"Redemption Island"

I at times tune in to the weekly TV show called “Survivor”. Many persons already know the plot. There are people who are stranded on an island somewhere in the world. They get voted off one by one by their peers for various reasons.

This season the popular TV show added a new twist. This year when a survivor gets voted off by their peers they go to "Redemption Island." It is on this island that they may find their way back into the game if they can win a battle against another survivor. The point to my story is that redemption is a key element to getting saved and being able to continue to live in the game.

This TV show is not that far off from what our life is like in this world. We all must be redeemed for our sins from the legacy we inherited from the first sinner Adam.

The question becomes: how do you get redeemed and choose life when you are facing death each and every day? What does Jesus mean when he says in John’s Gospel that "this illness does not lead to death rather it is for God's glory" so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." He’s correct. Lazarus’ illness does not lead to his death but it ultimately does lead to Jesus’.

These questions bring us to the Gospel text of John 11:9-41. We are told early that Lazarus has died. Jesus meanwhile knowing full well that he could have saved his beloved friend waits two more days then tells the Disciples "our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep" died, dead, gone! He was your friend hello!!

“And Jesus wept.” “You love us and you loved him; why did you not come and cure him while he was still alive?” I think many of us ask God that question when a loved one dies. Jesus asked it from the cross: “God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” You always think of love as something you can have because you are alive. But the opposite is true. Life is something you can have because you are rooted in love. Death does not erase love, it brings you more deeply back to it, to the place you came from—love’s rich loam.

Jesus tells her " your brother will rise again". She knows that he will rise in the ressurection so she really believes cause she says so. But Jesus tells her I am the resuurection and the life . Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live and everyone who loves and

"Jesus began to weep" most divine and the most human aspects of Jesus

Jesus reveals, God is not so much a rescuing God as a redeeming one. God does not protect us from pain, but instead enters it and ultimately redeems it. That might sound simplistic in the face of real death and evil, but it is not. That sorrow and grief and anger may be appropriate emotions at times. We do not need to hide them. But we also cannot allow them to stop us from continuing to move forward... even if our destiny is with Christ's... on the cross.

"Lazarus come out!" Mary is asking the universal, timeless question about suffering and God’s seeming absence. Her query (“Where were you when my brother died?”) asks that question for everyone: Where is God when innocent people suffer? Where was God during the holocaust? Where is God when anyone’s brother dies? He enters into peoples’ helplessness and pain. Instead he redeems our suffering afterwards. He came out his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said "unbind him and let him go". We too are to be unbound and set free by the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Who has redeemed us by His precious blood. Yes we are redeemed not rescued. We still have our own lives to live on this island knowing that we indeed have been saved.

Open My Eyes

I remember the movie title “Close Encounters” from a movie about our world’s first encounter with aliens. At first, one would think that it would have no correlation to the Gospel of John 9:1-41. However, in looking at how we can have so many close encounters with Christ, I wonder how many of our encounters result in our being changed. Many times when we first come to Christ we actually feel like the alien ourselves. We have become isolated and estranged from our creator. Once we have a close encounter with Jesus it is unlikely that we will ever be the same.

It seems that so much of our lives we feel like aliens ourselves. We are separated and at times cut off from the love that is in God through Jesus. How many times do we have “encounters" with our own blindness and spiritual deadness? This story in John’s Gospel gives us the reality of Christ’s power to make us see and live again. When our hearts which hold our values, our will, and our emotions are in Christ, we can see much more clearly, too.

How many times are we blinded to the truth? Doesn’t this happen to so many of our politicians and leaders? They become blinded to what is the truth. We do the same thing. If we are all too busy trying to protect our fiefdoms, money, fame, power or whatever we stockpile, we still do not see.

To contemplate divine life is to find freedom; but it is also to encounter that which we do not like in ourselves. It is to stand up when there are those who oppose our new found freedom. However, we must open our eyes and be healed by the power of Jesus Christ. Only then can we be finally open to the evil, injustice and oppression all around us. Yes, we are all healed and made whole once we are opened to the light and no longer are blind in darkness.

I still vividly remember the horror of waking up to blindness in my left eye last November. I had a detached retina that happened over night. It came very quickly yet its scars still remain. I think the issue for me was not being able to see, being blind and no longer being able to see the light. I love light. I love the beauty that God has opened up to me through God’s eternal love and grace. I am no longer blind because I too had years ago a close encounter with God and I , too, will never be the same!