Christ Episcopal Church
November 4, 2012
All Saints Day
Week before last, the week before Hurricane Sandy, I attended a conference outside of Baltimore. The title of the conference was "Bold and Hopeful leadership for a missionary church". I was asked to make one of the presentations, and my assignment was to talk about how we, at Christ Church, nurture bold ministry. I had to start by telling the truth: I am not, but nature, a bold person. I don’t jump out of airplanes and I don’t eat raw fish. I don’t go looking for bold things to do. I also told the group that I think there is a fine line between bold and crazy. But as a congregation we have done some bold things because God seems to intend for us to be bold whether we feel bold or not. So I told the group about the day the doorbell rang in Hollenbeck and the gentleman who owned the two houses next door was there wanting to sell the property to us at a good price. His health was such that he could no longer take care of the homes and he wanted the church to own them. And the day the phone rang and the Executive Director of the Dayton Gay Men’s Chorus wanted to know if we would host the Chorus for their Christmas concert in their first venture outside of Dayton. And the day I was having lunch at Procter Camp, minding my own business, when someone invited us to be part of the pilot project to bring Reading Camp to the Diocese. In all those cases, we-you and I- said yes, because we understood that God was calling us to those ministries, even though we did not go looking for them. God calls us to do bold things even we are not particularly bold ourselves.
Today is All Saints Sunday, one of the most loved feast days in the Church. We sing magnificent hymns, light candles and offer prayers for our loved ones, and hear what I consider to be some of the greatest passages of Scripture. Isaiah and Revelation both show us that future time when God will gather up all people at the great banquet table for a feast of rich food and we watch as God wipes away the tears from all faces. On All Saints Sunday, we are reminded that at this banquet table, we are joined with all those who have gone before us for the feast that gathers us together and makes us one.
Then we watch as Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. We understand Martha’s concern when Jesus asks that the stone be removed from the cave that contains Lazarus’ body. "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days." But Jesus insists. The stone is removed and we hear Jesus say with a loud voice "Lazarus, come out!" And the once dead man comes out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth.
Next we hear one of my favorite lines in Scripture. "Then Jesus said to them ‘Unbind him and let him go.’" Unbind him and let him go. Jesus has just raised Lazarus from the dead. But as long as Lazarus’ hands and feet are bound, and his face is wrapped in cloth, he may be able to stumble out of the cave, but he can’t do much else. In order to be fully free, Lazarus must be unbound. Jesus’ work was the work of resurrection. Living into that resurrection is work that belongs to his followers. What I hear Jesus saying is "I have done the work of resurrection, now you do the work of living as resurrection people. So unbind him and let him go." What actually happens next in the story is that some who saw what Jesus did believed in him and others went to the Pharisees and told on Jesus. But in my imagination, what happens next is that Martha and Mary hang back at first, afraid to unbind Lazarus. For starters, they are being asked to touch this once dead man, whose body only moments ago they feared had decomposed to the point of stench. Secondly, if they unbind Lazarus, what will they be unleashing? The man had been dead. Now he is alive. What new power might he now have. Will he be the same brother he once was? But we know they swallow their fear and unbind Lazarus, because in just a few more verses, Mary and Martha will give a dinner party for Jesus and we are told that Lazarus is at the table. Unbound.
Unbind him and let him go. When we think about the great saints of the church we see people who heard Jesus say "I have done the work of resurrection, now you do the work of resurrection people" and they stepped out in faith to do things they could not have done on their own. From the words of Mary who hears the angel and says "Let it be with me according to your will," to Peter, who despite his many failings steps forward to be the rock on which Jesus built the church, to Mother Teresa and her work with the impoverished of Calcutta, they all come to believe that Jesus’ work is the work of resurrection and our work is the work of resurrection people. The Saints in our own lives are often those who have challenged us to be more than we think we can be, face what we think we cannot face, to live more fully than we think we can bear, and to give more generously than we think possible. The Saints of God, be they official saints of the Church or the saints of our own lives, show us how to do bold even if we can not be bold. Jesus has done the work of resurrection. Jesus calls us to live as resurrection people.
Amen.
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