Be unbound: be a saint

Isaiah 25.6-9 We have waited for the Lord, so that he might save us.

Revelation 21.1-6a I saw a new heaven and a new earth

John 11.32-44 Father, may they believe that you sent me.

 

 

‘Unbind him and let him go’

 

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The story of the raising of Lazarus is one is the pivotal moments of the Gospels.

 

And it has direct bearing on today’s celebration of All Saints, because it shows the movement of the saint from death to life through the resurrection power of Jesus Christ.

 

There are two distinct levels on which to hear this passage.

 

First, we cannot dodge the fact that it’s physical: Jesus, who is deeply moved to tears at the death of his friend, listens to the pleadings of Mary and Martha, Lazarus’ sisters, faces the stinking reality of death, and raises Lazarus - who is well and truly dead - from death to life.

 

That opens up all sorts of questions:

 

What was Lazarus’ body like?

 

How can his body work, with cells and bodily functions and the decay of four days in a tomb?

 

And, after all that, what was Lazarus’ life like once he had come back from the dead?

 

This is about life after death: not just in heaven but on earth too.

And that takes us to the other level of hearing the passage, the spiritual life:

 

What is your life like… before you die?

 

I expect we have all either thought, or talked to people, about our so-called ‘bucket list’: the things we want to do or achieve before we die.

 

It might involve Machu Picchu, a ticket to an Oasis concert, seeing Taylor Swift live, going up the Eiffel Tower: things that people now call, ‘creating memories.’

 

Lazarus’ resurrection pushes this further to deeper spiritual level:

 

if you died and were brought back to life, how would you live your life if you had it all over again?

 

That takes us way beyond memorable experiences into living life in the light of knowing the gift of life, the graced moments of all we do.

 

We don’t know, in any detail, how Lazarus lived his life after death, but we do know he was a disciple of Jesus Christ.

 

Later in John’s gospel, just before Palm Sunday, his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus dined with Lazarus, and his sisters, at their home in Bethany, and we’re told that the crowds came to see Lazarus as well as Jesus (John 12.9).

 

So, Lazarus was a noted person as well as Jesus: there was a buzz about the man who raised someone from the dead, and about the man actually raised from the dead.

 

The ‘buzz’, the ‘wow’, should not be about the man raised, but, as Jesus says, it is that God sent Jesus precisely to bring life, abundant life, to all people. (John 11.42)

So the story of Lazarus has a physical and spiritual reality, but don’t conclude there’s a physical bit of you and a spiritual bit: the word ‘holy’ relates to ’wholeness’.

 

A fundamental Christian doctrine is that we are body and soul together.

 

We declare in the Creeds that ‘we believe in the resurrection of the body’ (Apostles’ Creed) and ‘look for the resurrection of the dead’ (Nicene Creed).

 

That is about whole person life: physically and spiritually alive – that’s what a saint is, a whole, integrated, holy person living in the power of Christ’s resurrection and then raised body and soul.

 

St Paul puts it like this:

 

[I want to know Christ] and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3.10-11)

 

So this gospel text asks a big question of you and me: if you were given a new chance at life how would you live it?

 

The Church’s answer is framed by our baptism and the forgiveness of sins.

 

By being baptised, you and I have sacramentally been raised from the dead, passed through the deep waters of death with Christ and called out of the death of sin into the life of holiness.

 

When we seek forgiveness of our sins, we are moving from death to life: the move of the saint.

 

In other words, you and I have made the move of the saint, each day we seek to follow through on it: today is a new chance at life!

 

Don’t think of saints being remote, otherworldly figures, just portrayed in stained glass: but rather real, flesh and blood people who face death, wherever it reigns, with the life of Christ.

 

The saint on earth is a person who has passed from death to life in baptism, clothed in a new robe; the saint in heaven is one who is clothed in the new, glorious resurrection body we are promised (c.f. Philippians 3.21; 1 Corinthians 15, esp. 35-49).

 

Lazarus was called out of the tomb and Jesus commanded those around him to ‘unbind him [from his grave clothes] and let him go’ (John 11.44).

 

His body bound by death was freed into life.

 

Be unbound!

 

Do not be constrained by fear, despair, lack of purpose but live the ‘lively life that deathless shall persevere’.

