HOMILY: "This Week Will Change Us"

Sunday, March 29, 2026

Luke 19 (Palm Sunday)

Brennan Whaley singing Spencer LaJoye's "Plowshare Prayer"

1.

Brennan, it seems you and I have been talking about that song and your singing it here for months. And I for one am so glad that it worked out this way: that you sing it for the church, and to the church today, on Palm Sunday. Because it strikes me, it really strikes me, that your particular interpretation of that Plowshare Prayer is as close as we’re ever going to get to the “Hosannas” of that first Palm Sunday. You have—in such a beautiful way—liberated those first “Hosannas” from the dusty pages of scripture, and given them to us fresh.

What you’ve given us, Brennan, is something like the song of a people shattered by cruelty, but believing again in the generosity of God; a people exhausted by war, but now greeting this Prince of Peace with palms and praise. And not cheap praise: but purposeful praise, the kind of praise that reorders our footsteps and reimagines the future. What you’ve given us, Brennan, is something like the cry of a crowd, encouraged to dream again, newly awakened by grace, and welcoming their Beloved and his nonviolent, open and affirming, apartheid-free rebellion.

So I wonder, then, if we might take--all of us--just a piece of that prayer and recite it together. As our own Palm Sunday “Hosanna!”  Brennan’s offered it as a gift to us, even as our gospel this morning. So let’s make it our own. And let’s do it now according to the simple call and response tradition. You don’t even need your bulletins. In fact, go ahead and put them down. I’ll read a line, and you’ll repeat it. Just a piece of this remarkable, tender, Christ-like prayer. A crowd, newly awakened by grace, encouraged to dream again.

Amen on behalf of the last and the least
On behalf of the anxious, depressed and unseen
Amen for the workers, the hungry, the houseless
Amen for the lonely and recently spouseless

Amen for the queers and their closeted peers
Amen for the bullied who hold in their tears
Amen for the mothers of little Black sons
Amen for the kids who grow up scared of guns

Amen for the addicts, ashamed and hungover
Amen for the calloused, the wizened, the sober
Amen for the ones who want life to be over
Amen for the leaders who lose their composure

And amen for the parents who just lost their baby
Amen for the chronically ill and disabled
Amen for the children down at the border
Amen for the victims of our law and order

2.

In many gospel accounts, the disciples greet Jesus with cries of “Hosanna!” as he reaches the Mount of Olives on the gimpy donkey and looks across the Kidron Valley to Jerusalem itself. “Hosanna!” “Hosanna!” Or, “Save us!” Or, “Deliver us!” “Hosanna!”

And their cries vocalize their ancestors’ passion for liberation, the great Hebrew yearning for freedom from Pharaoh’s oppression and empire’s violence. From despair itself. It seems clear that the Festival of Passover is at hand and their every prayer, every hope, every liturgy is tuned now to God’s promise of deliverance. “Hosanna!”

"A Brave & Quiet Heart" (J. MacKenzie)

What this plowshare prayer offers, then, is a fresh take, even a revolutionary take, on deliverance and liberation. What it means for you and me to claim the freedom Jesus offers in his teaching and in his life and (yes) in his sacrifice. To claim it for ourselves, and for one another. No longer need we be shackled to images of God that bully some of us without mercy and render others unimportant or unseen. No longer need we be suffocated by fears—stoked by 21st century Pharaohs, by the way—fears of people who look different or pray different or talk different or dream different dreams. No longer need we be tethered to violence and war as the true means of safety and security.

“I was a stranger,” Jesus says, “and you cherished my company.” “I was broken and wounded,” Jesus says, “and you made a place for me.” “I was at the end of my rope,” Jesus says, “and you pulled me close.” “I was forsaken by family,” Jesus says, “and you became my family.” Free from fear.  Free from violence.  Free from cruelty.  

“Hosanna,” we cry. “Bring it on,” we cry. “Save us!”

