You unbind him

Friday March 14th, John 11: 41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me." 43 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go." Jesus did the healing, the calling forth, but Jesus also called into play the actions of others. You take off the grave clothes and let him go from that which would bind him, what a beautiful description of ministry. Jesus calls forth and we unbind. Too often the church has been in the binding rather than the unbinding business. We bind with our traditions and rules, our histories and our hysteria. The old jokes about how many (fill in the blank with any religion) does it take to change a light bulb, are just humorous ways of looking at the bindings we use. Our calling is to unbind and Jesus is calling us out of our tombs to do it.