Reverend Bob Phelps
March 29, 2020
Fifth Sunday of Lent
Sermon: Unbound
John 11:1-45
The Reverend Bob Phelps
I can’t imagine a more universal experience than grief. If you have experienced it, you know how painful and unsettling it can be. Some of you also know the pain and the joy of working through that grief and experiencing wholeness again. If you are in the midst of grieving now, you know how acute that pain and unsettlement can be. And I hope you cling to the promise that you will be whole again someday. If you have not yet experienced grief, be thankful, but you know you will at some point. And that you will be whole again.
The story from John’s Gospel that draws us together today is like an onion; we keep peeling off layer after layer of it and finding new things to think about and to be challenged by. As I’ve lived with this story this week, I have come to understand it primarily as a story about grief. There is a lot going on in this story, but, primarily, I think, it is a story of good friends grieving the loss of one they love.
Many of us have gotten that phone call we all dread. A friend, a loved one, is sick, and we need to come, quickly. That usually means we drop whatever was important before the phone rang, and go where we need to be. That’s what makes part of this story hard for us to understand. Word comes to Jesus that his friend, Lazarus, is sick, and he hangs around where he is for two days. When he does arrive, Lazarus is dead, has been for four days. His friend, Martha, reacts as we would expect her to: why didn’t you come when we called? You could have done something.
When they go to the tomb where Lazarus’ body lay, we get a rare glimpse into the human side of Jesus’ nature. We take comfort in believing that Jesus is fully human and fully divine, but we only get a few opportunities to see the fully human side of him. In this story, we see Jesus as one of us, one who grieves the loss of a good friend, one who experiences the pain and separation of death. Makes me a little ashamed of those times I tried to get by with counting “Jesus wept” as my memory verse for the week when I read that verse in the context of the whole story. When the other sister, Mary, joins that grieving community, she echoes her sister: we called; why didn’t you come? You could have done something!
The people who were part of the crowd that gathered with them at the tomb all wondered the same thing: I thought he was their friend; we’ve heard about the things he did in other places. Wonder why he didn’t do something about this?
The answers we get are, frankly, not much more satisfying to us than they probably were to those two grieving sisters. They were believers. They knew they would be reunited with their brother in the promised resurrection, but they were hurting now.
All of them, like all of us, were bound up in the way they understood the world and their place in it.
Our understanding of the world and our place in it has been shaken in recent days in ways that most of us never imagined would come. We have been more fortunate than many in that we have not experienced illness or death in our community because of the worldwide pandemic. We don’t know what our immediate or long-term future might bring. Our faith has sustained us and will continue to sustain us. Even so, in the privacy of our own thoughts and prayers, many of us have wondered why God doesn’t do something about this mess we’re in. I’m sure that people in Italy and New York and New Orleans who have seen friends and family die from this virus wonder the same thing. We are as bound up in our way of thinking and understanding as Jesus’ friends and all the others in that story were.
In all kinds of pastoral situations, I get asked similar questions: Why is this happening to me? Why does God heal some and not others? Why can’t we find a cure for these things that cause so much pain? The normal, human response to things we don’t understand is to ask why. When pastoral relationships allow me to, I usually try to reframe that question and help those who are hurting to change the question from why to where. Instead of, “Why me?” I try to invite us to ask, “Where is God in the midst of all this pain and confusion? And, “How can I get to that place, where God is?”
That’s what I think Jesus was trying to say to his friends. “I know you’re hurt. I am, too. I know you’re disappointed. But I’m here now, and I have things to share with you that you have never considered.” Then he led them to the tomb and commanded that it be opened. They protested, of course, because they were still bound up in a mindset that worried about things like odors and other practical things. But Jesus persisted. “Lazarus, come out!” he commanded.
Surely even those who loved him must have thought his grief had gotten the best of him. They all knew Lazarus was dead. What had possessed him? Perhaps if he had come when they had called him, he could have worked some of that hocus-pocus they had heard about in other places; maybe he could have made up another mud paste and turned this thing around before whatever it was took Lazarus from them. But he hadn’t come. And now it was too late. Lazarus was dead.
