John 11:32-44

When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

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 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 upward 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.”

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.”

You won’t see shackles drop from our baptismal candidate’s arms or legs this morning when he stands up, his head still wet after being baptized. You won’t hear the swell of background music, the kind you might hear in a film of a captive walking out of his cell after many years. You won’t see or hear either of these things this morning.

But know this: part of what we will do in baptizing Blaire today, part of what we remember about our own baptisms today, is that he and we are captives who have been set free, the dead who have slept in lonely darkness, but who have been awakened, unbound and set free.

Growing up, I never thought of myself as “captive” to anything. I was white, middle class, had enough to eat, had a roof over my head, and went to adequate and, in some cases, excellent schools. True, I was a female growing up in the South, but for the most part, I wasn’t aware that this might limit me, mostly because my parents, American through and through, always told my siblings and me that we could accomplish anything we set our minds to.

But over time, I became acquainted with captivity.

• As a new mother of a child with a serious illness, I became acquainted with the captivity of that illness and the cell it seemed to put me in, set apart from the world of parents with healthy children.
• As a woman in the working world and later as a woman priest, I became acquainted with the captivity of my own and others assumptions about who I was and what I could do.
• And as one who had absorbed my parents’ and this culture’s message that we could accomplish anything we set our minds to, I became acquainted with the captivity of my own drive for success and accomplishment over a balanced and grounded life.

But these were only the beginning of the captivity I discovered. For as I was having my own individual experiences, I was also moving in and among communities and groups whose stories, conscious and unconscious, included captivity.

• My middle school students in South Carolina from a nearby housing project who, for the most part, could not imagine any life other than the one they already had
• The black congregation I served in and the Jewish Day School I taught in, both of whom were shaped by their histories and their own stories of slavery in a foreign land
• Some of you here who’ve told me the stories of the captivity you experienced growing up gay or lesbian in families and in a culture that were unabashedly heterosexual.

Out of these experiences, I’ve come to believe that all of us are captive to something—to a situation, an addiction or a wound, to an illness or a compulsion, to a powerful drive or desire, to our own or someone else’s prejudice, or even to our own determination never to be held captive! These conditions can limit our choices, steal our hope, bind us up in knots, and break our connection to God and to others.

So take a moment and ask yourself--what holds you captive? What is the thing that keeps you bound up, cut off, and, puts you in some cases, in a dark and hopeless place? What is the thing that the Holy One, the Lord of life, desires, even yearns, for you to be freed from?

Today is the Feast of All Saints, the Sunday we celebrate the saints we have been privileged to hear about but also to live among, saints long dead and saints here in this very room. Today we also get to make and welcome a new saint.

Part of what our gospel this morning is trying to tell us, the story of Lazarus freed from the captivity of death by the power of God, the story of Lazarus unbound and let go by those who witnessed his raising, is that our sainthood is not something we do for ourselves; our freedom from our captivities and our human dignity are not things we bring about through our own talents or determination. No, our sainthood, the sainthood that Blaire fully receives today in baptism, is a gift given, a freedom accomplished through the power of God, a God who cannot abide his own sons and daughters being hemmed in, isolated or diminished, no matter what their stories are, no matter what conditions they live in. In baptism, God once and for all times says no to this on our behalf, no to this and yes to who we really are—free and dignified human beings made in the image of God.

But even with this, the day-to-day unbinding of our lives is still a piece of work that we have to do in response to the dignity and freedom we’ve been given. But we do not do this alone. Just as in the story of the raising of Lazarus in which Jesus tells the onlookers to unbind Lazarus and let him go, so we have each other to help unbind us from the captivities that hold us back. Through conversation, inspiration, listening, presence, encouragement and at times, forgiveness, we each have a part in unbinding one another and sending one another out as agents of freedom and dignity in the world.

Each year at Diocesan Convention, the Bishop awards something called the Bishop’s Cross to an individual in the Diocese who is a real saint. This year, it was awarded to a 90 year old man whose life story exemplifies a pattern of living freely through the captivities of his life and the world’s conditions. His story is the story of the sainthood we have all been given in baptism and the baptismal life to which we are all called: a life engaged in the lifelong process of being unbound and unbinding those who are captive.

“Jefferson Macon is a charming Southern gentleman, born on April 25, 1919, in Georgia. Raised a Baptist, he was confirmed in the Episcopal Church in the 1950’s. He became a member of St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Bellevue, in 2005, after moving from the Missoula, MT, area where he had a career in real estate. Jeff’s life story includes some remarkable moments.

 In 1943, Jeff enlisted in the US Army Air Force, where he was trained as a pilot. Upon earning his wings, he married his beloved Sara, and they moved to Colorado Springs, where he received combat training on a B-24. During WWII, he was the pilot of missions into southern Germany and Italy. When his plane was shot down over Austria, all 12 members of Jeff’s crew were captured and sent to concentration camps. Jeff was marched from one Stalag to another, moving toward Munich during winter, where he was rescued by Patton’s Army. Then he returned to the US with all 12 of his crew alive. Before he left Sara in Georgia to go oversees, he asked a florist in Atlanta to give his wife a rose each month. Even while he was prisoner, (Sarah received a rose each month).

When Sara was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1990, Jeff and his son Gary cared for her at home for two years, then made the difficult decision to admit her to a nursing home in Missoula. Jeff and Gary eventually closed their real estate office and moved so they could spend time with Sara daily. Jeff wrote a history of this time: “My Second Courtship of Sara During 13 Years of Alzheimer’s.” He wrote, “… never give up on a loved one who has Alzheimer’s…. Wrap your arms around the limited abilities that still exist and treasure them with love.”

Since arriving at St. Margaret’s, Jeff has been actively engaged in (a way that allowed him to)…reflect upon the “epiphanies” of his life – such as when he and his wife Sara entered a movie theater just after the lights had dimmed. “We were raised as bigots,” he says. When the movie ended, they discovered to their amazement that the theater was a racially-integrated one. They looked at each other, initially horrified, but then instantly realized that it was not a problem, and Jeff immediately changed his attitude. More recently (at age 89), he was drinking coffee in a Starbucks, when he overheard two men at the next table who got up to leave. They embraced each other and said, “See you tonight.” Jeff had an epiphany – a moment of understanding about how people relate to each other, and he’s been a gay rights activist since then. “If I can change my thinking that quickly, why is the church so slow?” he wonders.

Last Lent, when St. Margaret’s read the book The Great Emergence, a book about new models of the Church, together, Jeff read it several times, excited and eager to know what comes next. (In response to reading the book) he wrote to Bishop Rickel and said, “I am 90 years old, I figure I only have a few more years to help, tell me what I can do!” 

In baptism, what we can do is what God has done for us before. Raised from the dead, we bring life to one another and to the world. Released from our bonds, we loose the bonds of those who are captive, and we let them go.

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