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Untie Him: Lazarus and the Work of Liberation

Untie Him: Lazarus and the Work of Liberation

Last updated on: March 21, 2026 at 7:44 pm by Jeff Hood

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Untie Him: Lazarus and the Work of Liberation 2026-03-21T19:44:33-06:00 Jeff Hood

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Lazarus

Lazarus and the Anatomy of a Miracle

In the 11th Chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus is told that his friend Lazarus is gravely ill…but instead of going immediately he delays. By the time he arrives Lazarus has been dead for four days and his sisters are grieving. Martha meets Jesus and expresses both faith and disappointment…believing he could have prevented her brother’s death. Jesus tells her that he is the resurrection and the life and calls her to trust in him.

Deeply moved Jesus goes to the tomb and weeps. Despite objections that the body has already begun to decay he orders the stone to be removed. Then he calls out loudly for Lazarus to come out…and the dead man emerges still wrapped in burial cloths. Jesus then tells those present to untie him and let him go…and many who witness this come to believe.

Where Was God When This Happened?

The story unfolds in a space that feels painfully familiar…a home filled with grief…a community circling loss…and a question that refuses to go away…where was God when this happened? In the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of John the sisters of a dead man send word to Jesus Christ hoping that love will move him quickly. But it does not. By the time he arrives their brother Lazarus has been dead four days. The tomb is sealed. The grief is settled. The possibility of change feels long gone.

It is a story that begins not with power…but with delay. And that delay is where the narrative first intersects with our own lives. Because we know what it means to wait for intervention that does not come…to pray for relief that seems postponed…to stand in the silence between crisis and response. When Martha meets Jesus on the road her words are both confession and accusation…”Lord if you had been here my brother would not have died.” It is a statement of faith but also a lament. She believes in his power yet cannot reconcile that power with his absence.

Lazarus and the Living Claim of Resurrection

That tension drives the entire narrative forward. Jesus does not dismiss her grief nor does he correct her theology in abstract terms. Instead he draws her deeper into a claim that is as unsettling as it is hopeful…”I am the resurrection and the life.” This is not merely a promise about the distant future. It is a declaration about the nature of reality in the present. Resurrection in this moment is not just an event…it is embodied in a person standing before her.

Grief Is Not a Failure of Belief

Yet even this profound claim does not erase the pain. The story refuses to bypass grief. As Jesus approaches the tomb he is described as deeply troubled. He asks where Lazarus has been laid and when he sees the sorrow around him he weeps. The shortest verse in scripture carries immense weight…Jesus wept. The one who is about to call the dead to life first stands fully inside the experience of loss. The miracle does not cancel the mourning…it moves through it.

This detail matters because it reshapes how we understand both divine power and human suffering. Too often faith is used as a way to explain away pain or rush past it. But here the narrative insists that grief is not a failure of belief. It is part of the landscape in which belief must operate. Before anything is transformed it is acknowledged in its full depth.

Lazarus and the Stone We Would Rather Leave Sealed

When Jesus finally stands before the tomb the story reaches a moment of confrontation. “Take away the stone” he says. It is a simple command yet it carries enormous weight. The stone represents finality…the sealing off of what has been declared over. To remove it is to expose the reality inside…the decay…the smell…the undeniable evidence of death. Martha resists naming what everyone knows but does not want to face…”Lord by now there will be a stench.”

Her objection is practical honest and deeply human. It is also symbolic. Because in every age there are realities we would rather leave sealed. There are forms of suffering so entrenched so normalized that we treat them as irreversible. We learn to live around them rather than confront them. We accept certain deaths not only physical but social and spiritual as permanent fixtures of the world.

Exposing What Has Been Declared Over

Yet the narrative does not allow for that kind of resignation. Jesus responds not by denying the reality of death but by challenging its authority. The stone is rolled away. The tomb is opened. The place of decay is exposed to the possibility of transformation.

What follows is the moment that has echoed through centuries…”Lazarus come out!” It is a command spoken into the depths of what appears beyond reach. And in response the unimaginable happens. The dead man moves. Bound in burial cloths he steps out of the tomb still wrapped in the signs of death yet undeniably alive.

Lazarus Unbound: The Community’s Work of Liberation

If the story ended there it would already be remarkable. But it does not. Jesus turns to those gathered and gives them another command…”Untie him and let him go.” The miracle is not complete until the community participates in it. Lazarus is raised by divine power but he is unbound by human hands.

This detail shifts the meaning of the entire narrative. Resurrection is not presented as a spectacle to be observed but as a reality that demands involvement. The community is drawn into the work of liberation. They are not passive witnesses…they are active participants in the unfolding of life where death had reigned.

To believe in this miracle then is not simply to affirm that something extraordinary once happened. It is to accept a vision of the world in which death does not have the final word. And if that is true it has profound implications for how we see the present.

Lazarus and the Tombs That Surround Us Today

Because the tombs are not only ancient. They are all around us.

There are systems that bury people in poverty and call it inevitability. There are institutions that confine human beings in ways that strip them of dignity as if their lives are already over. There are communities marked by violence where hope struggles to take root. There are individuals walking through despair addiction and isolation…conditions that resemble a kind of living death.

The Stench We Have Learned to Live With

Like Martha we often recognize the reality of these situations and conclude that they are too far gone. We acknowledge the stench and choose not to roll away the stone. We adapt to the presence of death rather than confront it with expectation.

But the story of Lazarus challenges that posture at its core. If the dead can be called forth then no situation can be dismissed as beyond the reach of transformation. This is not a denial of how difficult change can be nor a naive optimism that ignores suffering. It is a refusal to grant suffering ultimate authority.

To believe in the miracles of Jesus is in this sense to believe in the possibility of social resurrection. It is to see in the raising of Lazarus not only a singular event but a pattern…a revelation of how divine life presses into places marked by death.

Lazarus and the Call to Roll Away the Stone

Such belief carries responsibility. It calls for stones to be rolled away even when the act feels uncomfortable or risky. It calls for voices to speak into silence naming the possibility of life where none is expected. And it calls for communities to participate in unbinding those who have been constrained by forces larger than themselves.

The narrative does not suggest that this work is easy. On the contrary it acknowledges resistance doubt and grief at every stage. But it also insists that these are not the end of the story.

What We Dare to Believe

In the end many who witness what happens come to believe. Not because they have been given a tidy explanation but because they have seen something that disrupts their understanding of what is possible.

That disruption is the lasting power of the story. It invites us to reconsider the finality we assign to the broken places in our world. It asks whether we are willing to imagine that what appears dead might yet live.

And it leaves us with a question that is as urgent now as it was then…if we believe that Lazarus came out of the tomb what might we dare to believe about the tombs that surround us today?

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About The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood

The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood is a Catholic Priest (Old Catholic) and nationally recognized theologian and spiritual advisor to death row inmates nationwide. He has accompanied eleven men to their executions, including the first and eighth nitrogen hypoxia executions. Widely regarded as the leading spiritual voice on the death penalty, his work has been profiled in outlets ranging from the New York Times to a Rolling Stone documentary, The Spiritual Advisor. For his service and scholarship, he was nominated for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. You can read more about the author here.

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