Unbind...Set free!

Jesus cried in a loud voice, 'Lazarus, here! Come out!' The dead man came out, his feet and hands bound with bands of stuff and a cloth round his face. Jesus said to them, 'Unbind him, let him go free'. (John 11:43-44)

These are the last words of Sunday's Gospel, the Raising of Lazarus. Like the previous two weeks, it's a long one, so I thought I'd just offer a thought on this last bit.  (Bangor, Mash and Freddie say that's a relief, that I'm not gonna go on too long). The painting is by Rembrandt.

So what catches my attention about this dramatic moment is that while Jesus, obviously, performs the miraculous raising of Lazarus, he turns to the others to unbind Lazarus and let him go free.  It's a bit like the Feeding of the Five Thousand, where Jesus asks the apostles to distribute the bread and fish which he has miraculously multiplied. There he depended on them to kind of implement the grace of the miracle. So, here he does the raising but he asks the apostles - the Church - us, you and me - to do the unbinding and setting free. 

There are so many ways that we can and do bind one another up, with our actions and our words, even in our thoughts, directly or indirectly. We can do it with nastiness or sometimes with a deceptive warmth. Our pride may be hurt, jealousy may rise, we are offended. We have a little power, we want our own way, and so on. And so we bind someone up, or even a group of people - or even a whole country if it's mixed with power on a grander scale.

So as we join Martha and Mary in welcoming their brother back, maybe in our quiet moments - and there are probably more of them than is usual - we might ask ourselves who we need to unbind and set free...