All Saints Sunday: Experiencing Our Emotions in Community and with God

A message based on John 11:32-44: When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”   When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.   He said, “Where have you laid him?”  They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”   Jesus began to weep.   So the Jews said, “See how Jesus loved him!”   But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb.  It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.   Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”  Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.”   Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”   So they took away the stone.  And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me.   I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.”   When Jesus had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”   The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth.  Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”