Since we are only just past Halloween, I begin with a spooky tale about an open grave…well, actually it’s not so spooky a tale. It’s more of a joke, and it goes like this. Many years ago, a man was weaving his way home from a pub in the wee hours, when he took a shortcut through a cemetery. In his unsteady condition, he fell into a freshly-dug grave, and despite his clumsy efforts he was unable to find a foothold and get out. Finally he gave up and decided to sleep things off in the corner until daybreak. However, it was not long before another fellow, also on his way home after a night of merry-making, stumbled along the same path and right into the open grave. As the second man began to grunt and struggle to climb out, the first man chuckled and spoke up: “Forget it, mister. I’ve already tried that, and the only way out of here is straight up.” But would you believe it - that is just how the second man got out of that grave? Straight up and out!

Jokes allow us to make light of death, of the cold reality of the grave. But I tell you something that is not funny: there are times in our lives when we are living in an open grave. Times when we are not alight with the joy of living, or going about the challenge of living faithfully and well. These are times when we succumb to deadening routines, when each day stretches out before us seemingly without promise, without the bloom of new life. You may think I speak of depression - of those who have battled mental and emotional illness, or the demons of addiction. I do speak of these, who know something about an existence less than alive, lying in bed as an alternative to getting up and facing the challenge of living.

But when I speak of living in an open grave, I also speak of our surrender to a culture of hedonism and death. I speak of our capitulation as a society to a narrative that cheapens life, that reckons death as inevitable, or somehow even acceptable. For we live in an age of yawning graves, a season in which the lives of the inconvenient unborn are reckoned worthless, and the lives of those convicted of serious crimes, worth even less. In our day, those who offend by living innocently beside our long-range bombing targets can be written off as collateral misfortune, acceptable losses barely even newsworthy in a time of war. Oh, we know something about death, alright, it’s just that we’ve become so used to wasting the devalued currency of human life, we’ve forgotten there’s an alternative.

The day Jesus arrived in Bethany, he got there late - that is how Martha and her sister Mary saw it. Their brother Lazarus, a man whom Jesus had befriended and loved, had died. All their hopes and dreams for their lives, interwoven with Lazarus’ stolen future, were now sealed in the cold dark of a tomb. In their shock and grief, in their unspeakable pain, Martha and Mary confront Jesus, and in turn are themselves confronted by something beyond their experience, beyond their reasoning, and quite beyond their religion.

But first, we must observe where they live before they have this strange experience, a place where at times we all live. Because when Martha rushes out to meet Jesus, the faded hope she’d had for her brother’s life, she cries out, “Lord, if only you’d been here my brother would not have died!” And when her sister Mary hears that Jesus has come, though too late, she approaches him and blurts out the same cry: “if only you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.”

How many of us are living entombed in an “if only?” Many people live each day with “if only” as their constant companion, their grave-mate. They think “if only I had taken that other job,” “if only I had married the right person,” “if only I had take better care of myself,” “if only I had been born with a more beautiful face or body,” “if only I could take back what I said, what I did.” We covet the lives we might have had, have never had, and we refuse to participate fully in what God is doing right now, could be doing, with the life we have been given.

You see, some of us have died in the midst of our lives. It is a tragic thing. We’ve become consumers of God’s grace, spectators to God’s Will on earth, rather than participants in God’s on-going act of creation. God forgive us! God forgive us the sin of an unlived life - from our inability to live the now that is God’s present grace in our lives.

Mary and Martha presented their if-onlies. And in response, Jesus answered “I am the Resurrection and the life; those who believe in me, even though they die, will live. And everyone who LIVES in me, who believes in me, will never die.” And then he asked, “Do you believe this?”

Welcome to the wonder and terror of now. I want to extend an invitation to come out of the tomb, because there is one here who is capable of rolling away the stone and calling us out. Behold that in our story today, Jesus is ready, is poised at the entrance to the tomb. But somehow Martha holds back: “Lord, there’s gonna be a stink; he’s been dead for four days.” Martha is reluctant to face death, cringes at what Jesus is about to do. Frankly, no one who has risked encountering the living Christ is immune from this hesitation, this misgiving. We have something to lose, after all - something sealed away in our tombs, in the dark recesses we choose not to enter, where we keep the deepest hurts, the indignations, the howling cries for vengeance and justice.

But I extend the invitation of Jesus Christ to walk out of the tomb, by means of confession, dealing with that pain and falsehood. Because what Jesus offers is not only life in the sweet by-and-by - the life he offers is abundant today, his forgiveness is total, cutting loose the anchors of past regrets. That’s what rolling back the stone means.

There’s just one more bit of Good News in this. My favorite part of this greatest of miracle stories is what Jesus says at the end. When Lazarus comes out of the tomb, confounding every human notion of death and closure and finality, Jesus says to the utterly silent crowd of would-be mourners: “Unbind him, and let him go.” It seems to me that’s what he expects us in the church to be doing. He expect us to be in the unbinding business, so that when someone here wakes up from having died in the midst of life, when someone welcomes the call of Jesus that reaches into the dark places and invites them to begin to live in the light, guess what? We get to help them get free of those grave clothes. We get to affirm and confirm that new life, to celebrate their exit from the open grave.

That is, our Confirmation class leaders get to be grave-clothes-unwrappers, our Sunday school teachers and Bible study leaders and Faith mentors and ministry-team members, all get to celebrate new life in Christ. We stand in the light and rejoice, and then get our hands involved with freeing others to live as we all are called to live. Our hands, unbinding. And sometimes, friends, those joyful hands will be those of others, freeing us from the bonds that need loosening. That’s just what being part of the church is like.

So a story that began with the finality of a sealed grave ends with an open question: “do you believe this?” Do you believe that there is one with the power to confront death and open the lifegate for everyone, and in particular, for you? That is the question, because there is One who is the Resurrection and the life, and his way is straight up and out.

Do you believe this? Let us pray.

O Lord of boundless life, what can we say to you, we who have forgotten how to live freely? We are bound by so many anxieties and so many regrets. Thus we fix our eyes on the frailty of the future, and the tragic certainties of the past. Lord Jesus, as you did for Mary and Martha, draw near to each of us, and ask us: do we believe you? Do we believe that you are the Resurrection and the Life we need - that you hold the now that is God’s gift for us, today? Lord, we believe. Help thou our unbelief. Amen.

Note: several years ago, I heard the great South African Methodist preacher Trevor Hudson speak on this text at Greene Memorial UMC. I have never read it the same since, and I am indebted to him, I have no doubt, for some of the insights I have tried to present. Certainly any shortcomings are all my own.