Where are You Bound?

Yesterday I was moved by the circumstance of Mary and Martha in John's Gospel story of the raising of Lazarus.  They had lost their brother.  It was memory of my niece, the heartbreak of my sister-in-law and brother-in-law fresher on the anniversary of her death that made me think of the grief of those left behind by death.

But I have been moved since then by the call to enter the story as Lazarus, and what is in my mind is how he was bound, bound, bound.  Two weeks ago, it was the Samaritan woman at the well whose attitude of stubborn self-determination that bound her.  It took repeated logical argument to draw her beyond her suspicion and hostility to trust and hope.  Last week it was the blind beggar who was given sight not instantaneously by magic mud, but also by going where he was sent and doing as he was told.  They were not zapped, healed in a moment by the touch of the healer like they do on some of those “faith healer” TV shows. 

Healing is not an event, but a process of letting go of what binds us. 

So I’m Lazarus.  Bound, bound, bound.  The stone is rolled away, and the voice calls, the voice of my friend Jesus is one I recognize even through these wrappings.   I’ve awakened from my acceptance of the Big Sleep, and decided to return to the life I left, with the complex love of my sisters for each other and for me.  I’ve decided to return to the world of mornings and their call to action, and nights and their call to rest.  I’ve agreed to accept hunger and thirst in exchange for savor and refreshment. 

But I emerge haltingly, my hands and feet tugging at the rags of my shroud, like a convict being let into court in shackles.  And I do not weep at the sight of blue sky or the faces of my sisters, or Jesus.  My sight is obscured by that same shroud, even as the coins had fallen from my eyelids when I’d sat up.  It strikes me that Lazarus is bound in his mobility by the shroud...and all of his senses too.  I see in myself that when I was given freedom to retire, to be released from the daily requirement of going to work, that I discovered that I was not able to move around freely, my mobility bound by another layer of binding.  I discovered that my senses were not open to my new surroundings, bound as I was to my past.

So here we are nearing Holy Week, called to drop our daily grind like the Samaritan Woman and accept our gift of sight like the beggar, and now to let go of our bindings, bindings, bindings that we have allowed ourselves to be imprisoned in, just as Lazarus.  We’ll not climb Calvary in our shroud.  We have a couple of weeks to get with the program, to not only emerge from our cave but to reclaim our mobility and respond to our senses as we try yet again to believe that we can take on death with Jesus, and emerge from it.