What’s so stunning about Jesus’ ministry—then and now—is that Jesus builds a movement beyond lazy tolerance and simple acceptance. He’s about so much more than that. Jesus builds a community that doesn’t simply tolerate “the anxious, depressed and unseen,” but calls out their gifts (OK, our gifts) as the holy sacraments of God’s transforming grace. The holy sacraments of God’s transforming grace.

"Gethsemane"

This is an unmistakable theme in scripture itself. There is no kin-dom, no gospel, no movement without them—without the “hungry, the houseless, the recently spouseless”; without the “addicts, ashamed and hungover”; without the “calloused, the wizened, the sober”; without the “ones who want life to be over.” There is no kin-dom, no gospel, no movement without them. Pete Hegseth may think that human weakness is abhorrent and disastrous. He may think Christianity’s all about holy war and religious conquest and righteous whiteness. But Jesus confronts these myths over and over and over again. Turning the tables on pride and contempt. Touching the “untouchable” and blessing their many gifts. Refusing to take up a weapon. Any weapon. Ever.

The world will be transformed, Jesus insists; our communities will be healed, even redeemed, not by a phalanx of warriors, not by battlefield strategists and high-tech wizards blowing things up, but by the loving intentions of wounded human beings, by the prayerful compassion of broken-hearted brothers and sisters. And, if this sounds naive and unreasonable, he says, then so be it. The world will be transformed by forgiven people extending forgiveness to one another. By liberated communities insisting on liberation for all.

And isn’t that the message, Brennan, isn't that the promise of this plowshare prayer? That our frailty, our fragility, our vulnerability is itself an invitation to radical hope, to costly solidarity, to lovingkindness and mercy?  Blessed are the poor in spirit.

3.

Meeting Jesus on the Mount of OIives means meeting Jesus in his own intense vulnerability. Meeting Jesus on the Mount of Olives means meeting Jesus as he contemplates his own mortality and the consequences of costly solidarity in an empire where diversity, equity and inclusion are dirty words. And punishable. And meeting Jesus as he crosses the Kidron Valley means breaking bread with his sketchy friends and bearing witness, up close, as he rejects violence but bears its terrible cost.

This week, this Holy Week, will change us. It has to. Though we’ve walked this path three dozen times before, it will change us. Not because we’re deficient in some essential way. And not because we’re wretched and unworthy of love and spirit. Because this is the kind of blasphemy cooked up by theological bullies who’d rather rant than reconcile, who’d rather hound than heal. Who imagine Christianity as a war to defeat our many enemies and win back the human soul.

BECAUSE MUSIC: "Wondering Where the Lions Are"

NO KINGS: "March 28, 2026"

Portsmouth, NH

 

A MORAL PLEDGE: "Dear Governor Ayotte"

A Moral Pledge for a Fair Economy: 

Fund The People, Not War and the Rich

We, the undersigned faith leaders of New Hampshire, come together in this moment of moral crisis to speak a simple truth: our economy is out of balance, and it is hurting our people.

Right now, our nation is spending nearly $1 billion a day on war—over $20 billion so far, with $200 billion more requested—while here at home, families are struggling to afford health care, housing, child care, and energy. At the same time, the NH House of Representatives recently passed another corporate tax cut that will cost Granite Staters $26 million every year, shifting the burden onto working people who are already stretched thin.

This makes it clear that when it comes to funding our economy, it is not a question of resources. It is a question of values.

Our faith traditions call us to care for the poor, lift up the vulnerable, and build communities where everyone can live with dignity. Yet there is always money for war and tax breaks for the rich, and never enough for the people who need it most. This is a moral failure. Budgets are moral documents, and what we fund reveals who we value. We cannot stay silent while the rules are rigged to reward wealth and leave working families to carry the cost.

We respectfully call on you, Governor Ayotte and State Senators, to take a clear and public stand in this moment. We ask that you oppose this war and any additional war funding that diverts vital resources away from the people of New Hampshire. We also ask that you reject HB 155 and any policy that gives further tax breaks to wealthy corporations while working families struggle to afford basic necessities.