“Lazarus, come out!” he had called. And while they are convincing themselves that he’d lost his mind, the dead man came out! Wouldn’t you love to know what he thought about it all!
It’s interesting to me that Lazarus bears the marks of death when he comes out of the tomb. He is not resurrected in some glorified, fit, and vital new form. He looks like Lazarus, but his hands and feet are still bound as bodies were prepared for burial in those days. He didn’t burst out of that tomb. He hobbled, as a man in chains might do. His face is still covered with a cloth. The marks of death are still on him. Jesus calls for help from those dumfounded folks standing there: Unbind him. Let him go.
I’m confident that Mary and Martha were among the first to respond, that they ripped and tore and whatever deathly things they could tear away from their beloved brother. But even some of those who had scoffed must have helped, and some of them believed. There was a lot of unbinding going on that day.
I think I hear Jesus issuing the same call to us in the midst of these times we have never seen: Unbind yourselves. Let go of what you think you know and trust me to guide you through this.
I know how hard that is. I don’t like having my world disrupted any more than you do. I miss my routine. I miss the conversations some of us have been having around John’s Gospel on Thursday mornings at Bible study. I’ll miss greeting you at the door when we finish this morning and hearing about your lives. I miss choir practice, both here on Wednesdays and in Hattiesburg on Thursday nights. I miss my friends at the Food Pantry at MICA, and our sharing a word of Scripture and prayer on Monday mornings before people begin showing up there. I’ll miss Burke lugging bags of groceries to the big basket in the front this morning which should have been a MICA food collection day for us. I miss the camaraderie that goes into getting Wednesday suppers on the table each week and the prayers that follow our meal. All that is what life is supposed to be.
And I hear Jesus say, “Unbind yourself, Bob! Just because things are different doesn’t mean that I have abandoned you or that the world has ended or is about to. I am with you!”
And then I wonder how many other things he wants me to be unbound from. I am grateful to Beth Wild who figured out how to get this sermon to you in this new format this morning. We’ve never done this before. Your Session will meet this week by video conference. I’ve had those meetings with folks across the Presbytery before, but I never thought we’d need to have them here. Even though our Session just slips in under the wire of the Governor’s and the Mayor’s prohibition of gathering in groups of more than ten, it’s probably still not safe for us to gather as we normally do, so we’ll do something we’ve never done before this week when we meet to discuss and decide what other things we’ve never done before we’ll be doing in the days ahead.
And what about even more important things: things I think I’ve got all figured out, but things that God has a lot more to say about? How many of those things does Jesus call me to unbind my thinking about?
I remember as a kid thinking there would come a time when I understood what I needed to know to function in the world. I guess I thought that might come when I graduated from high school. But when I walked across that stage, college lay ahead, and I soon figured out how much more there was to learn. I walked across more of those stages along the way, and every time instead of a sense of closure, I realized that what I had been given was a set of tools to help me continue to learn and grow, not a handbook on how the world is supposed to work. At this stage of life, I don’t plan to walk across any more of those stages, but I have learned not to get too attached to the things I think I know because God always has a way of reminding me of how much more there is to learn.
I don’t know yet what we’re supposed to learn from this situation in which we find ourselves, but there is something. I have learned already that trying to blame all this on someone or something is not helpful. That’s just another example of our tendency to ask why instead of where.
Grief, like most learning and growing experiences in our lives, is a process. Jesus did not allow himself to get hung up in the pain he experienced when he realized that his friend was dead. He knew what Martha knew—that there would be a reunion one day, but he also knew what Martha didn’t—that the power of God in him was more powerful than the things that bind us, even death. “Lazarus, come out!” he commanded. And Lazarus did. “Unbind him, and let him go!” he commanded, and those who trusted him did.
