Come Out

What amazing readings we have this morning! First, Ezekiel’s wonderful vision of the valley of dry bones who came back to life and then the long and detailed account of Jesus bringing Lazarus back to life.  It’s all about new life in the Spirit, the Good News of transformation and resurrection.

For those of us who identify as LGBTQ this gospel reading has always held a special place in our hearts as Jesus cries with a loud voice, “Lazarus, Come Out”!

Coming out is rarely an easy process. Coming out means first acknowledging to oneself that one’s inner self is in some significant way different from the dominant culture. This inner difference may be deeply felt but take a long time to identify and name.

For many years I struggled with my own sense of self and my sexual orientation. The few gay people I saw around me were extravagantly gay men who were not attractive – I didn’t want to be like them – and were not Christian – which I wanted to be. But much as I prayed to be heterosexual It didn’t happen, and I began to feel like a hypocrite because when I went to church everyone thought I was a ‘nice’ Christian girl, they didn’t realize that hidden inside me was a lesbian waiting to come out. And so I stopped going to church. The dissonance between who I knew myself to be and who others expected me to be had become too great and it was yet too dangerous to come out.

And so I was unable to fully live. I was in a real sense dead and bound like Lazarus. The scripture tells us that when he came out “his hands and feet [were] bound with strips of cloth, and his face [was] wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”  It was not enough for Lazarus to come out, he also needed to be unbound by his community. LGBTQ people need not just to be accepted but to be seen, celebrated and encouraged by their community before we can be fully free to be the unique people God created us to be.

And it’s not just gay people.

My fifty year old nephew came out last year. Not as gay but as neuro-diverse. For fifty years he tried to fit in, copied the behavior of neuro-normative people. For fifty years he felt trapped in a tomb of normative behavior. Finally, he sought a professional diagnosis and came out as high functioning autistic. This identity has given him new life and new confidence.

There are many things that keep us stuck in the tomb needing to come out and be unbound and find new life.

It is in the interests of the powers of this world to keep us in the closet or in the tomb because the life of the Spirit is a direct threat to the status quo. The life that Jesus offers, the life that Jesus calls us to, the life that Jesus lived led him into direct conflict with the powers of his time. And those powers are very similar to the powers of this 21st century world.

We are caught up in a world where the rich get richer and the poor can’t get ahead. Where the priorities of those in power reduce the power of the rest of us. We have seen immigration raids which entrap and have even killed people who are not criminals, ordinary people who are living their lives and trying to look out for their families the best they can;  we have watched the administration push through the so called Big Beautiful Bill which reduces the ability of as many as 10 million people to afford and access healthcare and which may lead to the closure of as many as 300 rural hospitals[i]; and in the last two weeks the industrial-military complex has led to a war which has killed many people including children in the Middle East, especially in Iran and Lebanon, has cost this country about $22billionand counting, and has released 5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – that’s as much as Iceland emits in a whole year[ii].

These are the powers that lead not to human and planetary flourishing but to a society where people are enslaved by the sin matrix and unable to free themselves. And the same powers lead us to feeling powerless, so we turn away and focus on the everyday things of our privileged lives, and we are kept bound in the tomb.

But Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” [And Lazarus heard him] and the dead man came out.

I don’t know what it is that is keeping you in your tomb – it may be fear, it may be grief, it may be past trauma – whatever it is, Jesus is calling you to come out, Jesus is calling you to allow yourself to be healed, to come out into the love and resurrection life of God.

Just like those dry bones.

Ezekiel’s vision came after the Babylonians captured Jerusalem and the conquered people of Judah were exiled. It is a vision of hope, of the renewal of the spirit in a people rendered lifeless and powerless. The story of Lazarus gives us hope as individuals that we can be freed from what holds us back; the valley of the dry bones gives us hope as a community.

St. Peter’s is at a possible turning point. In the year I have been with you we have lost people, some who have died, some who are no longer able to get to church because of health issues and some who have simply stopped coming. There have been few local visitors and those who have come have not returned more than a few times.

We are like a valley of dry bones. We remember vibrant times in the past and it is tempting to think if it could only be like that again everything would be better. But the past is past, and if we allow ourselves to revel in nostalgia we will miss the movement of the Spirit into the future.

We are hopeful that when Rev. Ollie comes, he will prophesy to the bones and new life will come to St. Peter’s. Yet in Ezekiel’s vision, the bones themselves came together and developed sinews and flesh and skin. Yes they were inspired by the prophesy, but they also acted. Inspired by the Spirit of God, they found new life. They found new bodies and new bodies lead to new ways. The Jewish people were never the same after the Babylonian exile.

The church of tomorrow will not be the same as the church of today. We don’t know what it will look like but as long as we cling to our memories of the past we will not be ready to move forward and welcome the breath of the Spirit offering us new life and new possibilities.

Next Sunday we will be entering Holy Week when we walk with Jesus through those dark days before his final confrontation with the powers of this world. But even as we acknowledge the darkness we also know the truth – that Jesus resurrected – that the powers of darkness did not win and will not win – that new life and new hope and new possibility flourish in the reign of God. No doubt the disciples longed for things to be as they had been in the past, but in those few days everything changed. But we know that Easter is coming.

Even in the darkness of these times when the powers of the world seem to be winning, we know that Jesus the Christ is the true light of the world and the darkness cannot overcome the light.

So let us open our ears to hear the cry of Jesus “Come Out!” and let us have the courage to leave behind the tomb of the past and step into the future of the Spirit.

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall
 
 
 


https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-truth-about-the-one-big-beautiful-bill-acts-cuts-to-medicaid-and-medicare/

[ii] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/21/middle-east-iran-conflict-environment-climate