As Governor and State Senators, you have a responsibility to protect the well-being of all Granite Staters, especially those most at risk of being left behind. This is a moral decision. A just society is judged by how it treats those in need, not by the profits of corporations or the wealth of the powerful.

We urge you to stand with the people of New Hampshire and choose a path that invests in health care, housing, child care, and the dignity of every person.

Granite State Organizing Project

Signed by the Rev. Dave Grishaw-Jones 3/28/26

FAITH & THE COMMON GOOD: "Diversity Means Creativity"

ORGANIZE: "Apartheid Free"

Major news out of Washington State: Washington is the first U.S. state to have divested from Israeli genocide and apartheid, after the State's Treasurer sold its Caterpillar bonds, worth over $53 million. Caterpillar’s bulldozers have been used extensively during the Gaza genocide (and for decades) to destroy Palestinian lives, homes, and infrastructure.

Thank the Cut Ties to Apartheid coalition out of Washington State!

HOMILY: "Not with Faces but Hands Opening"

Sunday, March 22, 2026
Isaiah 58 (Lent 5)

Note: In a deliberate and spirited congregational meeting on March 22, the Community Church of Durham voted 63-3 to adopt the Apartheid-Free pledge!  This comes after a committed Palestinian Solidarity Team worked for weeks on efforts to educate and inspire the congregation.  They are to be thanked!  "By faith we can move mountains..."

1.

Graffiti on the Apartheid Wall

Many years ago, in a seminary ethics class, theologian Larry Rassmussen suggested to my classmates and me that the most important concept, and the most misunderstood, in all of Jesus’ teaching is not love, but power. I remember writing his words down, fast and verbatim, in my notebook that day. Larry insisted that Jesus confronts coercive power with collaborative power; that Jesus dismantles the logic of violence with practices like solidarity and compassion. The cross, then, isn’t a symbol of surrender, but an invitation to transformation, personal and communal, even global. Transformation and empowerment.

Jesus is committed to love, Larry said, not simply as an emotion or an impulse, but as a practice, a shared practice, and (perhaps most significantly) as a collaborative practice. And as a practice, as a lifestyle, as a purposeful life, love is all about empowerment. Not only the orientation of the heart: but our capacity for prophetic imagination, for mutual liberation, for prayerful blessing and social change. Love is power. A particular and countercultural kind of power. And to miss this is to miss Jesus.

And this is just one of the reasons why today’s discernment around the Apartheid-Free Pledge is so very important, urgently so—not only to our Palestinian and Israeli partners (who are indeed pulling for us), but to our American church which so often interprets Jesus in purely personal or private terms. But discipleship is not simply a matter of feelings and beliefs; and we know this here. Discipleship is just as importantly an invitation into networks of loving and creative resistance, a call to partnerships that move bravely to confront racism with love, and enact new worlds where human rights and justice prevail.

2.

So our immigration ministry (for example) is not simply one small congregation helping out one beleaguered refugee. It’s our Community Church partnering with UCC congregations across New Hampshire to call out our government’s madness and celebrate instead all the ways “immigrants make New Hampshire great.” It’s our Community Church collaborating with the American Friends Service Committee and the Seacoast Interfaith Sanctuary Coalition and speaking truth to power. Together. And it’s our Community Church showing up in Somersworth and Manchester and Kittery, when we’re needed, to stand powerfully and tenderly for immigrant neighbors there. Love is power.

Our Open & Affirming commitment (then) is not simply one small congregation pushing back against homophobia and bigotry in American religious life. It’s our Community Church joining in covenant with over 1800 Open & Affirming UCC communities across the country, communities accounting for over 350,000 members. And together, as a movement, we manifest gospel values in community action, and collective power in protecting queer members and queer friends, and a whole new way of being church, of being human in America. One people, many ways of loving!

