Resurrection

In this season of resurrection, I have been wondering what it means to live the resurrected life. It is what we are called to, right? Or rather, it is this amazing gift we are offered – new life free of the bondage of sin.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I get entangled in those bonds of sin every day, and many times in each day. I don’t know that I have ever felt free of the many things that seem to separate me from God.

Ronald Rolheiser, in his book The Holy Longing, calls the resurrected life a “radically new life,” a life transformed. A life that surprises me, perhaps, by what it includes and what it excludes, if I can be freed from my expectations.

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upwards and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’ John 11:38-44, NRSV

This resurrection story raises a core question for me: If Lazarus was bound, if his feet were bound, and his eyes covered with the face wrapping, how was he able to come out of the tomb? And yet, Lazarus comes out, bound. Jesus tells those gathered, Lazarus’ community – family and friends – to unbind him. To free him.

That is my prayer today, for me and for you: that we will hear Jesus’ call to come out of the tomb, and heed it. That we will be unbound and will walk free in the life of the resurrection.