LIVING MESSY MIRACLES: THE GRACE OF COMMUNUAL UNWRAPPING
I imagine resurrection like a magical movie scene where someone is raised from the dead as “Alleluia” plays when they gloriously emerge from a cave with beams of light shining. However, in today’s Gospel, John shares a different reality. When Jesus raises Lazarus, "the dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth.”
It isn’t the polished scene I pictured. Lazarus is alive but is still bound - a “living messy miracle” who requires help unwrapping the burial bands to see again and become fully free.
I can’t help but wonder: why didn’t Jesus free him completely? He had the power. Instead, Jesus says to the crowd: “Untie him and let him go." He chose to invite Lazarus’ community to participate in his freedom – the same people who wept, comforted his sisters, and doubted Jesus for not saving him.
I often find myself in a similar messy space as Lazarus – grateful to be alive yet bound by all that holds me paralyzed in fear. As much as I struggle to ask for help, I’ve learned that I cannot unwrap what binds me alone. I need community. Lately many close to me have been navigating deep grief. Being only three months out from my mother’s death, my instinct is to hide; I fear that hearing about more grief will be “too much.”
But I’m learning the opposite is true. For eleven years, I’ve journeyed with the same small faith community. Each time I listen to someone share, God moves my heart with compassion rather than letting it be overcome by weight. In this shared space, we help unwrap each other’s burial bands. By simply showing up and sharing our lives with God vulnerably together, we experience a mutual unwrapping. It is in this communal grace that I’m invited to see more clearly and move more freely toward Love.
Who are the people in your life who help "untie" your burial bands? Whose bands might you be called to help loosen this Lent?
Jaclyn Guerrero