That same call to unbind comes to each of us, not just in these unprecedented times, but any time we think we’ve got life all figured out. Those of us who trust the one who calls will try. And those who are not able to give up all that binds us, he will continue to call, and will never give up on us. There is so much more of God’s love and care to experience that what we think we understand. As scary as it is, his call to unbind is a call to grow and to thrive. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Trusting in the Spirit of God, let us confess our sin against God and against one another:
Gracious God, if you held our sin against us, who among us could stand? We confess that we have more faith in death than we have hope in your promise of everlasting life. Even so, you love us; there is always forgiveness with you. This is why we worship and adore you, O God, because you alone can save us from death, redeem us from our sin, and guide us into everlasting life. Assure us of your promise, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
If the Spirit of God lives in you, then God, who raised Jesus from the dead, will also give life to your mortal body and then life everlasting. Friends, this is the Good News of the Gospel: In Jesus Christ, our sin is forgiven. Thanks be to God!
Prayers of the People
From depths we have not experienced before, we cry out to you today, Good Lord. We ask you to hear our prayers and to be attentive to our need. We pray for all who are losing hope, who feel so cut off from you and from others that they don’t know where to turn. Open their minds and hearts and remind us of the joy you intend for us to know, the joy we will know again when this trouble has passed. We pray for the many in our community, in our country, and in the world who are sick, especially for those who are suffering from this virus we don’t understand. We pray for all whose lives are disrupted by these current conditions. Help us to believe that we will be whole again. We pray for those who are dying, from this virus or from other causes, and we give thanks for those who care for them and guide them into your presence. Give them the faith they need to trust and not be afraid. Give us all that faith, we pray. We pray for those who make decisions for all of us in these strange times. Give them wisdom. Help them to seek solutions rather than causes and to help rather than to blame. Give us all rich and abiding faith in you. It is easy for us to trust and to believe when all is well. Now that it is not, help us to trust and believe even more. We will need your help, and we believe that you will help us. We thank you for hearing our prayers and for being with us in this as in all things. Give us confidence in you and in those who are normally worshiping with us in this hour and whose presence, either down the pew or across an electronic line we cannot see and do not understand, whose presence sustains and inspires us. We ask these things through Jesus Christ, who is the resurrection and the life, and who taught us all to pray together when he said:
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
Fifth Sunday of Lent
Sermon: Unbound
John 11:1-45
The Reverend Bob Phelps
I can’t imagine a more universal experience than grief. If you have experienced it, you know how painful and unsettling it can be. Some of you also know the pain and the joy of working through that grief and experiencing wholeness again. If you are in the midst of grieving now, you know how acute that pain and unsettlement can be. And I hope you cling to the promise that you will be whole again someday. If you have not yet experienced grief, be thankful, but you know you will at some point. And that you will be whole again.
The story from John’s Gospel that draws us together today is like an onion; we keep peeling off layer after layer of it and finding new things to think about and to be challenged by. As I’ve lived with this story this week, I have come to understand it primarily as a story about grief. There is a lot going on in this story, but, primarily, I think, it is a story of good friends grieving the loss of one they love.
Many of us have gotten that phone call we all dread. A friend, a loved one, is sick, and we need to come, quickly. That usually means we drop whatever was important before the phone rang, and go where we need to be. That’s what makes part of this story hard for us to understand. Word comes to Jesus that his friend, Lazarus, is sick, and he hangs around where he is for two days. When he does arrive, Lazarus is dead, has been for four days. His friend, Martha, reacts as we would expect her to: why didn’t you come when we called? You could have done something.
When they go to the tomb where Lazarus’ body lay, we get a rare glimpse into the human side of Jesus’ nature. We take comfort in believing that Jesus is fully human and fully divine, but we only get a few opportunities to see the fully human side of him. In this story, we see Jesus as one of us, one who grieves the loss of a good friend, one who experiences the pain and separation of death. Makes me a little ashamed of those times I tried to get by with counting “Jesus wept” as my memory verse for the week when I read that verse in the context of the whole story. When the other sister, Mary, joins that grieving community, she echoes her sister: we called; why didn’t you come? You could have done something!
The people who were part of the crowd that gathered with them at the tomb all wondered the same thing: I thought he was their friend; we’ve heard about the things he did in other places. Wonder why he didn’t do something about this?
