Lent with Lazarus

 

This week we are adding to our Lent with Lazarus quotes from the Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman.  Here is one from his book, Jesus and the Disinherited:

 

“The basic fact is that Christianity as it was born in the mind of this Jewish thinker and teacher appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed. That it became, through the intervening years, a religion of the powerful and the dominant, used sometimes as an instrument of oppression, must not tempt us into believing that it was thus in the mind and life of Jesus. 'In him was life; and the life was the light of men.' Wherever his spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them.”

A few thoughts from this quote.  First, Dr. Thurman is clear that Jesus was a poor, itinerate, preacher from a minority religion.  Jewish people were tolerated, if they paid taxes and didn’t protest too much about Caesar claiming to be a “god”.  Jesus wasn’t powerful or prestigious.  As he said in Matthew 8:20, “The foxes have holes and the birds of heaven have nests, but the Son of Man does not have a place where He may lay His head.”  Jesus wandered through life, just as we can sometimes feel aimless or restless.  

Second, Dr. Thurman reminds us that the church today has gained and gathered tremendous power.  Think about our church with its property, buildings, and budget.  I think about this when I receive a paycheck from the church.  I tremble when I hold my life up to Jesus’s life.  I am not poor, itinerate, or pushed to the fringe with my back against the wall.  I need to keep praying, “Lord I want to be a Christian in my heart,” and keep asking God to guide me in living that prayer.  This reminds me what it means to be full alive, I long to let God’s love radiate and roam free from my heart to the world.  

Third, I am always aware of how the church has/continues to hurt and harm people through racism and homophobia and sexism.  There exists a wall for our BIPOC brothers and sisters, obstacles for our LGBTQ family; and a stained-glass ceiling for our sisters in faith that don’t honor women as we do men.  There are tombs where we still confine and define people based on race, sexual orientation, and gender.  There are also tombs of economics and geography too.  The ways we “other” people, binding them.  Just as Lazarus was set free with God’s liberating love, so too that is our work.  

Notice Jesus brings the life to Lazarus…the people unbind him.  God brings life today, we are called to unwrap the things the constrict and restrict, especially those on the margins.  Just as people in the Lazarus story worried about the smell of the tomb, so too there will be a stench as we deal with our biases – individually and collectively.  Just as Thurman said that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred guard the gates that can prevent people for being fully alive, we need courage to go together into God’s kin-dom.  May you and I prayerfully ponder Dr. Thurman’s quote today and throughout this season of Lent.  Amen.