All Saints’ Day
“... 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.”
Overview
Today we celebrate the Feast of All Saints, marking the beginning of the season of remembrance. As the year draws to its end we turn our minds towards endings, and so both our readings today ponder the mystery of death.
In Isaiah 25:6-9 God describes the feast that he will give for his people, a feast at which they will eat the finest food and wine and God will eat death. Surrounding cultures believed in a god of death called Mot who swallowed people when they died. God is bigger than death, big enough to utterly consume death, and so set his people free to live, for to be part of God is to be part of life. We celebrate this in our baptism when we are called to die to a way of life bound by the fear of death and be given a part in the divine life, reborn as creatures who are unafraid of death and so can be fully alive.
In our gospel (John 11:32-44) Jesus again shows that the life of God is bigger than death. Here the community are called upon to unbind Lazarus from his grave clothes and set him free. We too are called to unbind one another from fear of death and to set one another free to live life abundantly.
Readings
FIRST READING
Isaiah 25:6-9
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,
of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.
And he will destroy on this mountain
the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.
Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces,
and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.
It will be said on that day,
Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.
This is the Lord for whom we have waited;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.
GOSPEL
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.”
