Richard Mallory

Dear Friends of Christ,

We are five weeks into Lent, one week from Jerusalem, and the Gospel gives us a cave.

Lazarus is in there. He has been in there four days. The community that loved him has been keeping vigil outside. When Jesus finally arrives, Martha meets him on the road—not with quiet deference but with barely contained accusation: If you had been here.

Jesus asks to see the tomb. Then he asks them to move the stone. Martha protests—Lord, already there is a stench—which is what we say, in our own ways, when we have made a long peace with our diminishment. When the smell becomes familiar. When we stop noticing that we are living inside a cave. When we cease doing our work—our inner work.

Lazarus, come out.

Not come up. Not be raised. Come out. Emergence is the word. The movement is outward, from constriction into air, from the wrapped and sealed life into something that can breathe.

He comes. Still bound—hands and feet wrapped, face covered. Alive, but not yet free. Jesus does not unwrap him. Jesus says to the people standing there, Unbind him, let him go.

The liberation is not complete until the community finishes it.

This is what abundant life looks like in John’s Gospel—not a private transaction between the soul and God, but an emergence that requires others, a freedom that the community midwifes into being, I came that you might have life, Jesus said a chapter earlier, and have it abundantly. The abundant life is not something we hoard or achieve. It is something we are released into—and release each other into.

The stone gets moved. The name gets called. And then the rest of us have work to do.

We are the unbinders.

Lent has been asking us to look honestly at what we grasp—what we cling to that keeps life small, what we wrap around ourselves that began as protection and became a tomb..The kenotic path, the self-emptying way of Jesus, runs straight through this story. The one who pours himself out calls the bound man into the open air and then turns to us: You finish this. Unbind him. Let him go.

There is a stench of death in the world right now. There are people in caves. There are communities wrapped so tight they cannot move.

We have been given purpose.

Move the stone. Call their name. And when they come stumbling out, still bound, meet them there.

Unbind them.

Let them go.

Your fellow traveler,

—Richard