Good morning, children of God! 

I hope you are all managing okay in the safety of your house. 

 

What have you been doing? Have you built some tents? Doing crafts? Writing messages on the sidewalks? Playing with lego? I hope you are helping with chores. Some of your Sunday school teachers have been sewing masks. 

 

When this is all over we’ll have a big celebration. Okay. Do you like celebrations? Me too. We’ll come to the banquet table where God promises a foretaste of the feast to come.  We’ll sing and pray and maybe even dance… together….in the same space.

 

In the meantime, we gather as the virtual body of Christ. Our lives have changed a little. This won’t be forever. Thank you for being safe and staying home. For helping out your mommy and daddy by letting your bright light shine. If we all work together, some awesome things can happen.

 

Sometimes you might feel sad. You might miss your bff’s at school and playing together on the playground.  You miss giving your grandparents and cousins big hugs. 

It’s okay to be sad sometimes.

 

Jesus felt sad too. In our Gospel story this morning, we hear that Jesus weeps because his friend Lazarus was sick and he wasn’t there to be with him. When Jesus finally gets to see his friend, Lazarus has died. How very sad is that.

 

But the story does not end there. 

 

In God’s story, death is never the last word. 

 

Do know what God’s last word is?

 

Life. 

 

Life in God.  Life the breathes deeply. 

 

Life that sings and dances.

 

Life that helps.  Life that loves.

 

Life in Christ that never ends.  

 

Jesus says, Unbind him and let him go. 

And do you know what happens next?

Lazarus gets up. His friends help take off his bandages. And he  lives! Maybe even more fully than he did before. Now he knows what it truly means to live in the new resurrected life of Jesus.

  

Children and adults, in a few minutes, I’d like you to get a small bowl of water. We are going to remember that in baptism we are renewed daily in the life of Christ. We die to our old way of being and we live anew.  We’re learning a lot these days about living anew...

 

Let us pray.

Loving God, you come to give us life even when we are bound.

Bless us, your people. Bless the world, gracious God. Amen