Will You Be There?

A lectionary poem for the fifth Sunday in Lent

This poem grows out of this week’s Lectionary Readings. What struck me as I sat with them is this:

Jesus is not simply pointing to resurrection. He is the resurrection and the life. He speaks, and the dead live. The breath of God comes, and what was gone begins again.

And yet, in the middle of that, there is this surprising turn. Lazarus comes out… and he is still bound. And Jesus looks not to heaven, but to the people standing there, and says: “Unbind him.”

So there is something only God can do and something God chooses not to do alone.

This poem lives in that space.

Will You Be There?

Bones do not gather themselves.
They do not remember their shape
or call breath back into their own ribs.

They wait—
if waiting is even the word—
for a voice.

And God speaks.

Not loudly.
Not with spectacle.

But with a steadiness
that does not consult the evidence.

And bone comes to bone.
And sinew finds its place.
And breath—
breath that was never theirs to begin with—
enters.

A friend lies in a tomb.

Four days into silence.
Four days into certainty.

The kind of silence
people learn to live around.

And Jesus arrives
not early enough to prevent it,
but not absent either.

He stands before what has been sealed
and says something strange:

I am.

And then—

Lazarus, come out.

And the dead man
hears his name.

It is a quiet thing, perhaps,
to be called.

Easy to miss
if you have grown used
to other voices.

The ones that say,
“This is just how it is now.”

The ones that say,
“Nothing more can be done.”

The ones that do not shout—
only settle.

But there is another voice.
And it does not agree
with your ending.

And the Spirit—
the same Spirit
that gathered bone
and stirred breath
and raised a man from the grave—
is not held at a distance.

Not waiting somewhere else.
But dwelling.

Here.

Within.

Closer than your conclusions.
Closer than your resignation.
Closer even
than the places you have learned
not to touch.

Lazarus comes out—
alive,
but still bound.

And Jesus turns
to those standing nearby:

Unbind him.

So this life is God’s.
This breath is gift.

But this work—
this gentle, human work—
is given to you.

Will you believe
that what feels finished
is not?

Will you listen
for the voice
still calling?

Will you become
gentle hands
for another?

Because God is already there.
Breathing.
Calling.
Giving life.

And somewhere beside you,
someone is waiting
to be unbound.