Today, we commemorate the 5th Sunday of Lent. We are getting closer to the end of our Lenten journey. In just a week, we will hear the Passion of our Lord on Palm Sunday, as we enter into Holy Week.
Today, our Lenten journey takes us face to face with Lazarus, a beloved friend of Jesus. Lazarus has been sealed away in the tomb for 4 days when Jesus arrives in Bethany. At Jesus’ command, “Come out, Lazarus!”, Lazarus comes out of the tomb, with his hands and feet all tied up with strips of material, with a cloth covering his face. “Unbind him, let him go free!” Jesus commands.
In one of his books, No Man Is an Island, the Trappist monk Thomas Merton had this to say about seeking God: “In all his acts God orders all things, whether good or evil, for the good of those who know him and seek him and who strive to bring their own freedom under obedience to his divine purpose. All that is done by the will of God in secret is done for his glory and for the good of those whom he has chosen to share in His glory.” So if God orders all things for the good of those who seek him, as we strive to be obedient to him, how do we approach this when we feel that we are bound up like Lazarus in our lives? Sometimes, the things that bind us are tied to the circumstances of our lives, while other times the things that bind us up are things of our own choosing.
We probably feel bound up in the circumstances of our lives right now, in this pandemic of the Coronavirus that is spreading across the world. First, it was something that was associated with a particular province of China. Now we in the United States and communities all over the world are trying to confront this new reality. A friend of mine in Tupelo was out of electricity at her house for a day. She said she felt guilty bemoaning what she was going through compared to others who were sick and battling this illness. We are asked to confine ourselves and to avoid putting ourselves and others at risk. We may feel bound by the sacrifices we make, but at different times in our life, we are called to make sacrifices, aren’t we?
I remember talking to a prisoner who had been a drug addict for many years, whose life revolved around getting his next fix of heroin or meth. He told me that his life was dark and ugly all the time, but it was nothing he could break away from. He kept on returning to those drugs again and again. In the midst of that darkness, he said that he would pass by a Catholic church on his way to work. He said that in the midst of his ugly life, he would stop in at the church to pray, even though he was not Catholic and did not even grow up going to church. He saw those quiet moments he had in the church as one of the fews signs in his life that showed him that God was still there in all that was wrong in his life. Although he and the other prisoners definitely did not want to be in prison, did not want to be bound up and constrained by time served in a correctional institution, many of them admitted that being sent to prison was a wake-up call that saved their lives. I told them that there were worse prisons we can put ourselves behind compared to serving times as a prisoner behind the bars. Sometimes the worst prisons in life are those prisons we create for ourselves. Sometimes we bind ourselves worse than anyone else can bind us up.
When I was a missionary in South America, part of my ministry was through Bible studies with the people. Through the reading of the Exodus story in the Old Testament, the poor whom I worked with identified with the people of Israel who were enslaved in Egypt. God led the Israelites out of slavery and liberated them, bringing them to the promised land and into a covenant with Him. God liberated these enslaved people on many different levels: spiritually, economically, politically, psychologically, and socially, just to name a few. Through the study of Scripture, the villagers saw their own stories and their own reality, through which they were able to discern where God was calling them to help themselves. Through that discernment, we would start different projects, such as a distance learning high school, a carpentry and mechanics workshop for young boys and men, and a sewing workshop for women and girls. These projects helped give them hope, helped them earn a living, and helped them gain confidence in themselves and in their journey of faith.
Yes, we are bound up in a lot of different ways, as I have illustrated through the examples I have given today. Sometimes we can physically break through those boundaries. A lot of us would like to break through the physical boundaries that are isolating us today. A lot of us would like through this physical isolation we are experiencing. May the story of Lazarus inspire us today. Yes, we will one day break free from what is keeping us bound up right now. But during this time, we still have work to do. We are called to reach out to others, to provide hope and inspiration. We are called to minister to each other, to be beacons of hope. We are called to continue to do the work to which we are called in the secular world.
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