Mtr Taylor Devine

Dear Friend,

Jesus said them, "Unbind him, and let him go." When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead can you imagine how shocked the gathered people would have been? Deeply glad, so confused, overwhelmed by the powers of Jesus. As they caught their breath I imagine they would come down from this feeling to a feeling of awe and wonder and maybe even wondering why this wasn't standard-issue Jesus treatment. "Why can't my sibling be raised from the dead?" I am sure some thought. As the ultimate in impossibility, maybe it begged other questions, what else can he do! What other kinds of stones will he roll back? What other kinds of binds will he loose? We know it escalated the threat for the authorities, he went into hiding.

Just days later Jesus is at Lazarus' house when Mary anointed Jesus' feet and he prepared to go to Jerusalem. On the way the moment we commemorate with Palm Sunday took place, with palms strewn before him as he rode toward his crucifixion, or as the passage says, his glorification. The pattern of Jesus' life set loose many binds, and as Christians we hold that he loosed the ultimate bind in his life, death and resurrection - taking on sin and death to destroy them. I've heard stories and I imagine that you have too of people loosed from the things that bound them for decades, or who have found consolation after a long long wait, who have echoes in their lives of "Unbind him, and let him go." Those moments, big and small, point toward what is possible in Jesus's work in the world and beyond.

In Christ,
Mtr. Taylo