 

At baptism a new garment, a new robe, signifies this: as of the next baptism, here at the Minster, the newly baptised will be wrapped in a white to robe signify just this: unbound from death; clothed in Christ’s life.

 

That is the process of your sanctification, your becoming a saint.

 

The call to be a saint is for now: don’t be bashful about it: it is the beginning and end of the Christian life.

 

Then the vision of Isaiah of a banquet at which the redeemed gather saying ‘let us be glad and rejoice in God’s salvation’ (Isaiah 25.9) is fulfilled by the vision of a new heaven and a new earth, where death is no more, neither crying, nor weeping, nor mourning for all is made new (c.f. Revelation 21.1-6a).

 

Our Eucharist now points to that same heavenly banquet tasted by saints on earth: this is the banquet of life!

 

Be unbound. 

 

Be clothed in resurrection power.

 

Come to the banquet of the Lamb of God.

 

Be a saint.

Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me

Jeremiah 31:7-9 I will guide them by a smooth path where they will not stumble.

Hebrews 7:23-28 We have a High Priest a high priest, holy, blameless, undefiled, separated

from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.

Mark 10:46-52 Go; your faith has saved you.

 

 

‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me’.

 

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I love the story of Bartimaeus.

 

In the unlikely setting of a dusty road outside the city of Jericho, what unfolds shows the sheer supernatural power and capacity and desire of Jesus, ‘to open the eyes that are blind’ (Isaiah 42.7).

 

Bartimaeus could not see and, on Jesus’ declaration that his faith had saved him, ‘immediately his sight returned and he followed Jesus along the road’ (Mark 10.52).

 

That’s breath-taking: a soul saved, insight given and a disciple made.

 

I wonder, do we pray enough for this sort of thing to happen in our own day, in this place, for people we engage with, for ourselves?

 

Bartimaeus’ experience is set within the context of faith: this is so much more than Specsavers!

 

So, there’s another level on which to see this encounter.

 

Jesus asks Bartimaeus, ‘what do you want me to do for you?’ (a nice contrast with James and John last week who say to Jesus, ‘we want you to do anything we ask of you’ [Mark 10.35]).

 

Bartimaeus has already shown his faith; unrecognised by the crowd.

 

Bartimaeus was calling out in a very particular way, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me’.

 

That phrase is not random.

 

Bartimaeus, who is blind at this point, can see something more vividly than all those in the crowd whose eyes function perfectly well.

 

‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me’. Let’s explore that prayer of invocation.

 

Jesus.

 

Devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus is a longstanding one: ‘O let the heart beat high with bliss’, says a medieval hymn, ‘Yea, let it triumph at the sound | Of Jesus’ name, so sweet it is, | For every joy therein is found.’

 

The name of Jesus literally means ‘God saves’.

 

As the angel said to Joseph:

 

[Your wife, Mary,] will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ (Matthew 1.21)

 

Bartimaeus’ cry is first a plea to be saved.

 

His blindness is existential and spiritual as well as literal.

 

So he says, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me’.

 

‘Son of David’.

 

That’s saying, ‘you, Jesus are the are the Messiah, the anointed one of God; you are in the line of David, yet a greater shepherd-king than he; you, Jesus, are the fulfilment of God’s promise, revealed by the prophets, throughout the ages’.

 

Bartimaeus is touching deep things here and revealing a faith that perhaps he didn’t even know he had.

 

‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me’.

 

Have mercy on me.

 

‘Mercy’ is such an important word.

 

It can sound like abject submission or an appeal against judgement.

 

But it’s not like that.

 

The word ‘mercy’, in the Greek of the New Testament, has the same root as the Greek word for oil, olive oil, to soothe and heal.

 

That’s why we sing in the Liturgy, ‘Lord, have mercy,’ or sometimes in the original Greek, ‘Kyrie, eleison’, and ‘Lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the world have mercy upon us’, that is to say, ‘Lord, soothe me, comfort me, take away my pain, show me your steadfast love’.[1]

 

Bartimaeus is calling on Jesus’ power, through the Holy Spirit of God, to anoint and save and heal him: to restore his sight, and give him insight.

 

Bartimaeus was shouting this out to Jesus on that dusty road.

 

But Bartimaeus is shouted down.

 

We live in a shouty world.