The answers we get are, frankly, not much more satisfying to us than they probably were to those two grieving sisters. They were believers. They knew they would be reunited with their brother in the promised resurrection, but they were hurting now.
All of them, like all of us, were bound up in the way they understood the world and their place in it.
Our understanding of the world and our place in it has been shaken in recent days in ways that most of us never imagined would come. We have been more fortunate than many in that we have not experienced illness or death in our community because of the worldwide pandemic. We don’t know what our immediate or long-term future might bring. Our faith has sustained us and will continue to sustain us. Even so, in the privacy of our own thoughts and prayers, many of us have wondered why God doesn’t do something about this mess we’re in. I’m sure that people in Italy and New York and New Orleans who have seen friends and family die from this virus wonder the same thing. We are as bound up in our way of thinking and understanding as Jesus’ friends and all the others in that story were.
In all kinds of pastoral situations, I get asked similar questions: Why is this happening to me? Why does God heal some and not others? Why can’t we find a cure for these things that cause so much pain? The normal, human response to things we don’t understand is to ask why. When pastoral relationships allow me to, I usually try to reframe that question and help those who are hurting to change the question from why to where. Instead of, “Why me?” I try to invite us to ask, “Where is God in the midst of all this pain and confusion? And, “How can I get to that place, where God is?”
That’s what I think Jesus was trying to say to his friends. “I know you’re hurt. I am, too. I know you’re disappointed. But I’m here now, and I have things to share with you that you have never considered.” Then he led them to the tomb and commanded that it be opened. They protested, of course, because they were still bound up in a mindset that worried about things like odors and other practical things. But Jesus persisted. “Lazarus, come out!” he commanded.
Surely even those who loved him must have thought his grief had gotten the best of him. They all knew Lazarus was dead. What had possessed him? Perhaps if he had come when they had called him, he could have worked some of that hocus-pocus they had heard about in other places; maybe he could have made up another mud paste and turned this thing around before whatever it was took Lazarus from them. But he hadn’t come. And now it was too late. Lazarus was dead.
“Lazarus, come out!” he had called. And while they are convincing themselves that he’d lost his mind, the dead man came out! Wouldn’t you love to know what he thought about it all!
It’s interesting to me that Lazarus bears the marks of death when he comes out of the tomb. He is not resurrected in some glorified, fit, and vital new form. He looks like Lazarus, but his hands and feet are still bound as bodies were prepared for burial in those days. He didn’t burst out of that tomb. He hobbled, as a man in chains might do. His face is still covered with a cloth. The marks of death are still on him. Jesus calls for help from those dumfounded folks standing there: Unbind him. Let him go.
I’m confident that Mary and Martha were among the first to respond, that they ripped and tore and whatever deathly things they could tear away from their beloved brother. But even some of those who had scoffed must have helped, and some of them believed. There was a lot of unbinding going on that day.
I think I hear Jesus issuing the same call to us in the midst of these times we have never seen: Unbind yourselves. Let go of what you think you know and trust me to guide you through this.
I know how hard that is. I don’t like having my world disrupted any more than you do. I miss my routine. I miss the conversations some of us have been having around John’s Gospel on Thursday mornings at Bible study. I’ll miss greeting you at the door when we finish this morning and hearing about your lives. I miss choir practice, both here on Wednesdays and in Hattiesburg on Thursday nights. I miss my friends at the Food Pantry at MICA, and our sharing a word of Scripture and prayer on Monday mornings before people begin showing up there. I’ll miss Burke lugging bags of groceries to the big basket in the front this morning which should have been a MICA food collection day for us. I miss the camaraderie that goes into getting Wednesday suppers on the table each week and the prayers that follow our meal. All that is what life is supposed to be.
And I hear Jesus say, “Unbind yourself, Bob! Just because things are different doesn’t mean that I have abandoned you or that the world has ended or is about to. I am with you!”
