Nov 1, 2009

FPC Hallock

All Saints’ Day

Unbound

John 11:32-44

Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Unbind Lazarus, dead for four days, but now by another of Jesus’ signs, alive. “Unbind him, and let him go,” he had no more need for his funeral wrappings. “Unbind him, and let him go” live life once more.

Jesus was not bound by the laws of physics and reason in which we pride ourselves today. Jesus was not bound by our expectations and our understandings. Jesus was not bound by even our greatest enemy — death itself.

“In the raising of Lazarus, God steadfastly refuses to allow death the final word.” [Feasting on the Word, Year B v. 4, p. 236] “Unbind him, and let him go.” In the raising of Lazarus God shows us Jesus’ ultimate power: in Jesus Christ, death can never have the last word. In Jesus Christ, death itself is conquered; death is dead forever.

But in this time after Jesus’ resurrection and before his coming again, we easily forget this good news because we are bound to so much ourselves. We are wrapped in shrouds of doubt and entombed in narrowed visions of what God can do with us today. So Christ, unbind us too, and let us go.

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For the past few weeks, every Sunday we’ve confessed our sin before God and one another. I understand saying a confession of sin every Sunday is more often than this congregation is used to confessing. Every week we say:

Merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart and mind and strength. We have not loved our neighbor as ourselves…

There’s a Lutheran prayer that puts it a bit differently: “We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.” Bondage. Wrapped in sin’s death shrouds.

I appreciate it might take a little getting used to, this confessing every week. But I’m afraid we’d just be deceiving ourselves if we didn’t say who we are every time we meet together for worship.

The point is clear: we cannot save ourselves. We cannot wrestle out of sin’s death grip ourselves.

So we confess that we have fallen short of God’s best hopes, that we have separated ourselves from God, that we need forgiveness. That we must be unbound something greater than ourselves.

But just as we confess each week, we are forgiven each and every Sunday, reminded of what Jesus has done for us. The liturgist declares every Sunday following the confession that in Christ we are a new creation. In Christ we are set free. In Christ we have died to sin and been raised to live once more. Unbound, and let go. It’s that reminder, every Sunday, that can keep us going. Unbound to respond to God’s grace.

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Today is All Saints’ Day, the day on which we consider the saints of the past, women and men who now from their labors rest. To be honest, I think it’s a strange day in the church year. After all, we Presbyterians don’t have “Saints” with a capital “S,” instead we are all saints, each of us baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection no more or less part of God’s good purposes.

All Saints’ Day gives us that opportunity — to give thanks for all those who have gone before us. And that’s a good thing, so later our Prayers of the People will include reading the names of those saints close to our hearts.

But All Saints’ Day offers another opportunity as well. On this day we consider death and its power over us. And on this day especially we take time to name death as the enemy, an enemy already vanquished by Christ.

We’re not too comfortable with death these days in America. Tom Long has an editorial in this morning’s New York Times that speaks to the fact that many American funerals have become so commercialized and sentimentalized, that they have lost their voice and worshipers have been robbed of their opportunity to proclaim the gospel. Long says today most people attend funerals more to memorialize the memory of the deceased than to proclaim the gospel in word, song, story, and action.

Instead, Long argues for the Christian funeral as a sacred ritual that connects the gospel narrative to the narrative of the deceased. The funeral becomes a kind of “seeing place,” and sacred time in which we proclaim the good news that death is vanquished.

I spent some time in Louisville, Kentucky this week as a member of the Presbyterian Committee on Congregational Song. This is a committee of sixteen people tasked with the overwhelming duty to develop the next hymnal for the Presbyterian Church. (By the way, the committee has been meeting regularly for over a year, and my colleagues were eager to hear stories of you folks and this place our ministry, and they send you their greetings.)

Part of our committee’s task, in addition to reviewing thousands of hymns and songs composed in the last twenty years since the blue hymnal was published, is reviewing all the hymns in that 1990 blue hymnal to determine what should be carried forward to the next hymnal.

And so we sit, as a committee, and sing hundreds of hymns from that blue hymnal. We talk about each hymn, examine its origin, its message, its tune, and consider how often it is sung around the denomination. But we also talk about each hymn as a “heart song,” as a way the church can sing its faith in the risen Lord.

This meeting I was struck anew by the power of some of those old hymns to proclaim that gospel message, even and especially at difficult times such as a funeral.

To God be the glory, great things He hath done!

So loved he the world that He gave us His Son,

Who yielded His life an atonement for sin,

And opened the life gate that all may go in.

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee. How great thou art!

Be Thou my vision O Lord of my heart;

Nought be all else to me, save that Thou art–

Thou my best thought, by day or by night,

Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

These hymns and oh so many others can comfort at the time of death, but they do so not because it’s easy to sing at funerals. No the hymns comfort so many because they proclaim the gospel at that most difficult time. Maybe that’s why many of you have shared with me privately how much you cherish the tape of your loved one’s funeral. Our heart songs sung at a funeral can change it from a reverent service of remembrance to a bold witness to Christ’s resurrection.

What is that gospel at the time of death? Nothing less than that death has already been defeated. Nothing less than in Christ death is merely the completion of our baptism. The gospel at the time of death is nothing less than the proclamation that the deceased, our beloved and God’s beloved, is welcomed into God’s presence for Jesus has already prepared the way.

Many times it’s hard, when we are caught up in grief, to sing the hymn or proclaim the gospel. And that’s only natural. After all, Mary and the disciples had the same trouble. They’re concerned in today’s reading that Jesus get to Lazarus quickly, before he dies so that Jesus can heal him. But once Lazarus has died, they figure, “What’s the point?” Jesus can’t do a thing now. Death has won. The crowd said, “Look, he could open the eyes of a blind man but couldn’t even keep his friend from dying.” Martha tells him not to go near the tomb, after four days dead it already smelled.

They knew Jesus was powerful, could pull of many a miracle, but conquer death? They couldn’t comprehend that.

But then he said in a loud voice, “Lazarus come out!” And the dead man came out. “Unbind him, and let him go.” Death is no more. “Unbind him, and let him go.”

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I’ve been thinking a lot about vision lately: vision for this church, vision for my ministry here, vision for our future together. The vision of this passage from John, most definitely, is one of hopefulness in God. That in Jesus who raises even the dead, the very dead — the four days dead — that Jesus who can “unbind him, and let him go” can unbind us too.

So what do you need unbound? Is it forgiveness for that thing you’ve told anyone? Is it forgiving yourself for not being who you want to be? Do you need unbound from a family or work environment that entombs you rather than frees you to live out the gospel. What do you need unbound?

The problem about being unbound by Jesus is that life in Christ is so unpredictable, after all God chooses the direction, not we ourselves. If we are unbound by Christ, truly unbound and let go there’s no telling what the saints of Hallock might get up to. Jesus raised Lazarus — dead and smelling too — so surely Jesus can raise this strong community to new mission here.

So, dare we ask Christ to unbind us and let us go? Are we ready for what might be raised? Putting our trust in God, surely we are, so Christ…

Unbind our prejudices and let us go with a new view of others.

Unbind our tiredness and let us go refreshed.

Unbind our thinking that our best days are behind and let us go into a new vitality.

Unbind our hearts where love stops short and let us go to love every single neighbor near far.

Unbind our resources and let those who have much share their bounty.

Unbind our spirits and let us go crying out with all the church that Jesus is Lord.

Unbind us, and let us go. Amen.