Unbind Us and Let Us Go

Scripture — John 11:17-44 (NRSV)

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

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.”

Devotion

This is truly one of the greatest miracle stories in Scripture, and it’s hard to think of something to say about it that isn’t already said much better by the story itself. (I often think this when I have to preach on many of the great feast days of the church. When you have just heard the story of the Nativity or the Transfiguration or the Crucifixion or the Resurrection read from the inspired Word, what can the preacher possibly add?)

There are just any number of marvelous things about it. There’s the fact that we know from other places in the Scriptures (Luke 10, John 12), that Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were close friends of Jesus, which helps us enter into a moment that must have been personally emotional as well as divinely revelatory. There’s the fact that Jesus chooses this moment to make the great proclamation “I am the resurrection and the life” (11:25) There’s the fact that Martha responds with a beautiful affirmation of faith: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world” (11:27). There’s the interaction between the two sisters. There’s the fact that Mary feels comfortable calling out Jesus for his apparent inattention to her needs and prayers (11:32; how many times have some of us felt like we’ve been there?) And finally, there is the amazing miracle itself, when a dead man comes out of the grave.

Today when I came to it, though, I thought about it most in relation to our Ezekiel passage from yesterday, where a vast valley of dry bones—at least for a moment—come out of the grave. (The placing together of these two passages for the Fifth Sunday of Lent is not an accident. The lectionary compilers did it on purpose.)

No one in this story specifically refers to Ezekiel in the way we find elsewhere in the Gospel stories, when Jesus or the Gospel author sometimes announces that a certain action or miracle fulfills a certain prophecy from the Hebrew Bible. But the action of the story recalls the Ezekiel passage.

Someone or something is dead, gone, and hopeless—a fact emphasized here by our narrator John informing us that it’s taken four days to get there and the body probably stinks. A prophecy is pronounced over the dead, and a command is issued for the dead to come back to life. And Lazarus does.

There’s one key difference, though. As I noted yesterday, we don’t know what happened to the bones after Ezekiel’s prophecy was over. But we do know what happens to Lazarus here; Jesus orders those around to unbind Lazarus from the grave clothes he is still trailing and to let him go. From the most hopeless place of all, from the grave, unable to save or raise himself, Lazarus is freed and unbound and released into a new life.

And if that won’t preach in Lent, then nothing will.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Jesus’ Sacrifice (John 10-12).