Although all of us need the deep assurance and comfort of God's abiding love through Jesus - an image so perfectly depicted in the 23rd psalm, in this fourth Sunday of Easter, we still need to wrap our heads around the impact of God's amazing resurrection of the Son, Jesus. We need a picture to help us understand the power of the phrase 'I am doing a new thing' and the concept of 'bringing life out of the heart of death'.
Who is not moved when Jesus weeps outside the closed tomb of his friend? We have done this, no? We have had to say final goodbyes to people we love deeply and whose very existence we will miss. We have had to confront the possibility of living out our lives without this beloved person. For those of us who are widowed, we have had to figure out who we are now that we are not one half of a couple. We have to learn how to be single again, but in a new way.
Lazarus gives us all this. "Lazarus, come out!" Jesus cries. Humans have rolled the stone away from the front of Lazarus' tomb, but Lazarus himself must respond to the command of the Son of God, the command to walk from death to life, the command to live yet again. He must hear the Lord's voice and follow.
Deep in the damp darkness of death, Lazarus hears the Savior's call and steps from beyond the veil back into the bright sunlight of his old life. Yet, it will never truly be life as he once knew it, for he has tasted death and come again into the world of the living. Lazarus has stepped out.
Jesus then commands, "Unbind him, and set him free". Of course Jesus is talking about the burial cloths that are wrapped around the corpse, the bindings of this world which will forever keep him among the dead and restrict his ability to walk and live and move and jump in this new /old life of his.
"Unbind him and set him free!" Leave behind all that is death to you - shuck it off and step out into a new life, a new being, a new power, a new relationship with this God who has given you life yet again. Whether it is addiction or anger or deep wounds or resentment or any other prison of death that holds you captive, step out of your tomb and throw off all that binds you to death. Live.
Now Lazarus is not a resurrection story in that Lazarus is resuscitated rather than resurrected. Lazarus will, in fact, die again another day.
But we get it, don't we? We understand that image of being closed in a tomb from which we see no escape. We long for a time when all that binds us is pulled away and we can live a life we could never have imagined before. Lazarus teaches us the possibility of living a transformed life as a transformed person.
Between the healing of the man born blind and the calling out of the dead Lazarus, we get the good shepherd. Perhaps after these two extra stories of resurrection we are now ready to figure out who it is who is calling us out, what life with him will look like and whether, in the end, we can trust him at all.
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