The Reverend Carolyn Estrada

"Where’s everyone going?"

"That music sounds like a requiem. There must be another funeral…"

"Look – it’s Jesus, walking with Martha and Mary. They must be taking him to see where Lazarus is laid."

"You’d have thought Jesus would have come earlier – in time for his friend’s funeral at least."

"From what I hear, if he’d been here earlier, Lazarus wouldn’t have died."

"Well, it may not be too late – I heard he raised Jairus’ daughter from the dead."

"And the widow’s son, also!"

"So they say – but they hadn’t been dead for four days…"

Village gossip. First century kibitzers:

Where are they going? What are they doing? What’s going to happen?

We’re curious, too, so we tag along, following the Jews who have come with Mary, becoming part of an ever-growing procession of the curious, the hopeful, the skeptical...

When Jesus is around, you never know what might happen!

Frederick Buechner points out that before the Gospel is "good news" it is "bad news." It’s the accumulation of losses, pains, and hurts we all amass. It’s life portrayed on the evening news, life in which bad things happen to good people – or even to bad ones.

Lazarus in the tomb, Buechner suggests, represents the ultimate "bad news" of human existence.

And then there’s resurrection!

Resurrection: a concept so out-of-the-ordinary, so out of the normal course of events, that it captures the imagination – and has evoked its own share of speculation.

There is a scene in Katzanzakis’ book, The Last Temptation of Christ, in which Jesus is having dinner with Martha and Mary – a happy little family scene – except that Lazarus is sitting on the floor in a corner, funeral binding only half off, still reeking of death and decay after his four days in the tomb, picking at his wounds and moaning. He is breathing, but he’s not really alive – we get the sense that he is just waiting to die again.

And in Jose Saramago’s book The Gospel according to Jesus Christ, Mary Magdalene won’t even let Jesus resurrect Lazarus because he’d only just have to die again!

We try to wrap our human minds around what God can do, and we certainly come up short! Teeth or no teeth? Vital or aged? With or without stench? Alive only to die again?

None of this sounds like "Good News" to me!

But none of it sounds like resurrection, either.

It sounds like resuscitation.

It sounds like the restoration of breath rather than the transformation of life.

And yet – there IS Good News here!

Lazarus, with his stench and his binding cloths, groping toward the light, does embody the power of the Gospel to make all things new.

Encounters with Jesus DO offer that possibility of new life!

We’ve seen it in story after story: the woman with the hemorrhage touches the hem of Jesus’ garment and is healed; the paralytic takes up his mat and walks; the blind man sees; the tax collector returns his ill-gotten wealth; Lazarus – or Jairus’ daughter – or the widow’s son – are raised from the dead.

These are not "Fairy Tales."

Jesus doesn’t just drop in, wave his arm and mutter a few magic words, and we have a happily-ever-after ending.

It’s just that the story so often ends with what God has done – the lame walk, the blind see, Lazarus is alive – that it’s easy to think of them in those fairy-tale terms.

So often we focus on what God does: heal the sick, raise the dead, feed the hungry – that we fail to see what WE must do.

It’s easy to overlook the fact that he doesn’t just do FOR us; he does with us. Jesus asks for something – and it is in our response, I believe, that we find that new life, that resurrection.

"Bring him to me," Jesus said of Bartemaeus last week; and Bartemaeus came with alacrity – and then followed him on the Way.

"Who touched me?" Jesus asked, after the woman with the hemorrhage reached out for the hem of his garment; and she came forth from the crowd to speak with him.

"Follow me!" Jesus said to Peter and James and John and Andrew, and they left their boats and engaged in a long and not always easy relationship with him.

"Lazarus, come out!" Jesus calls, and Lazarus moves toward the light, toward the open door of his tomb, toward Jesus.

These incidents are not the ENDS of the stories. The new life of resurrection doesn’t happen with Jesus’ call! It happens with what follows!

Each of these incidents is a part of the PROCESS of new life; each is the BEGINNING of a relationship with Jesus.

Lazarus’ resurrection is dependent upon his accepting the invitation to "Come out." It is dependent upon the shedding of those burial cloths. "Unbind him!" is a powerful directive.

I think of the binding cloths we each of us wear, those attitudes and behaviors which hold us together, hide our wounds and our blemishes – our own stench and decay as it were; those things which keep our false self in place and our true self hidden, from God and one another – even from ourselves.

I think of the work of unbinding – the risk, the trust involved, the relationships formed and deepened – and the new life that results, as anyone in AA can attest.

Yes, new life is possible!

Yes, resurrection does happen!

It is NOT magic, but it IS there, in the relationship with the one who calls us by name.

I read somewhere that so powerful is Jesus’ desire for us to have new life that it’s a good thing he began his command to Lazarus with the name – "Lazarus, come out!" – or all the surrounding graves would have emptied.

I think that observation misses the point.

Yes, Jesus’ desire for us to have new life is powerful!

But yes, also: he DOES call each of us by name: Carolyn, come out! Mary, come out! Robert, come out! Jim, come out!

And we each emerge, with the binding cloths we have used to hold us together, with the stench of our lives that we wish to cover up.

And together, in that relationship with Jesus, we are made whole, and our lives are made new.

May each of us this morning hear the voice of Jesus calling us to "Come out" and may we make our way to him, willing to participate in that process of unbinding which will bring us new life.

Amen.