Who Would Do It?
This story has the shortest verse in the bible.
“Jesus wept.”
Sit with that and let it sink in.
Welcome your own tears and irritability.
Your fear and anxiety and boredom
and for any hard things in your day.
Give space to the suffering in our world
Jesus wept. We can too.
Imagine all the characters in the story.
There’s Mary and Martha, there’s Jesus,
there are the neighbours, there to comfort.
Get a picture of them in your imagination
all standing around the cave where Lazarus was.
“Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” – John 11:38-45
When Jesus says, “Unbind him” who was he talking to?
I mean, really, who did he expect to march to the mouth of the tomb
and unwrap the burial clothes of Lazarus,
who had been dead for three days?
I mean who would do that?
And yet someone stepped forward.
Let us sit with this for a moment.
We all have some ability to be the ones who unbind others and help them back to life.
We can be a source of support and strength for those who need it most.
How might we step forward and answer the call to help those around us?
In what ways might we bring new life and hope to those who are in need?
