Who is Your Lazarus? By Brian Flanagan

“Who is your Lazarus?” by Brian Flanagan

Fifth Sunday of Lent

During the summers, many high school and college guys get jobs working at movie theaters, mowing lawns, painting houses, or bagging groceries. For all of my high school and college summers, I worked at a Boy Scout camp. We spent eight weeks living and working there each summer, and there are enough stories from those years to last a lifetime. This week’s Gospel reminds me of one of them.

It was “Staff Week” – the first week of the summer when the camp staff sets up camp for the season and trains the newer guys. We would redo lesson plans for merit badges, plan out camp-wide games and competitions, and there was no shortage of work to do in the weed-whacking department. One day that week, a few of us had the task of sweeping the roof of a pavilion since dried pine needles and such had collected in the “off-season”. Several of us on this crew were senior staff members, and I am ashamed to say we decided to give the job of actually climbing up the ladder onto the roof to one of the first-year guys. He kept sweeping as the rest of us kept doing some other work around the pavilion until it was time for lunch at the dining hall.

Our little work crew went our separate ways to clean up before lunch, and after we finished stuffing our faces with grilled cheese sandwiches, we went back to the pavilion to finish working. As we were walking back, I noticed that I hadn’t seen the first-year staff member at lunch, and the other guys said they hadn’t seen him either. Sure enough, we got back to the pavilion, he was sitting up on the roof, patiently waiting for us to come back. I thought someone had accidentally moved the ladder on him, but it turned out this poor guy was afraid of heights. He didn’t want to say anything to us when we asked him to go up there, and when we all left for lunch, he was too afraid to climb down without someone holding the ladder.

This first-year staff member (we’ll call him Heights because that became his nickname – again I’m not proud of that…) needed us to help him get down off the roof. He couldn’t do it alone. He was stuck.

So what could this story possibly have to do with the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead? It parallels a line all the way at the end of the passage that most people wouldn’t even notice after such a long and powerful reading. After Jesus cries out, “Lazarus, come out!”, the dead man comes out, but is still wrapped in burial cloths with his hands and feet tied up. Jesus says to those around him, “Untie him and let him go.” Lazarus had to depend not only on God to raise him but also on his friends to untie him – and that seems to be what Jesus was going for. If Jesus is powerful enough to raise Lazarus from the grave, he certainly could have vaporized the burial bands with laser beams from his eyes. But he leaves the finishing touch of untying Lazarus to his friends.

God prepares the hearts of people for all sorts of amazing things, but he often uses us for that final touch – and if we don’t respond, that person can remain stuck in whatever situation, whatever sin, whatever circumstance they’re in that’s holding them back from God. Christ calls them out of their proverbial tombs, but he calls us to untie them so they can really experience that freedom and new life.

If we hadn’t come back to the pavilion from lunch that day, Heights might still be up there all these years later. Okay, maybe that’s a stretch, but he was stuck and couldn’t get out of that situation by himself.

I’d bet that almost every day Jesus is calling us to help “untie” someone, but we rarely notice it. Maybe he’s been preparing the heart of somebody who’s been away from Mass for a while to start coming back, but they just need a little push from you or an invitation to go. Maybe he’s been delivering your friend from an embarrassing sin, but your friend needs you to check in a see how they’re doing with it this week to keep them accountable. Maybe he’s trying to show a homeless woman that he hasn’t forgotten and forsaken her, and she needs a concrete sign of that – the $5 in your pocket.

God is the one who does all the heavy lifting, but he let’s us participate like a son handing his father a nail or a screwdriver. God doesn’t need our help, but he wants it. Let’s be on the lookout this week for any ways that Jesus is asking us to help untie a Lazarus in our life, and like the onlookers of that famous scene in the Gospels, may we come to a deeper belief and trust in God because of it.