“Follow me,” Jesus says. “Follow me.” And every time he utters these words, every time he invites a new friend into his circle, he creates a new and diverse community of friends, a movement, empowered and powerful. And in that movement, Jesus challenges systems of power that dehumanize and demoralize and oppress. He grieves systems that enforce hierarchies of value and honor. And then—in that movement—Jesus reimagines godly power as collaborative and nonviolent, as relational and prayerful; and he rebuilds a community empowered to free captives and heal broken bodies and feed hungry hearts. A community empowered to praise God—through celebration, solidarity, and sacrifice! Together.

So the question before us this morning, then, is in part: “Will we choose godly power, collaborative and nonviolent, relational and prayerful—with over 1000 communities across the country—who have chosen to challenge Israeli apartheid lovingly and bravely and actively?” “Will we choose godly power, collaborative and nonviolent—with Pax Christi USA and the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, with Jewish Voice for Peace and American Muslims for Palestine, with First Congregational UCC in Dallas and Claremont Congregational UCC in Southern California and hundreds of other churches and synagogues and communities?”

If what our friends (Palestinian and Israeli, by the way), if what our friends in the Holy Land are saying is true, if it is indeed apartheid that is erasing Palestinian culture day by day, and destroying generations in Gaza with sophisticated technologies, and facilitating the annexation of family farms and ancestral lands; if it is indeed apartheid, as international consensus has overwhelmingly determined that it is, will we make this pledge and join this movement and own our power to resist and heal and bless? Is that ours to do today?

3.

You’ll remember that I spent two months last spring with my friend Zoughbi Zoughbi in Bethlehem and his team at Wi’am: The Palestinian Centre for Conflict Transformation. You’ll remember that I brought a $6,000 gift—from all of you—that Zoughbi has since used to secure health insurance for his amazing team and a summer camping program for Bethlehem’s children. They were all so immensely grateful for that gift! Empowerment, that gift of faith offered in love.

As you can imagine, it was an extraordinary experience in a hundred ways. Zoughbi took me to his Melkite church where we worshipped and prayed and broke bread together. He walked me through the streets of old Bethlehem, introducing me to the best falafel joints and the best pita ovens and (of course) the best coffee. And he invited me to join him and his family at funerals and weddings: two weddings (once) on just one busy June afternoon!

Zoughbi Zoughbi at Wi'am

And day after day, at Wi’am, I watched and listened as Zoughbi trained young Palestinian Christians in public life and nonviolence; as he encouraged Palestinian mothers to raise proud and resilient children forty miles from the Gazan genocide; and as he introduced me to Jesus, an indigenous Palestinian Jew, he said, whose every word, whose every choice was born of that land, that place, and that people.

One Sunday during my visit, Zoughbi discovered that he’d been given a rare “day pass” to visit Jerusalem; and he invited me to join him on a short bus ride into the city that’s (in reality) just a few miles away. Palestinians in the West Bank are rarely given permission to make that trip, though they all have family there and friends there, and Jerusalem (as you can imagine) is a sacred site beloved by peoples of so many traditions. If you’ve been there, you know that a huge apartheid wall now divides the West Bank and prevents Palestinians from moving freely into the city they call Al Quds which means, in Arabic, “the sacred” or “the sanctuary.” Al Quds.

And a series of checkpoints makes travel impossible without that “pass” and punishable if tried. Zoughbi had worked in Jerusalem for years as a young adult, with the World Council of Churches, and that Sunday (with that rare “day pass”) he was eager to show me a city he’d come to love. A city with such cultural and familial significance. We’d go to church. We’d walk the Old City. And we’d meet up with his sister and her family for Sunday dinner at their Jerusalem home.

However, before we could catch that bus to Al Quds, we had to cross the militarized checkpoint that separates Bethlehem and the West Bank from Jerusalem itself, a series of electronic gates and biometric stations and armed gatekeepers that keep Palestinians out of Israel and most often away from Jerusalem. The biometrics stations, Zoughbi told me, are new. And insulting. And dehumanizing. Hi tech—often engineered by American firms, deployed in Israel to control and intimidate.

Now Zoughbi is a remarkably gifted man, a former city councilor, and a giant in the ecumenical Christian community. These days he’s the international president of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, FOR. And in his own beloved Bethlehem, he’s recognized as a pillar, a brave and accomplished intellectual. And he’s also a large man.

