April 6, 2014 -John 11:1-45
John 11:1-45
Completing Jesus’ Work
Fifth Sunday in Lent – April 6, 2014
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
The people in Adult Faith Study this Lent have been having a grand time
reading the book Take this Bread by Sara Miles.
The book is about how Sara Miles came to faith.
She was a left-wing atheist journalist who, out of journalistic curiosity,
wandered into a church in her San Francisco neighhourhood one Sunday morning.
She accepted the invitation to the communion table, took communion,
and her life completely changed.
She was totally unprepared for this.
Through this experience she came to realize how closely God is tied to food and to feeding.
She became a Christian as well as a member of this church where she’d been fed,
and eventually was inspired to start a food bank at her church as an extension of
her congregation’s communion table – very like our own food bank.
When she is invited by her priest to help distribute communion one day,
she has an deep insight into Christian faith.
What happened once I started distributing communion was the truly disturbing, dreadful realization about Christianity: you can’t be a Christian by yourself. (Take this Bread, 96)
One of the most beautiful things in Christian faith is sharing communion,
both giving and receiving.
Feeding one another is such an intimate act – as I’ve said before,
in our culture one only really feeds the very very young or the very very old.
This is an odd, intimate thing to do.
But Sara Miles is right: among many other things, sharing communion makes you realize that
you can’t be a Christian by yourself.
Being a Christian is about receiving and it is about giving.
And the receiving implies a giving away.
You receive from someone, and you give to someone: you can’t do it alone.
And you don’t have to.
There is so much to say about this long Gospel reading.
Jesus has conversations with Mary and Martha.
He dramatically raises Lazarus from death.
It’s a pure gift for the friend that he loves.
But what is so interesting about this story is that the raising of Lazarus is not the end of the story.
You’d think that would be the end of the story, right?
The big technicolour miracle: the dead guy lives! Hurrah!
Only: God’s redemptive work with Lazarus is not over yet.
Sure: Lazarus is existing again – but there’s more to life than just existence.
Lazarus needs to live again.
And to get Lazarus to live again, Jesus enlists some help.
Apparently, to live again, Lazarus needs a community.
You’ll notice that, near the end of the story, when you think everything’s done,
everything’s not done.
Lazarus comes out of the tomb – but his redemption is not done yet.
“Unbind him,” Jesus commands the community, “and let him go.”
Jesus enlists the work of the community in helping take off the linen cloths that bind Lazarus.
He’s not free yet, even though he’s existing again.
And so Jesus enlists the help of the community to complete what he has begun,
to bring it to its desired end.
Apparently, even if you’re Jesus, you can’t – or don’t want to – do it all by yourself.
Jesus just doesn’t want to do God’s work all by himself:
Jesus wants to enlist our help in God’s work.
As Stephanie Jaeger writes in the Christian Century this week:
The story of Lazarus doesn’t just reveal God’s power to renew. It also reveals our power and our calling to participate in the unbinding of our brothers and sisters.
(http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2014-03/sunday-april-6-2014)
Community is a powerful thing – when we open ourselves to receiving care from our
brothers and sisters – and when we open ourselves to giving it.
There are many strips of cloth that bind us and that do not allow us to live into the freedom
God has made us for.
Addiction, fear, hopelessness, illness, and grief.
Anxiety, financial difficulties, resentment, and lack of faith.
But Jesus doesn’t say today,
“I will be the resurrection and the life at some unknown time in the future.”
Jesus says today, “I am the resurrection and the life, right now. Right now!!
I can strip off those strips of cloth that are binding you beginning right now!”
And Jesus does it through enlisting the help of his communities.
Ask anyone who’s ever been ministered to by an AA group –
and there are some of you here this morning:
the work of communities that Jesus enlists to help him is powerful.
Share your grief with a brother or sister here.
Ask someone if they’ll meet you for coffee so you can share some of your burden with them.
I’ve done it and believe me – the risen Christ will minister to you now through them.
And then, when you’ve been ministered to, when the strips have begun to free you,
think about how you can take what you’ve been given – and minister to someone else.
Because you have been given the power to help unbind restricting bonds.
Many days at our Food Bank Community Meals I have seen people come in weighed down and
restricted with their own strips of cloth – their faces, their body language tell the story.
But by the time they leave their faces and their bodies often tell a different story.
Maybe a volunteer treats them respectfully and attentively.
Maybe they graciously get fed with something warm and home-made with love.
Maybe someone offers to do something for them in kindness –
give them a ride with their groceries, or offer to help them with a doctor’s appointment.
The thing is: Lazarus’s resurrection isn’t the end of the story.
And Jesus’s resurrection on Easter Sunday isn’t the end of the story.
The story continues.
When a minister gives you bread and wine this morning, think about how you are not alone.
Think about how you can’t be a Christian alone.
Think about how you can take what you’ve been given – and pass it on,
this free gift of grace in food.
If one of the gifts you have is the ability to cook for the Community Meal,
or the means to provide food for the Community Meal,
or the ability to serve the Community Meal,
look at the blue sign-up sheet in the entry way.
When you see all the empty spaces on the sheet for the summer – which I am not worried about,
by the way – when you see those empty spaces on the sheet,
see how those empty spaces are calling you to fill empty stomachs.
See how those empty spaces are calling you to unbind those bound by hunger,
or poverty, or despair, or loneliness.
See how you are being called to complete the work begun by Jesus –
for once you come to this tableyou like Sara Miles cannot be the same.
For you will have taken Jesus and his grace and his life inside of you.
And Jesus will be able to say again on this day, in this place, at 580 Victor Street,
“Truly I am the resurrection and the life.”
So together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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