Reading from the Gospel according to John, chapter 11. In this passage, Lazarus of Bethany, the brother of Martha and Mary and good friend of Jesus, became ill and died. The women sent a message to Jesus hoping he would arrive before the death but by the time Jesus came, Lazarus had been dead four days. Listen for how God speaks to us through these words tonight.

TEXT: John 11:32-44

When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." When Jesus saw her weeping, and the others who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord; come and see." Jesus began to weep. So the others said, "See how he loved him!" But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?" Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days." Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Lord God, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me." When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go free."

That morning one year ago, something inside of us died. The world that we thought we knew changed instantly and many of us began to wrap our hearts and our lives in protective coverings. Stunned at the on-the-spot news films so hard to believe, we tried desperately to reach New York City friends, business associates, and loved ones to be assured of their safety. Then, without even realizing it, in several ways we stepped into a tomb to shield ourselves and we rolled the stone across the opening. What else could we do? The reality of that morning was too much to bear. As a nation this year we have been willing to give up freedoms to ensure our safety until it was suggested that postal workers and neighbors monitor each other and report suspicious actions. We wrapped ourselves in caution and fear. As individuals, we questioned the wisdom of taking a plane flight, of driving across the Golden Gate Bridge, of trusting our neighbors. In many ways, the terrorists won.

Yet, just as Moses called to the Hebrew people to "Choose Life," Jesus called to Lazarus to "Come out!" Jesus didn’t unwrap the burial cloths from Lazarus himself but called to the community around him to, "Unbind him, and let him go free." May we respond to his call to us today in all the ways that we can to free each other from our own bindings: by listening to the stories of our neighbors who experienced personal loss on September 11; by opening our hearts, our neighborhoods and our social lives to people of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds; by refusing to listen to or speak disparaging generalizations about any peoples; by believing in our hearts that throughout the world we are all God’s children precious and loved.

This morning, the sun was shining on the sparking blue water of Richardson Bay while the thick fog covered the Golden Gate Bridge and hid the City from our view. As his community slowly unbound Lazarus to allow him to live in freedom, the early fog gradually burned off revealing our sparkling Bridge monitored very carefully today by boats and ships of all shapes and sizes. God calls all of us to have life and to have it abundantly — you and me and little girls in Afghanistan and old men in India and mothers in Nigeria and fathers in Central America. May we feel God’s gentle hand unbinding us from fear and grief and setting us free to love.