All Saints’ Sunday B 2024
John 11:32-44; Jack Hardaway
THE WALKING LIVING
So we have two choices.
To walk around being dead, or to walk around being alive.
Every now and then I watch a zombie movie, or television show, pop culture has an ongoing fascination with the walking dead.
The shows are silly and gross, but there is an underlying question that is sometimes subtle, sometimes glaring. Which ones are the true monsters? Which ones are really alive?
Sometimes the contrast is clear. Sometimes it is hard to see.
Walking in death.
Walking in life.
The world according to the Gospel of John is a dead husk of what it was created to be, inhabited by the dead who don’t know they are dead, walking around in a mockery of life.
Jesus walks into the world and the world is suddenly confronted with life, suddenly devastated by the realization that they are not alive. Not really. Walking around being dead in so many ways, unable to choose love.
As Jesus walks through the world what was dead comes alive again, fully alive, not the mockery of life that once passed for life, but fully alive with the glory of God.
The blind see. The dead are raised to life. Where there was unbelief and scorn there is belief, hope and love. People are suddenly free to choose love.
Jesus in the Gospel according to John confronts and challenges the world with two choices: to continue walking into death or to walk into life.
Jesus cries out with a loud voice, “Lazarus come out!” Or in my favorite blue grass song by Patty Loveless, “Rise up Lazarus! Rise up from the dust! If in Jesus you believe, Then you shall be released!”
“The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him and let him go.”
Lazarus, the dead man, walks into life, unbound, his hands and feet set free, his face uncovered.
“I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
What binds us to death?
What if we took up Jesus’ challenge to walk into life?
The power of death is infectious; it escalates and passes along quickly, like a zombie apocalypse, it’s just that we are so acclimated to it that it feels normal, business as usual.
Mass shootings become routine.
Sharing libel on line becomes acceptable.
A world infected with rage and snarky bitterness.
The power of death at work in the world, holding the world in a bind.
Death walking around.
The Gospel breaks this chain reaction of destruction, death cascades into the cross of Christ, and its spell is broken by the resurrection. The thrall of death is shattered. Death loses its sting. The chains break. Love is unbound, boundless.
Death is not the last word.
The last word is life. The last word is love.
Love wins by a landslide.
All Saints’ Sunday, today, in the aftermath of all the silliness of pop culture Halloween and the horror of human history.
Today-this day- we remember those who chose to walk in life, and we celebrate the miracle of belief, the beauty of the communion of saints, the mighty force of the forgiveness of sins, and the holy mystery of the resurrection of the body.
We baptize. We renew.
The Saints. The saints are those who invite us into communion, to walk around being alive, to walk around being in love.
How will we walk?
Walk around being dead, or walk around being alive?
Two choices. One Lord. One Baptism. Boundless.