Thanks to my friend Barbara for providing a sermon during this insane week of my sister’s hospitalization

On John 11:32-44

Live long enough in this world and it begins to close in, to bind us up. To bind us up with its difficulties and hardships. We find ourselves bound up by circumstances, by events, by situations that are beyond our control. We feel as though we have been bound up and left for dead. We pray for help and yet help seems too often to come to late or not at all.

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Jesus has come too late. Lazarus is dead. Jesus has come too late. Lazarus’ hands and feet and face are bound and his body has been laid in tomb. Lazarus’ sister Mary is bound by grief over the death of her beloved brother. Martha, her sister, is bound by her faintheartedness that covers her eyes because she, too, is overcome by grief. Even Jesus is affected. He is distressed by the power that death has over the people around him. In their sorrow Mary, Martha and bystanders cannot hear him anymore. They cannot believe him anymore. And in their anguish Jesus’ promise that Lazarus will rise again does not make it through their grief. They have all been bound, and Death has taken hold.

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2

Death is powerful. Death reaches into OUR lives wherever we turn. And Death has forceful minions that put limits around us and within us, that bind us. Fear, doubt, guilt, and despair have a tight grip on us. They all drain the life out of us, and we die little deaths every day. Something in us dies when someone hurts us by lying to us, betraying our trust. Something in us dies when we are confronted with the limits of the grief we can endure. Something in us dies when we hurt those we love with harsh words. And something in us dies when someone we love dies. And each time when something in us dies the bonds that pull us into ourselves grow ever tighter.

These daily inner deaths are debilitating. They tie down our hopes, they drown out our joys, and they rob us of our courage to face life. And in these daily struggles we, like Mary and Martha, forget the incredible work that God is doing in our lives. Like Mary and Martha we limit God to what fits our imagination. In theory we, like Martha, believe that Jesus can do anything. And when Jesus asks her if she believed that he could raise Lazarus from the dead, she says “I know he will rise in the resurrection on the last day*.” But when push comes to shove, when Jesus asks us to remove the stone from the graves within us, when Jesus asks us to trust him, we, like Martha, only smell death and see decay. ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.’

And we don’t remember the hope and the life that Jesus promises us.

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The recent movie Gran Torino centers on the life of Walt Kowalski, a jaded, embittered, and resigned war veteran. As a retired auto-worker, Walt fills his days with home repair, beer, and monthly trips to the barber. The people he once called his neighbors have all moved or died and have been replaced by Hmong immigrants from Southeast Asia. Walt openly despises them. And he is basically resentful of pretty much everything and everyone he sees - the shabby eaves, the overgrown lawns and the foreign faces surrounding him. His own children prefer to speak to him as little as possible.

We meet Walt for the first time at the funeral of his beloved wife. The young priest Father Janovich, a recent seminary graduate, had promised Walt’s wife to look out for her husband. Throughout the movie Father Janovich tries to connect with the old man. Walt doesn’t make it easy for the young man. But Father Janovich doesn’t give up on Walt. At one of his visits he says, "You seem to know a lot more about death than you do about living."

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Walt's world view has been tainted by death for the last 50 years: the killing he had done in Korea, his experiences of watching his friends die, his extreme racism, his penchant for violence, and the severed relationships with his family - all contributes to Walt dying little deaths every day. All these experiences have crippled him, they have bound him up, they have killed him on the inside. The death of his wife has only fastened his bonds tighter. And by now Walt is just waiting out the rest of his life.

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When a loved one dies, it is hard to even think straight let alone remember the power of God’s Word to us. When we are bound up in fear and despair, when we are tied down by an overwhelming work-load, a rocky family life or other commitments that start to close in on us it is hard to breathe, let alone to know that the Holy Spirit is with us. When there is not enough money in the bank to make it to the end of the month its hard enough to decide whether to keep the house warm or to eat, let alone to remember that Christ died for us.

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Mary and Martha are overcome by grief. Jesus is grief-stricken, too, and he shows great compassion. Jesus weeps with the sisters and promises them again that death is not the end. Then he asks for the stone to be removed from the grave. Jesus calls out to Lazarus by name. Jesus calls Lazarus, who is dead, with a loud voice and commands him to come out of the tomb. Lazarus can do nothing for himself. All he can do is receive the power of God to give him new life. And Jesus does give Lazarus new life! Jesus also peels Mary out of the layers of her grief. And Jesus rolls away the stone covering Martha’s heart. 

This story is the story of Good Friday. Very soon Jesus is going to be convicted and sentenced to death on the cross. Very soon Jesus himself will be wrapped in shrouds and his face will be covered with a cloth. But the fetters of death won’t stop Jesus. Jesus himself is going to rise to new life and death no longer will have the last word.

These people that Jesus loved, Martha, Mary and Lazarus himself experience first-hand the power of God’s Word. The power of God’s Word working in the world is not dependent on whether we can hold our lives together long enough to remember it. It is in these states of being unable to think, unable to breathe, unable to remember that God’s Word cuts through our shackles and unbinds us.

For Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino the voice of God that is calling him out of his grave comes in the person of Sue, a teenage girl who lives next door with her family. She reaches out to Walt with an unconditional acceptance that ignores his racist comments, that loves him despite his grumpiness, and that invites him into a world that he thought he would never encounter. She eventually softens his heart, unbinds him,  and unties his dying hands and feet and face. Regretting his lack of relationship with his own sons, Walt’s unbound heart is touched by her love, and he finds a new family in the most unlikely of places.

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And God calls us into the most unlikely of places also. God calls us with a loud voice out of the waters of Baptism. We have died in these waters of life, and God calls each of us by name. Baptism does not happen to us, but baptized is something we are. We are washed. Washed and bathed into the new life that Jesus promises. Our God is a God of life. And this God of life constantly unbinds us from fear, despair and death. This God of life constantly calls us back to life. As Jesus made his way to unbind Lazarus, the risen Christ calls us out of our tombs into light and life – every day anew.

Today we celebrate All Saints day. Jesus calls all, dead or alive, with a loud voice “Come out!” so we come out of our tombs. And Jesus unwraps all those layers of fear, doubt, guilt, and despair, and we are free to go into the world redeemed, reclaimed, and rejoicing. Jesus frees us to witness to our awesome God. Jesus unbinds us and we are free to go into the world to witness to his glory.