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Untie him and let him go.
This gospel is so rich and has many layers to it,
so it is important to break it open a little bit.
One of the things about this gospel has always bothered me
is when Jesus hears that his friend Lazarus is ill,
and his response is to stay two more days.
This is deeply disturbing!
Why is it that he does not come to rescue his friend?
After all, he had the power to do this.
So why does he not rescue his friend?
He chooses to stay there, and not rescue.
This becomes a theme in John's gospel,
that God does not rescue us.
He redeems us.
He does not even rescue Christ, his own son from the cross.
He redeems him through the cross.
And we have to unpack what this really means for us
and what it is that Jesus does
and what he does not do.
He does not go immediately!
He waits and then he goes later.
Ron Rollheiser, the great Catholic priest and theologian,
breaks this open and says
there are two distinct movements here that are very important
to highlight and understand what Jesus does.
In response to this, he goes to them,
he shows up, he arrives and then he enters.
The second part is that Jesus enters into our suffering.
He does not rescue us.
He redeems us and he enters into our suffering.
So again, that might not seem all that big,
but that is pretty important.
As God became one of us in Jesus,
he enters into our human condition
and he becomes one of us to show us the way through this life.
That means he does not take away all our suffering.
He does not take away all our pain,
but shows us how to be with each other in that pain.
What does that mean for us?
It means that when Jesus comes to his friend Lazarus,
and Mary and Martha, the sisters of of Lazarus,
he shows up in their pain and he weeps when they weep.
He is sad when they are sad now.
And then, he calls Lazarus forward,
“Untie him and lets him go.”
What does that ultimately mean for us?
It means that the Lord comes to us
and shows up in our time,
but how he shows up is up to you and I.
He shows up when you and I show up because
he has no hands and no feet in this world except yours and mine.
So when our relatives are struggling and sick,
it is you and I that have to show up,
you and I have to be there
to be the hands and the feet of Christ,
not to rescue them, not to take away their suffering
because we do not have that power.
But what we can do is we can show up
and be present to them in the midst of their suffering,
in the midst of their pain.
Now, at least that sounds so easy, let me tell you,
it is hard when our loved ones suffer.
I do believe that it is harder to watch our loved ones suffer
than it is to suffer ourselves.
I really do believe that
when our parents or grandparents or our spouse,
or God forbid, even our child is sick
and even worse dying,
we want to solve it.
We want to take away their pain.
We want to take away their suffering,
but we do not have the power.
But what we can do in that difficult moment
is be present to them in their suffering.
Be present to them in the midst of their pain
and understand that requires of us
a certain amount of centeredness,
requires of us a certain calmness in our own spirit
that we can sit with them and
maybe hold their hand
or just simply gently touch them with no need for words.
Just a loving presence.
I promise you that makes all the difference in the world.
You might remember several years ago,
my brother Paul was dying of pancreatic cancer
and I remember how difficult it was
to be present to him in the midst of suffering.
The challenge was that when he came to me first,
right when he got the diagnosis and the result,
and we knew how bad it was,
I knew how bad it would get.
He did not.
I had been down this journey with many other people
who have died of pancreatic cancer.
So I knew what the road ahead was.
And so he asked me,
“Will you tell me what is ahead?”
I said, “I will tell you what is ahead as long as you want to know it.”
And so every now and then
he would ask a difficult question at a difficult moment.
I remember him asking when things were getting particularly bad,
“Will I make Christmas?”
I said, “No, you will not make Christmas.”
“Will I make my birthday in early December?”
“No, very unlikely but possible.”
“Will I make Thanksgiving?”
I said, “Depends if you want to,
that is going to be up to you on how much fight you have left.
Your body is broken down, you have got nothing else left.”
He did make Thanksgiving
because he wanted to see his daughter and her new boyfriend.
But that was the only thing he did.
He died a few days after Thanksgiving.
All I could do was show up.
I had no control.
I could not take away his suffering
as much as I wanted to.
I wish I could take away the pain
that his family was experiencing.
I could not.
But what I could do is be there
and to hold his hand like I did that last night
for endless hours until he was comfortable to say goodbye.
My friends, it is important for us to know the power of presence,
the power of showing up in the difficult moments of people's lives.
It does not have to be the end of their life.
The difficult moments, the transitions,
the painful times when we doubt ourselves,
when we struggle and we wonder,
can we make this moment?
And we often cannot change things for them,
but what we can do is to be there for them.
That is what it means to be a fully alive Christian in our world today.
Today, more than ever, we need to be people
who are willing to show up,
to show up and not save people, not to rescue them,
but to be present to them in the midst their suffering.
Whether it be from a divorce
or whether it be from a rejection of their family
because they are a part of a LBGT community,
or whether they are immigrants and they feel no longer welcomed,
or whether they have a multitude of other places
where they feel left out on the sides of society.
Our job is to show up,
to show the loving presence of God to them.
Today we will have the third scrutiny for the elect
where we will pray upon them
and ask the Lord to give them particular insight,
but not only to them, but also for us.
That we know the power of presence,
that we turn up for each other’s lives
and be refreshed and renewed in the journey of Christ.
So as we hear these words for them,
let us also hear the words for ourselves
that we are called to be alive in Christ
and to show up for people's painful moments of life.
Untie him and let him go.
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