Living in the Spirit

November 7, 2021

Scripture Reading: John 11:32-44

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 for 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 upwards and said, ‘Father, 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.’ John 11:38-42

Soon after I graduated from college and started my first job as a social worker, I participated in a Bible study based on the story of the raising of Lazarus. We explored the question was our faith dead or alive? Did our faith need to be unbound and let go? If so, where was it leading us? This was a good time in my life to consider, as a young adult, how I would live my faith. I am a cradle Christian who never experienced life without being a part of a Christian community of faith.  I attended a Christian College. I accepted Jesus as my Savior as a youth.  But the time had come for me to choose how to live my faith beyond the influence of family and the church’s culture. My life experiences discerning how my faith defined me coincided with my first experiences as a social worker providing direct services. I only spent two years working directly with the poor and families caught in the child welfare system. While I spent 33 years more working in social work administration, those prior two years provided me with a lifetime of lessons in the need to do justice and see that the world’s systemic ways must be addressed for justice to be realized.  Jesus was very clear about our need to address such issues.

While we readily think that we are the most powerful nation globally, we fail to see if that were true that could classify us as what the Bible calls an empire. The question with which we must struggle is whether there can be justice within an empire. Unfortunately, history does not give us much hope for that. Greed and lust for power have overtaken most empires. Can our faith in God unbind us from these snares of empire?

Prayer: Lord, Paul tells us that faith, hope, and love abides and the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13). Fill us with your love, renew our hope, strengthen our faith toward building a world ruled by love. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.