But what that Israeli checkpoint did to him that Sunday will stay with me forever. How he shook with a combination of fear and anger as soldiers half his age questioned his credentials and his integrity. How he cowered, seemingly trying to make himself small, as we passed through long, gated hallways, and then waited for electronic gates to open whimsically. How he fumbled through his wallet to find the right card to use at the biometrics station. The whole process—the series of checkpoints and apartheid walls—is designed (clearly) to humiliate and discourage. And, for a few minutes at least, it did all of that and more. I was embarrassed for the young soldiers. And once again shaken by a realization that American politics and American aid and American companies make all this humiliation possible.

4.

And of course, that moment is but a single moment in a project that has played out in Palestine for 70 plus years. And it’s so much more than checkpoints and humiliation. It’s family farms in the West Bank—by the dozens—seized in the middle of the night by armed Israeli settlers from places like Brooklyn and Houston. It’s ten-year-old children kidnapped by soldiers (often from their beds at home) for throwing stones or less, and hidden in unmarked prisons for weeks before families can find them. It’s thousands of ancient olive trees cut down by settlers in Palestinian orchards to degrade families and scare them off their ancestral lands. And it’s a government peddling fear—yoked to American politicians indebted to their PACS—committing genocide in Gaza, and murdering at least 70,000 human beings (maybe twice that many) since 2023, with the force (according to one human rights advocate) of six Hiroshimas. Six Hiroshimas. A people with no place to go, and drones raining fire day after day after day. On hospitals and schools and journalists and children. Many, many, many children.

So again the question is: Will we choose godly power today--collaborative and nonviolent--with others who have chosen to challenge Israeli apartheid lovingly and bravely and actively?  Is that ours to do today?

Jesus stands bravely, but vulnerably of course, in the prophetic tradition. The indigenous prophetic tradition of his Jewish Palestinian ancestors. And that prophetic tradition is poignant and clear.  Free them. Free them.  So Isaiah cries:

wake up to a day
beyond acting
for yourself

the Lord’s voice speaks
for itself:
act for others

not with faces but hands
opening
locks of injustice

sophisticated knots
tied mentally and physically
around the poor and powerless

like a harness
to break their spirit
free them

"Free them." 

Not only, my friends, is the Apartheid-Free Movement not antisemitic; it is instead profoundly faithful to the heartbeat of Jewish tradition, to the liberating energies of Moses and Miriam, to the prophetic courage and encouragement of Isaiah. Ask Ann Romney, who spent the better part of a day with us three weeks ago. Ask UC Berkeley’s Judith Butler and Exeter’s Ilan Pappe, who celebrate Jewish resistance and the Jewishishness of nonviolence itself. Ask Rabbi Brant Rosen, whose Chicago synagogue was early to join the Apartheid-Free Movement and whose Jewish liturgies insist that Yahweh’s passion for justice and reconciliation calls for emboldened Jewish participation in the Palestinian cause.

WAKING UP: "An American Addiction"

 

HOMILY: "Lazarus, Come Out!"

Sunday, March 15, 2026
John 11:1-44

The Fourth Sunday in Lent

1.

James Loney’s not a household name. And he’s not a preacher either. But maybe fifteen years ago, I heard James Loney preach a stunning sermon on this same text, the very story we’ve read in full this morning. And I’ll never hear it again, this story, without thinking of him and his astonishing testimony that day. He made this strange story come alive in a way that seemed not just curious, but compelling and even contemporary.

“Then Jesus, who was intensely troubled, approached the tomb—a small cave covered by a massive stone. And Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ But Martha said, ‘Lord, he has been dead for four days…’” And then Jesus cried out, with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”

James Loney is a Canadian peace activist—who was serving in the early-2000s with a Christian Peacemaker Team in Iraq, when he and three others were kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents and held captive for four months. All four of them were daring and kind, all four committed to nonviolence and compassion as the substance of faith itself. And all four were in Iraq to keep ordinary Iraqis safe in a fierce and unpredictable war zone. And then, one day, they were simply and suddenly taken. Kidnapped.

