Theological Truth: By accepting that death is inevitable but not insurmountable, painful but not permanent, we can join Jesus in the difficult work of healing the world.
The Staunton clergy gathered last week to hear Pastor Lee Reid speak about “Shepherd’s House,” the recently opened, low-barrier, cold weather homeless shelter that he, along with Rev. Won from Central Methodist and support from many churches (including Trinity), opened on Middlebrook Road in the gym behind Arbor Hill, Pastor Lee’s church. If you had peeked into the Foster Room Thursday afternoon, you could have quickly determined “which of these clergy are not like the others.”
Pastor Lee is a large man with a large presence. He sports a mohawk topped with a curly shock of bleached blond hair and an armful of tattoos. But most importantly…he has a heart for the poor. He spent years with both The Mission and Waynesboro’s WARM shelter. He constantly reaches out to the afflicted and the addicted. His deep faith in the power of God’s love to transcend suffering and death empowers him to enter places of pain and suffering to unbind any child of God from whatever may be entangling them in the cords of death. He is not afraid to go there.
I’ll be the first to admit that I prefer to avoid places of suffering and death. Don’t we all? We prefer the maternity ward to the ICU, a baptism instead of a funeral. There’s a reason why weddings fill churches but divorces rarely do the same for courtrooms. We are a death-denying and suffering-avoidant lot. We don’t want to experience pain and suffering, death and dying—for ourselves or our loved ones—any more than Mary and Martha do. So of course they call for Jesus to save Lazarus. They don’t want their brother to die. They don’t want to experience the sting of death. They don’t want to go there.
But Jesus goes there…eventually. He answers Martha and Mary’s plea to come and save their brother Lazarus, after waiting two days despite knowing what will happen. By the time he arrives, Lazarus has been in the tomb four days. Mary and Martha voice their lament with the same exact words, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Their lament gives voice to the grief of us all who ask, “Why Lord?” “Where are you, Lord?” “How can we be saved from separation, suffering, death, and dying?”
Why does Jesus wait? Why isn’t the death of Lazarus prevented? Why aren’t our prayers answered, either in the way we’d like or the timeframe we prefer? These are important and faithful questions, and today’s readings shed some Gospel light on them. They demonstrate that death is an unavoidable part of mortal life, and sin is an inevitable reality of authentic love.
God knows it and Jesus doesn’t like it any more than we do. He is greatly disturbed and deeply moved. Another translation says that Jesus snorts or huffs. He too is irritated and frustrated that suffering and death continue to infect this world. The God of Jesus Christ is moved—not removed, unaware, or insensitive to the pain of our lives.
His willingness to move toward it is instructive and important too. Jesus enters the dark places. He wades into Martha and Mary’s grief. He goes to the grave of Lazarus; he weeps with them. Jesus knows our pain. He feels our grief. He isn’t afraid to go there—with us and for us. He loves us not only to death, but through death—beyond death—to true and lasting life.
We’ll see the same truth revealed as we walk with Jesus through Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday. Jesus doesn’t even prevent his own suffering and death. He goes there—not around the pain but through it. Not only for us but with us. And then on that glorious Easter morning, the fullness of God’s love and truth is revealed: Nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. God is with us in the pain, through the grief, transcending even death.
But this is more than a hope to hold, it’s a truth to live. Jesus gives them and us clear instructions: “Unbind him and let him go.” He calls us to join him in this loving, liberating, life-giving, cross-shaped way of life…to go there, to the places of pain, suffering, and grief. To release the captives and set the oppressed free—no matter how difficult, intractable, demanding, messy, painful, or impossible it may seem. Where is the weeping in our world? Where is the stench of death? Who needs unbinding?
Sociologist and author Matthew Desmond insists it’s the “third of [our] country’s people [living] in households making $55,000 or less.” In a guest essay in The New York Times, he defines poverty by its lethal effects: “Poverty is measured at different income levels, but it is experienced as an exhausting piling on of problems. Poverty is chronic pain, on top of tooth rot, on top of debt collector harassment, on top of the nauseating fear of eviction. It is the suffocation of your talents and your dreams. It is death come early and often. From 2001 to 2014, the richest women in America gained almost three years of life while the poorest gained just 15 days. Far from a line, poverty is a tight knot of humiliations and agonies, and its persistence in American life should shame us.” (Emphasis mine.)
Can we hear Jesus telling us “Unbind them”?
I get it. I dread “going there” too. Poverty is an uncomfortable, deeply entrenched, and messy problem that we want to avoid. But if we believe what we say we believe and follow whom we say is our Lord, then we can go there because we don’t go alone. We go with the One who goes through the pain, not around it, who is not only for us but with us.
We don’t do it alone and we don’t have to do it all. I couldn’t do the work that Pastor Lee does. Not many of us can. We don’t have to go there, but we shouldn’t fear or avoid going somewhere…places where people are suffocating and entangled in the cords of death.
How? Being aware of the extent of the problem, not averting our attention from the pain of our neighbors and trusting that God is in it with us are all good places to start. Admitting the ways we benefit from low wages and tax policy is an important albeit uncomfortable next step.
Praying for clarity about specific ways we can unbind those who suffer will surely come, because that’s where Jesus goes. And when we join him in that work, we discover anew the gospel truth that this God-connected life transcends separation, suffering, and death. It’s a reality to be experienced on both sides of the grave. Now and forever. For us and for all of God’s people. Unbounded love, unbinding us to unbind others.
— Fr. AJ Heine, Rector, Trinity Episcopal Church of Staunton
Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year A, March 26, 2023
Readings: Ezekiel 37:1-14, Psalm 130, Romans 8:6-11, John 11:1-45
