.

Works Cited

^[1][1] You can sign up here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0e4fafa62fa3fc1-uccoperation

^[2][2] Readers Digest, February 2020, Page 85.

^[3][3] Birdtalker’s Graveclothes can be found here: https://youtu.be/viIahr_MUjk