And then I wonder how many other things he wants me to be unbound from. I am grateful to Beth Wild who figured out how to get this sermon to you in this new format this morning. We’ve never done this before. Your Session will meet this week by video conference. I’ve had those meetings with folks across the Presbytery before, but I never thought we’d need to have them here. Even though our Session just slips in under the wire of the Governor’s and the Mayor’s prohibition of gathering in groups of more than ten, it’s probably still not safe for us to gather as we normally do, so we’ll do something we’ve never done before this week when we meet to discuss and decide what other things we’ve never done before we’ll be doing in the days ahead.
And what about even more important things: things I think I’ve got all figured out, but things that God has a lot more to say about? How many of those things does Jesus call me to unbind my thinking about?
I remember as a kid thinking there would come a time when I understood what I needed to know to function in the world. I guess I thought that might come when I graduated from high school. But when I walked across that stage, college lay ahead, and I soon figured out how much more there was to learn. I walked across more of those stages along the way, and every time instead of a sense of closure, I realized that what I had been given was a set of tools to help me continue to learn and grow, not a handbook on how the world is supposed to work. At this stage of life, I don’t plan to walk across any more of those stages, but I have learned not to get too attached to the things I think I know because God always has a way of reminding me of how much more there is to learn.
I don’t know yet what we’re supposed to learn from this situation in which we find ourselves, but there is something. I have learned already that trying to blame all this on someone or something is not helpful. That’s just another example of our tendency to ask why instead of where.
Grief, like most learning and growing experiences in our lives, is a process. Jesus did not allow himself to get hung up in the pain he experienced when he realized that his friend was dead. He knew what Martha knew—that there would be a reunion one day, but he also knew what Martha didn’t—that the power of God in him was more powerful than the things that bind us, even death. “Lazarus, come out!” he commanded. And Lazarus did. “Unbind him, and let him go!” he commanded, and those who trusted him did.
That same call to unbind comes to each of us, not just in these unprecedented times, but any time we think we’ve got life all figured out. Those of us who trust the one who calls will try. And those who are not able to give up all that binds us, he will continue to call, and will never give up on us. There is so much more of God’s love and care to experience that what we think we understand. As scary as it is, his call to unbind is a call to grow and to thrive. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Trusting in the Spirit of God, let us confess our sin against God and against one another:
Gracious God, if you held our sin against us, who among us could stand? We confess that we have more faith in death than we have hope in your promise of everlasting life. Even so, you love us; there is always forgiveness with you. This is why we worship and adore you, O God, because you alone can save us from death, redeem us from our sin, and guide us into everlasting life. Assure us of your promise, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
If the Spirit of God lives in you, then God, who raised Jesus from the dead, will also give life to your mortal body and then life everlasting. Friends, this is the Good News of the Gospel: In Jesus Christ, our sin is forgiven. Thanks be to God!
Prayers of the People
From depths we have not experienced before, we cry out to you today, Good Lord. We ask you to hear our prayers and to be attentive to our need. We pray for all who are losing hope, who feel so cut off from you and from others that they don’t know where to turn. Open their minds and hearts and remind us of the joy you intend for us to know, the joy we will know again when this trouble has passed. We pray for the many in our community, in our country, and in the world who are sick, especially for those who are suffering from this virus we don’t understand. We pray for all whose lives are disrupted by these current conditions. Help us to believe that we will be whole again. We pray for those who are dying, from this virus or from other causes, and we give thanks for those who care for them and guide them into your presence. Give them the faith they need to trust and not be afraid. Give us all that faith, we pray. We pray for those who make decisions for all of us in these strange times. Give them wisdom. Help them to seek solutions rather than causes and to help rather than to blame. Give us all rich and abiding faith in you. It is easy for us to trust and to believe when all is well. Now that it is not, help us to trust and believe even more. We will need your help, and we believe that you will help us. We thank you for hearing our prayers and for being with us in this as in all things. Give us confidence in you and in those who are normally worshiping with us in this hour and whose presence, either down the pew or across an electronic line we cannot see and do not understand, whose presence sustains and inspires us. We ask these things through Jesus Christ, who is the resurrection and the life, and who taught us all to pray together when he said:
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
