This is the fifth Sunday in Lent. I have some understanding of what the woman meant. I have been traveling for weeks. I have been on a form of pilgrimage. My vehicles were the liturgy, the transport of scripture and the conveyance of shared refection. There is indeed more than one way to travel.

On Ash Wednesday, I spoke, and heard, the invitation to a Holy Lent. I too heard the call for self-examination and repentance. So I put decided to put down some of my baggage in preparation for the trip and I departed for the desert of Matthew's recounting. We stood together in the sand of Jesus' temptation that first Sunday in Lent. Then we journeyed through 5 weeks to arrive, now, at the opened tomb of Lazarus.

The challenges that were issued in the heat of the desert that first week are dispersed by the wind five weeks later that makes the linen wrappings flap like banners in the breeze. Lazarus stands mute but eloquent -a living testament to the identity of Christ, and the power of God present through Him.

I have covered this same ground three times this Lent. I traveled with you, in the church, over thirty-five days. I journeyed by myself through five stations in the meditation chapel in about thirty-five minutes. And finally, twelve men explored the same Lenten landscape in a day and a half on the Saint James' Men's Retreat which concluded yesterday afternoon.

Each time I traveled I saw something more- some facet that had escaped me, some detail only visible when one is moving very slowly, some larger dimension that only becomes apparent when one traverses a great distance in a short time.

For five weeks the pilgrimage continued. I looked at the scripture analytically and read the commentary of scholars. I built an installation to portray the progression of Lent to others. I listened to others read the scripture in that ancient form called Lectio Divina in which the words wash over you like water, flowing and falling, leaving a word or a phrase cupped in your hands like a glimmer of gold or a wriggling fish.

Treasure and sustenance lie hidden in the words waiting for us to hold them. For five weeks my mind, my body and my spirit have been on a journey through Lent. I am grateful for the invitation the Church gives, each Lent. I am grateful for the season set aside for our use. I am grateful for fellow pilgrims on the way. And I stand at a tomb in awe and gratitude.

Four days dead, the soul by any reckoning, gone.
The stench has captured the cave.
The stone divides the living from the dead,
Brother from sister,
Those lost in mourning from he who has lost it all.

Glory that could move mountains,
Or divide the dry land from the vastness of the sea.
Says simply:
"Take away the stone."
And death itself is rolled back.
Lazarus still bound, but living,
steps into the light.

Delivered by God, and unwrapped by love,
His face will be radiant from the darkness left behind.
"Unbind him and let him go!"

We have walked from the water of baptism to the heat of the desert-
through the frenzy of life's choices- things done and things left undone-
to the seemingly inevitable end at a tomb.
But all things are possible with God.

We have been given signs, warnings, gracious foretelings and mysteries waiting to be unwrapped. We have the gift of God's own son, full of wonder. We have the gift of a community of faith which offers shared strength, help in discernment, and encouragement in times of our joys and our sorrows. And Lazarus stands, a linen wrapped answer to Nicodemus' plaintive cry: "how can these things be?"

How indeed?

Sleepers awake! Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you.
Christ is in us. Lazarus is before us.

We trek through a garden.
We move through a wasteland.
Not everything that the world presents is food for the journey.

Listen to the words of David Whyte:

This is not
The age of information.
This is not
The age of information.

Forget the news
And the radio
And the blurred screen.

This is the time
of loaves
and fishes.

People are hungry,
And one good word is bread
For a thousand.²

Our salvation is in the name of the Lord.
A very present help in times of trouble.
Seek the Lord where He wills to be found.

And where does He will to be found?

Look in your workplace.
Look in your home.
Look in your heart, and in the halls of power.

Go even to the places of the dead, if God commands it.
For at his word, we can unbind and release those whom God enlivens.

AMEN

² Whyte, David, Crossing the Unknown Sea, p186.