And preaching on this text, this outlandishly improbable text, James talked about his own captivity, those four long months in dark, confined spaces; those four long months of knowing next to nothing about what might happen next; those four long months of hoping beyond hope for good news and freedom. He talked about unexpected connections, clipped conversations, with his captors. He talked about faith tested and lost and found again.

And then he talked about his partner—who had waited at home in Ontario all those months, waited for any news at all; his partner—who had prayed day after day after day despite fears beyond his imagining. And he talked about how it was that his partner had dared not speak out or ask for any kind of support, so concerned was he that James would be endangered in captivity had their relationship been made public. That, if revealed, his orientation would further jeopardize his life. All of this wondering, all of this longing, all of this doubting and hoping—stretching out over weeks and months in captivity.

But it was his first experience of coming out, coming out as a gay man in his 20s, that James started with. As he preached that day. How like Lazarus, he’d been “entombed” (his word) in a world of anxiety and despair, silence and fear. Held captive by his culture’s bigotry, even his beloved church’s homophobia. And how Jesus’ story had penetrated all that angst, and the isolation he’d experienced as a young gay man. Jesus the Waymaker, he said. Jesus the Morningstar, he said. Jesus the Lover of all lovers. And how Jesus—in effect—had called James out of that closet, out of that tomb, out of silence and captivity and fear. Which was wild—because all around him in those days Christians were using “Jesus” to reinforce those fears, and insist on his silence, and pass judgment on his deepest and dearest values and hopes.

But James Loney had heard Jesus say, “Come out!” “Rise up, and come out!” In his sermon he said: “It’s right there in the text. I heard it in the text—and it was as if he was speaking directly to me.” And that journey of self-discovery and gracious acceptance, and holy affirmation—so radically did it open his heart that James soon embraced other movements for peace, intersecting commitments to human rights, and a practice of nonviolent resistance rooted in Jesus’ own teaching. Because now coming out meant diving in. Self-discovery meant daring discipleship.

2.

When he was freed at last in March 2006, and finally reunited with his partner, James could say that coming out that first time had been a memory, a story, even a promise that sustained him throughout those four long months of captivity in Iraq. “In the end,” he told us, “I knew that the universe was on the side of liberation and that God would always seek out the weary and the lost.” “In the end,” he told us, “I trusted that there would be friends on the other side waiting to unbind all the chains, all the cloth, all the trauma that bound me.” He was honest in saying that, for months after his release, he lived with terrible tremors and unimaginable premonitions; and that he rarely slept through the night without nightmares. “But like Lazarus,” he said, “I have a whole community standing by to love me, to comfort me and to unwrap the binding cloths that cling to my soul.” And he used the present tense. Because the unwrapping, the unbinding, the tender touching of community: it never ends. And that’s the church. I'm convinced of it. We can do that for one another. That’s exactly what Jesus is talking about.

It’s worth noting that seven months after their release, James and his friends held a special press conference in London—where they publicly and openly forgave their captors. Can you imagine? It was a year to the day after their kidnappers had first threatened to execute them on camera in Iraq. But in their joint statement in London, they said, "We unconditionally forgive our captors for abducting and holding us. We have no desire to punish them." I mean, this is gospel stuff. "We unconditionally forgive our captors for abducting and holding us. We have no desire to punish them." It’s like Jesus up there on the cross, rejecting violence and vengeance once and for all, and calling out, across all time and distance: “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” If violence and vengeance bind our spirits to regret and despair, forgiveness (it seems) is the great unbinding. The practice that finally frees us.

Again, for Jesus and for James Loney, coming out means setting aside revenge, casting off despair, even choosing to love the enemy, the captor, the foe. Coming out means seeking peace, pursuing reconciliation and believing in our shared humanity. Across all borders. Including all differences. Uniting us as one human and holy family. Worthy, every one of us, all of us, of love and respect.

