Photo by Angela Ryo

By Angela Ryo

When I think of the word community, I am reminded of Jesus raising up Lazarus from the dead in the Gospel of John. Here’s the story from John 11:38-44:

³⁸ Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. ³⁹ 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.” ⁴⁰ Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” ⁴¹ So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. ⁴² 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.” ⁴³ When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴ 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.”

What strikes me the most about this passage is the communal aspect of raising up Lazarus from the dead. If Jesus wanted to, there is no doubt that Jesus could have done everything by himself to bring Lazarus back to life—from rolling away the stone to unbinding him. But he doesn’t. In fact, if Jesus wanted to, Jesus could have prevented Lazarus’ death altogether! But he doesn’t. The intimate communal and relational aspects about death, resurrection, and life have a lot to teach us about how to do life together. Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to raise a person to life. He asks the villagers to remove the very heavy stone, and when Lazarus comes out of the tomb, Jesus again asks the villagers to unbind him.  Jesus wants the villagers to be part of this life-giving event.

I am always moved by this scene because it reminds me that even though “resurrection” is something only God can do, “life” is something that happens as we live in community. Right before this passage, in verse 25, Jesus says, “I am the resurrection AND the life.” Some ancient manuscripts have omitted “and the life” because they thought Jesus was just being repetitive. What’s the difference between resurrection and the life? We often see resurrection as a one-time deal, but although Lazarus resurrected from the dead, he needed his community to help him to be free and experience the fullness of life. The Greek word for life, “zoe”, refers to the fullness of life that we can have in Christ. Jesus is calling us to “unbind” those who have been resurrected so that they can experience this “zoe”–this fullness of life.

This is what community means to me: To be actively involved in rolling away the stones in our community—regardless of how heavy they are—and unbinding one another so that we can truly be alive together. Living in this Covid world feels like being in the tomb. We wonder how we can ever come back to life and back to the way things were. Sometimes we feel like Job in the Bible who lost everything. What’s interesting in the Book of Job, though, is that God blesses Job and restores what he has lost through his community. His community pulls through for him. And that’s how it’ll be in rebuilding our lives during and after Covid. This is how it will be as we fight for an anti-racist society. While things may never be the same, we will come together as a community to roll away the stones and unbind one another so that we can all experience the fullness of life.

Angela Ryo currently serves as the Associate Pastor for Christian Formation at Kirk in the Hills in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She enjoys taking long walks, reading, listening to NPR, and drinking good coffee with friends and strangers alike.