 

The crowds today – on social media, on TV, in the wider culture - shout down faith in Jesus Christ: okay, be a Christian if you like, but whisper it amongst yourselves, don’t speak into the public square, it’s a private matter.

 

And there can be a shouting match going on in our souls: sometimes a voice within shouts down faith: ‘be quiet, don’t bother Jesus’.

 

In faith Bartimaeus knew his need for healing, soothing, saving, have his sight and insight restored: he had to call out.

 

Never let the shouty crowd - those who are hostile to, or sneering about, your faith - drown out your call to Jesus; don’t allow the shout, or whisper, within stop you from calling to him.

 

Jesus stands still, bringing peace and tranquillity to a noisy, busy, dusty world.

 

Our call to Jesus comes now in prayer, and it is no accident that one of the ancient prayers of the Church, much used by  Christians of the East, is known as ‘The Jesus Prayer’, the gently repeated words, echoing Bartimaeus’ words, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner’.

 

Jesus hears Bartimaeus: he hears you above the hubbub of a shouty world; he hears you in the stillness of prayer.

 

Jesus stands still to listen and to hear, so whisper with Bartimaeus: ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me’.

 

That prayer is a cry of faith, a cry that will be heard, a cry that will restore our sight, insight and vision.

 

On regaining his sight, Bartimaeus followed Jesus on the way.

 

Bartimaeus prefigures another man who prayed that his sight would be restored, and that was Saul, blinded on the Road to Damascus.

 

On regaining his sight, Paul, as he became, followed Jesus on the way and was commissioned, as we are, not to shout down the message of salvation, but to shout it out!

 

As Jesus said to Paul in a vision:

 

‘I [am rescuing] you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me’. (Acts of the Apostles 26.17-18)

 

That is the promise to Bartimaeus, to Paul, to you, to me.

 

Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us, restore our sight and open our eyes, O Lord, that we may see the wonders of your law.’ (Psalm 119.18)

 

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[1] In Hebrew the word hesed meaning ‘steadfast love’ also translates as ‘mercy’

Can you drink this cup?

Isaiah 53:4-12 If he offers his life in atonement, what the Lord wishes will be done

Hebrews 5: 1-10 Jesus became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him

Mark 10.35-45 The Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many

 

 

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The gospel today sets before us the all too human tendency to rivalry and jostling for position.

 

It then sets out the antidote to that jostling, which is life lived in the life, passion and death of Jesus Christ.

 

Rivalry starts early in human beings and plays out in all areas of our lives: in a family; at work; amongst neighbours; in churches; in politics; in economics; in international relations - it’s everywhere and it’s now.

 

But when we vie for prestige and power in whose eyes, ultimately, do we want to find favour?

 

That’s a deep question for each of us.

 

Who are you trying to impress?

 

Who do you want to win over?

 

Whose opinion or love do you most value?

 

Ultimately, wisdom suggests that all roads lead back to God, usually via our parents or someone we have set up as an ultimate authority figure in our lives.

 

In the Biblical witness Cain and Abel were the first jostlers against each other.

 

Each wanted to find favour in God’s sight and when Cain did not receive the approval that he felt was his due, his path was to murder: he killed his brother Abel.

 

There is something in all of us that wants approval and status and respect.

 

We may not be moved to physical violence or murder, but there is a violence of thinking and being that comes from our quest for love and approval.

 

We should not be surprised that even amongst Jesus’ chosen Twelve human rivalry kicks in.

 

James and John, bound by ties of biological brotherhood, short circuit the fraternity of Jesus’ chosen Twelve by seeking their own advantage over the others.

 

They frame it in terms of heavenly glory.

 

They try to flatter Jesus - as if flattery would work with him - by suggesting that all they want to do is share is the glory that will come to him.

 

But their opening line is extraordinary and belies what drives us when we seek approval and power: ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’ (Mark 10.35b).

 

‘We want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’

 

How audacious, how impudent.

 

What a far cry from Jesus’ own prayer in Gethsemane, ‘Father… let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will’ (Matthew 26.39; Luke 22.42); or from the response of Mary to the archangel, ‘let it be to me according to your word’ (Luke 1.38).

 

How far from what Jesus teaches in prayer to the Father, ‘Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’.

 

We all go looking for approval and status and respect, but we go looking in the wrong place, thinking that exerting ourselves over others gives us what we seek, as did James and John, and the other ten who their talk had angered – they weren’t innocents, they wanted status too!

