Theme: "Come Out!"
Why would they want to kill him? Someone with such life-giving and
life-restoring power?
What is there about the Pharisees that cannot stand
someone bringing a person back to life?
Or what is there about new life coming into the community that brings
out the worst in the Pharisees, or even brings out the Pharisee in us?
When I lived in Vineland thirty years ago, I knew a
minister who was called by a church in the area specifically to help bring new
people in and renew the congregation. He
did that. For the six or seven years he
was there, he reached out to the community and attracted new people and helped
them see that church had something for them.
He also encouraged some of the more marginal or un-noticed people of the
church to take greater part – to start offering their gifts and their faith to
the larger life of the congregation.
The church began to grow. There was a new sense of life and
vitality. And you know what
happened. The minister had to leave. When the Church Board and Elders saw what it
really meant in terms of the makeup and message of their church, it turns out
that new life and a new direction for the congregation was not what they really
wanted.
I know what that’s like. I think of our plan to install a platform
lift in the back part of our building finally to make the whole of the building
accessible. I was at the last few AGM’s
where you made clear your impatience with how long this has taken, and with you
I long for the day – hopefully next summer, when the project is done. But the members of the Accessibility Project
Group can also tell you – I hope with a laugh, of the meeting where we were
looking at the plans and I realized that installing the lift would mean losing
a big part of what we now use as church office.
My face fell. My brow
furrowed. I grew quiet. Then I said with some anxiety, “You mean, we
lose the church office?”
For a few moments there, I was reluctant to let go
of what we have. I couldn’t imagine such
a loss – or sacrifice, being good.
Lest we be hard on churches and their leadership, I
think we all realize that churches and their leaders are not alone in that kind
tension between wanting new life and a life-giving, life-saving direction, and
not really wanting it – or not wanting its cost.
Governments want watch-dogs and auditors-general
and statisticians and scientists, until they start pointing out too clearly
places where the government is missing the mark or going astray. Societies love prophets and people who tell
the truth, until they start poking around in corners we’d rather leave
untouched, shedding light on things we’d rather not look at, calling for change
we’re not willing – or not ready yet, to make.
People in general want constructive criticism, as long as we – as long
as I, don’t have to really work at changing the way I go about being myself.
What’s the line from Bruce Cockburn? “Everybody wants to see justice done … on
somebody else.”
In many ways we are bound and not free to live and
move and change and grow as might be best.
In politics we’re often bound to tradition, ideology, party line and
self-interest. In society we’re bound to
status, the longing for respectability, and fear – of failure, of weakness, of
others. In our selves and our lives,
we’re bound to shame and anxiety, our own personality quirks and disorders, and
needs for security, love, control.
And maybe the saints around us – the real human
beings of our time, are those who are free.
Who are un-bound. Who are set
free from at least some of the things that constrain us, to be able to speak
and act and live in the world with a freedom for what is true and truly good, with
a freedom the rest of us can only envy.
As Jesus says, “Take the stone from the tomb! Lazarus, come out! And you there … un-bind him; let him be free.” And the ones who come out from whatever
little grave they’ve been in, and let themselves be un-bound, are the saints of
our time who on the one hand attract us with their freedom to follow and live
out what is true, and who scare us with it and make us want to lock it up
again, get new and true life back under wraps and under control.
Church is supposed to be one of the places in the
world where we learn that kind of freedom, though – learn it for ourselves, and
help our kids and grand-kids and maybe our friends and neighbours grow into it
too. I wonder if it is, and if we do.
In church, for instance, do we learn how to talk in
real community with one another, and speak together in new and life-giving
ways? One of the things we lament about
our society and our time is the death of real human communication and wise
discourse, and the ability to explore ideas, talk constructively and
compassionately across boundaries, and grow together towards new wisdom. So in church do we take the stone away from
the mouth of the tomb – take the time and effort to learn to do it better, to learn
how to listen as well as speak, to learn how to have difficult conversations
with people we disagree with, with a measure of grace and openness to a truth
that’s bigger than ourselves?
In church, do we learn to open ourselves in
life-giving ways to the world? Again,
one of the things we suffer from in our time is that in spite of – or maybe
because of global awareness and instant information, we have a stronger
tendency maybe than ever to try to insulate ourselves in our own little groups
for the sake of our own security and survival.
So in church, do we learn come out of hiddenness – to open up to what’s
out there – to come out of whatever tomb we build around ourselves – and even
though we don’t have all the answers, at least to let ourselves freely see and
hear and be touched by the wind and spirit, and the pains and possibilities of
the world in our time?
Which also means, in church, do we let our own
lives be opened up and maybe changed? There’s
a line in a song by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds called “Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!” that says, “He never asked to
be raised up from the tomb, no one ever actually asked him to forsake his
dreams.” And maybe that’s the question
that church is meant to ask us – do you really want to be set free? In your life and in your living, in the way
you go about being your self in the world and among and for other people, in
the kind of parent or partner or sibling or friend or citizen you are, do you
want to be free of what constrains you, what holds you back, what makes your
life more limited and narrow and bound to unholy and less-than-true things than
you really want?
“The stone is taken from your tomb! Lazarus, come out! There are people nearby just waiting to
unbind you, and let you go.”
I hope church and what we do together here brings
us at least every now and then up against this holy invitation.
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