And is it not true, then, that in this way, every one of us, every one of Jesus’ disciples is called—as James Loney was—to come out? To come out of the shadows of silence into the bright light of self-love and unfettered affirmation? To come out of the confining spaces of fear and anxiety into the open air of service and costly solidarity? To come out of the paralyzing logic of war and punishment into the liberating love and mercy of God?

When Jesus cries out for Lazarus, he cries out for you and me, for the church and for every soul would follow. “Lazarus, come out!” “Children of God, come out!” “Church, come out!” Discipleship (you see) requires our awakening: our awakening to divine grace, and our courage in going where grace would have us go, and our commitment to the One who goes before us. Jesus insists that you and I come out, that we choose to come out, over and over and over again. To be Christian is to come out. Bold and brave, compassionate and kind, resisting vengeance and violence, and choosing mercy instead. Not just in principle. But in the push and pull of daily life.

3.

And maybe there’s another indication in today’s story of what this kind of ‘coming out’ means in Christian life. And maybe we see it unfolding as Mary rushes out to find her sister Martha, and their dear friend Jesus, just outside the village. Lazarus has died. And for whatever strange and bewildering reason Jesus has delayed his visit. And now Mary falls at his feet, exhausted and brokenhearted and surely even disappointed. And she says to him, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would still be alive.”

And when Jesus sees Mary weeping and Martha too, and others with them shaken by grief and lamentation, he is deeply, deeply moved. And he says to them, “Where have you laid his body?” And they say to him, “Lord, come and see.” And as they walk on together, toward the tomb where Lazarus lies, Jesus begins to weep. Openly. Jesus begins to weep openly.

And this too is our calling. This too is the church’s vocation.

When our neighborhoods and communities are terrorized by masked vigilantes, we have every reason to weep. When our country’s weapons, our country’s soldiers are deployed to rain fire and destruction on distant deserts and faraway cities, we have every reason to weep. When our faith itself is weaponized by nationalists and racists to justify hatred and scare our children, we have every reason to weep.

Raising Lazarus / Eric Wallis

Our grief is itself a holy gift, you see, even a sacred obligation, and a sign of the Spirit’s proximity, the Spirit’s partnership in our time of great need and unrelenting sorrow. So Jesus begins to weep. Openly. Jesus begins to weep openly. Holding nothing back. Unafraid of his pain. Trusting that his tears are themselves sacraments of the Spirit’s transforming power. Preparing even in this very moment to touch the world’s pain with healing love. I have to believe that as he weeps he remembers his baptism. The waters running like streams down his cheeks. The love unbound in his heart. And now, weeping, he turns toward Lazarus. In the tomb.

Lazarus (you see) is that dear child, off to school in the morning, but clinging fast to his mom, or hanging on to his dad, just hating the idea of going to school, because he fears the bullies at recess. Lazarus is bound in bands of cloth and his sisters grieve. And Jesus too is weeping now.

Lazarus (you see) is that bright-eyed undergrad, falling in love on campus for the first time, now going home for spring break, but afraid to tell her dear friends at church, even her family at home, that she’s gay. Lazarus is bound in bands of cloth and her sisters grieve. And Jesus too is weeping now.

And Lazarus is that Cameroonian refugee, who’s risked absolutely everything to protect his life and his family; who’s hounded by an increasingly fascist government, at risk of being kidnapped (at any time) by cloaked agents of that government; who’s imprisoned—essentially—in his own home, in his own four walls. Lazarus is sealed in, bound up, and his friends grieve. And, again, Jesus is weeping now. Jesus is weeping now. It’s what Jesus does.

And Lazarus is the Free State zealot in Concord—whose guns are his only sacraments, who dreams of a world where all of us are packing heat and looking for trouble, who imagines that his deadly guns (and only his guns) make him safe and brave, who thinks that all this is democracy and security and peace. Lazarus is imprisoned by an American addiction and his own fears. And, yes again, Jesus is weeping now. Jesus is weeping too.

TO LISTEN, THEN TO ACT: "Voices from Palestine"