 

That’s the diagnosis, but what is the prescription?

 

Jesus called them and said to them, ‘You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’ (Mark 10.42-45)

 

Jesus is pointing to the washing of feet and the piercing of his hands and feet by the nails that hold him to the cross: this is the place to look for approval and status and respect.

 

That’s diametrically opposed to the rivalry, the jostling, the squabbles - petty and huge – the quest for respect and approval that we all indulge in.

 

So, it’s not just the approval of God that we seek: we want to be God, as we perceive God to be, lording it over other people; to impose our wills on their will.

 

‘But it is not so among you’. That’s a command not a description.

 

The scandal of Christian division continues into our day, because it is the scandal - the stumbling block - of human division.

 

Disunity comes when we place our own wills above that of Christ’s will, and see ourselves as rivals not as fellow servants of the Most High.

 

We are to be united in his Body, the living organism of the Church in which, yes, there is hierarchy, which means, in its purest sense, ‘a sacred order’ - for God is not a god of chaos but God, who gives order, pattern and structure to Creation.

 

But we disrupt God’s sacred order into pyramids of power and tyranny, and call them ‘hierarchies’; making sacred our power grab from God.

 

We are not to be like that because God is not like that: God is not the tyrant we project onto him.

 

At the Last Supper God Incarnate, Jesus Christ, adopts the posture that he commends to the Twelve.

 

If you wish to be great then be a διάκονος, the New Testament Greek word for ‘servant; if you would be first then be a δοῦλος, the New Testament Greek word for ‘slave’.

 

That is shocking on so many levels.

 

If you think greatness and being first is to be god over others, then what Jesus says is shocking.

 

But in our own day to suggest the way to greatness is service, and all the more so slavery, is almost abhorrent.

 

The slave carries no approval or status or respect in the eyes of the world.

 

And we are rightly sensitised to the wickedness of chattel slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, not to mention slavery in the ancient world and modern slavery and the trafficking that goes with it.

 

It is said that the Cross, a Roman execution device, was so sensitive to early Christians that it took centuries for it to be the emblem of the Faith.

 

Slavery carries that force today.

 

To be honest, I am hesitant even to mention it.

 

So, with our horror today of what slavery is, it is all the more radical for Jesus to suggest that one might choose it to find greatness.

 

Let us be clear there is nothing good in forcing a person to be a slave or trading a person as a slave.

 

Slavery is idolatrous because it places one person as a tyrant over another.

 

All this St Paul articulates in his letter to the Philippians:

 

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

 who, though he was in the form of God,

   did not regard equality with God

   as something to be exploited,

 but emptied himself,

   taking the form of a slave,

   being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

   he humbled himself

   and became obedient to the point of death—

   even death on a cross. (Philippians 2.3-8)

 

We should glory

in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ;

for he is our salvation,

our life and our resurrection,

through him we are saved and made free.

Amen.

How hard it is...

Amos 5:6-7;10-15  Hate evil and love good

Hebrews 4: 12-16 The word of God cuts more finely than a double-edged sword

Mark 10.17-31 Give everything  you own to the poor, and follow me

 

‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God;

for God all things are possible.’

(Mark 10.27).

 

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‘The word of God’, the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, ‘is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart’. (Hebrews 4.12)

 

That is some description.

 

Anyone who thinks the Bible or Christian belief and practice is undemanding or ‘easy come; easy go’ is in for a shock.

 

And those of us who already profess the Christian faith and consider ourselves disciples of Christ are pressed further, into considering what our faith really means to us, and what the demands of that faith are.

 

This is what the man in today’s gospel, who had many possessions, found out to his cost.

 

Or, perhaps better put, he was not prepared to pay the cost of following Jesus which, in his case, was to sell all he had and give the money to the poor.

 

People have speculated if that is a general instruction to us all – to sell up and give it all away – or a particular one to him.

 

That hardly matters: Jesus’ call to ‘come, follow me’ always calls for some form of renunciation: material, emotional, economic.

 

To follow him the fishermen put down their nets.

 

To follow him Matthew, the tax collector, walks away from his sharp practices and creaming off tax income for himself.

 

To follow him Mary Magdalene lets go of her physical needing Jesus.

