Friday, 9/11

                      __________________John 11:43,44_

  

  Jesus cried 

   “Lazarus, 

  come out!"  

 The 

   dead

     man 

      came 

        out,  

         bound with strips of cloth Jesus said 

            to them “Unbind him and let him go.”

It’s so striking  that Jesus raises Lazarus, but the unbinding is not Jesus' piece to do, but ours.  There were so many images that I found and I could only choose one. I picked this one  because it says that he’s raised into the same Jewish structures and familynad community, the same circumstances as before, exemplified to this Episcopalian by the gothic window

with the trees outside.

But I was was also

drawn to this one 

which expresses 

so well the power 

of  Jesus, the very 

well of life, calling 

his friend, for whom 

he had just been

weeping, back to life. 

And I liked this one 

because the guy nearest the no doubty utterly preplexed Lazarus, is holding his nose reminding  us of the  all too corporeal reality  the sitution and that the ever-practical Martha's protestaion,“already there is a stench, for he had been dead for 4 days ” Which did not deter Jesus in the least.  And it was Lazarus's friends and family who had to then unwind him from the soiled and grody grave clothes,  unbind him wand let him go. Which surely seems to true my experience!  It is God’s own love and power that raises us from the dead, but we cannot extricate ourselves from our soiled and grody gave clothes  — that part falls to those who walk with us.