Holy Wisdom Monastery
All Saints All Souls, November 3, 2024
Roberta Felker
Isaiah 25:6-9; Revelation 21: 1-6a; John 11:32-44
Today, with faith communities across the world, we celebrate the feast of All Saints All Souls. We are invited to recall our membership in the Communion of Everyday Saints and the promise of God’s ultimate victory over loss, sorrow, and death. In this morning’s reading from Isaiah, God hosts a feast for all people where every tear is wiped away and death itself is swallowed up—a vision echoed in Revelation, where a new heaven and a new earth reveal God’s intimate, healing presence with humanity. John’s account of the raising of Lazarus brings these promises into the present.
Throughout John’s gospel, Jesus’ actions repeatedly confronted the entrenched power structures that dictated the social, religious, and political landscape of his time. By interpreting the law through compassion and confronting exploitative systems, Jesus challenged this authority. Jesus’ healing on the Sabbath, his willingness to touch the “unclean,” and his dining with tax collectors and sinners foreshadowed the ultimate confrontation with death in today’s story of Lazarus. Each of these signs, along with Jesus’ teachings, escalated the tension between Jesus and the religious authorities and illuminated Jesus’ mission to transform systems of power and bring about a new kind of life, even in the face of resistance.
The raising of Lazarus is the seventh – and last – of Jesus’ signs in John’s gospel. In the Synoptic Gospels, the cleansing of the temple is the impetus for the plot to kill Jesus, but by a cruel irony, in the Gospel of John, it is the raising of Lazarus that is the final insult to the religious leaders. If we read just beyond today’s passage, we find the Pharisees and chief priests coming together in direct response to Jesus’ raising of Lazarus. They see – and fear — the effects of the miracle on the crowd: too many people are believing in this Jesus! This is the miracle that tips the scales and incites those who are plotting Jesus’ death. The story of Lazarus offers an invitation to cast off our graveclothes, to help unbind one another – to experience new life.
Earlier in chapter 11, Mary and Martha sent a message to Jesus about their brother, Lazarus: “He whom you love is ill.” (My Mom loved how St. Augustine referred to the three: “one sick, the others sad, all of them beloved.”) Jesus receives the news, and intentionally delays his visit to Bethany for two days. When he finally arrives, Lazarus has already been dead for four days, a fact that underscores the gravity of the situation and the despair felt by his sisters and the community.
Martha, followed by Mary in today’s reading, expresses sorrow and frustration at Jesus’ delay: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Their reproach highlights their belief that Jesus could have – should have – healed Lazarus, his beloved friend, and emphasized the deep sense of grief and disappointment they now experience.
Jesus is not unmoved by their tears. In this moment of mourning, Jesus reveals both his compassion and his divine authority. There by the tomb, “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved … Jesus began to weep.” It may be tempting to see Jesus’ emotion as separate from his miracle. Like he had a moment of human frailty there in Bethany but then pulled his divine self together and did the God-work at the tomb. But it is a both/and: Jesus’ intense anguish is a clear sign of his humanity while the raising of Lazarus serves as a transformative challenge to the authority of death and the systems that promote fear and hopelessness. His compassion is entwined with his power to bring life and hope; his humanity is not a footnote to the gospel but is essential to the work of redemption.
This moment of Jesus’ vulnerability transitions into an unmistakable act of authority when Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Up until now, Jesus’ signs have been powerful – but the religious leaders were able to rationalize or ignore them. But at the tomb, Jesus was not just healing. With the raising of Lazarus, Jesus extended his authority into what was previously seen as unassailable territory, challenging a political, economic, and religious system that thrived on fear, restrictions, and the inevitability of death. It wasn’t just that Lazarus was brought back to life; it was that the very power of death was defeated. Lazarus’ raising served as a warning and a promise that the “powers that be” held far less power than they wanted the people to believe.
When Jesus cried, “unbind him and let him go,” he was addressing every force – social, political, and personal – that holds us captive. Jesus challenged the unjust structures and systems of dominance, not with traditional power but with the power of a radical empathy that heals and restores. God’s love and life cannot be contained by any power on earth; whatever binds us, whatever holds us back, we are meant for a life that is truly free.
Everyday saints among us shed light on unbinding as a dynamic and participatory act! Theologian and civil rights leader, Howard Thurman, notes that the experience of being marginalized, can entomb a person, binding them with fears that prevent full self-expression and participation in life. For Thurman, “the central work of community is to identify and lift the burdens of those oppressed.” Dorothy Day, journalist and one of the founders of the Catholic Worker Movement, viewed unbinding as a form of radical hospitality, a responsibility of the Christian community to restore dignity to those who are bound by poverty and exclusion. Whether through acts of compassion, justice, solidarity, or advocacy, our work of unbinding is a commitment to releasing people from whatever holds them captive, enabling them to live fully in the freedom of God’s love. This is what the communion of saints means: to join with those who have, throughout history, acted as agents of liberation.
In the story of Lazarus, we encounter a shift in how power and consciousness are understood—a shift Richard Rohr and others describe as moving from transactional power to transformational power. In raising Lazarus, Jesus embodied a new kind of authority that doesn’t dominate but liberates, that doesn’t control but empowers. Rohr speaks of this consciousness as “non-dual,” a way of seeing that moves beyond the binary limitations of power structures in Jesus’ time (and our own) and into a more integrated, life-giving approach. Jesus’ power wasn’t aimed at maintaining religious or political supremacy but at breaking open the boundaries of life itself, revealing a God who refuses to leave us entombed by our own fear, complacency, or pride.
In light of Lazarus’ raising, we are called to awaken to this consciousness in ourselves and those around us, to embody a faith that challenges oppressive systems and refuses to settle for half-life. To live with our hearts unsealed. This is the radical, life-giving grace of unbinding: that we bear witness to a world where love and new life already have overcome death. Jesuit author, James Martin, reminds us that when we embrace this new life, “we are not simply engaged in a self-improvement project. We are responding to God’s call…. Lazarus can only come forth because he knows and trusts in the person who calls him.” The same Spirit that animated Lazarus animates us still.