 

To follow him Zacchaeus makes restitution of his financial misdealing.

 

This rich man with many possessions is told that to follow Jesus he must sell all those possessions and give the proceeds to the poor.

 

The gospel poses the question: to follow him what do you have to let of of?

 

It will be something you have to give up to make way for taking on the way of Jesus Christ more deeply.

 

Following Jesus means for each of us that we don’t just say put, stuck in a rut of our own self-satisfaction, pride or comfort.

 

We can’t.

 

Not when the word of God is ‘is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow… able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart’

 

Discipleship begins with decision; a movement of the heart.

 

‘Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?’ Will you, or won’t you?

 

If you will, then life will change.

 

It’s telling that Jesus was on a journey at the beginning of this passage, for he is always on the move.

 

That translates today into the fact that being a disciple of Christ is not a static experience: the disciple will change, will experience metanoia, which is often translated as ‘repentance’, or ‘changing’, or ‘turning around’.

 

The Greek word metanoia joins two words: meta, ‘to go beyond’, noia, from ‘nous’, meaning ‘mind’.

 

In other words, it is when we go beyond our present mind - changing our thoughts, our habits, our compulsions, our preoccupations - that we are ready truly to be a disciple.

 

We go beyond our present state of mind to see things through the eyes of Christ.

 

And just as Jesus calls disciples in the Gospels in different ways so your call to discipleship will look different from mine; we’re all different people with different sins and shortcomings, but we are all people who Jesus ‘looks at and loves’, just as he did that rich man.

 

And that man who comes to Jesus is so nearly there.

 

Just observe.

 

He comes to Jesus when Jesus is on the move, it implies he’s ready to join the journey, go where Jesus goes, literally and figuratively.

 

He runs up to Jesus; he is eager.

 

He kneels down at Jesus’ feet; this is deepest act of respect to give to anyone.

 

He asks Jesus, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’

 

So nearly there.

 

What the rich man was demonstrating was that he was a great observer of the Law of Moses: something the Pharisees did assiduously.[1]

 

But Jesus didn’t say, ‘well, you’ve come to the right man, it sounds great what you’re already doing, keeping the commandments and all that. And thanks for calling me Good.’

 

Instead Jesus does and says something that, ‘is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow… able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart’.

 

First, Jesus looks at the man, and loves him.

 

And then, precisely because he ‘looks at him and loved him’, Jesus can’t leave him stuck where he is, being very rich, possessed by his possessions, feeling great about the commandments, and going through the motions of righteousness.

 

He needs to be challenged.

 

Here it is again:

 

Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. (Mark 10.21,22)

 

The gospel reading last Sunday ended with Jesus describing how the kingdom of God is to be lived by those who are utterly dependent on love and grace, as you can see in a person who always accepts of the love of others – the child being the exemplar of that way of being.

 

‘How hard it is…’ we might say, just like the disciples did.

 

And that’s exactly what Jesus says too, ‘Children’ - that’s what he calls them – ‘children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!’ (Mark 10.24b)

 

Hang on, we might say, doesn’t Jesus welcome everyone, unconditionally?

 

He certainly welcomes unconditionally those who ‘get grace’, as we heard last week; but adults, and those possessed by possessions, he welcomes conditionally: the condition being, ‘are you ready to let go?’

 

Letting go of what possesses us like habits and things - be that money, possessions, overbearing clinging to other people, our pride, self-satisfaction – letting go of those things is not a deprivation but a completion.

 

The logic of the Kingdom, the logic of the Cross, is that when you give away, then you receive; when you are last, then you are first; when you have nothing, you have everything; when you die to self-obsession, you are born to eternal life.

 

If you’re ready to that then eternal life, life in Christ, life in the Kingdom, is yours.

 

If you are not ready to that, then you will, like the rich man, find yourself shocked, and go away grieving.

 

And those who don’t come near to Jesus or do not go away grieving probably weren’t sincerely seeking him in the first place: yet still he looks at them and loves them…

 

‘How hard it is…’

 

Well, yes, taking up the cross and following Jesus is, but it is the way to the fullness of eternal life.

 

As Jesus says: ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’ (Mark 10.27).

 

 

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[1] NB This is not a derogatory remark about Pharisees, but a point that Torah observance was fundamental to the Pharisaic tradition.