Topic: Ministry of Presence — Key Scripture: John 11:43-44
“When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, ‘Take off the grave clothes and let him go.’” — John 11:43–44
There is a moment in the resurrection of Lazarus that I have never been able to move past quickly.
Jesus has already done the impossible thing. He has called a dead man out of a tomb. Lazarus is alive. The miracle has occurred. And in the moment after — in the stunning, disorienting, world-reorganizing aftermath of a dead man walking out of his own grave — Jesus turns to the people standing around and gives them something to do.
“Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”
Jesus does not do it himself. He could have. He is the one who just raised a man from the dead — unwrapping linen would not have presented a significant challenge. But He does not. He turns to the community gathered around Lazarus and He gives them the work of the unbinding him.
I think about this often. Because it suggests something important about how healing actually works — and about the role that community plays in it that cannot be replaced or outsourced or accomplished alone.
Jesus does the resurrection. But He asks the community to do the unbinding. Both are necessary. Neither is optional.
Lazarus comes out of the tomb still wrapped in the grave clothes. He is alive, but he is not yet free. The thing that held him in death still clings to him. And the removing of those wrappings is not something he can do for himself — his hands are bound, his face is covered, his movement is restricted by the very things that once marked his condition.
He needs other people to do that part.
This is, I believe, one of the most honest pictures in Scripture of what the journey from death to life actually looks like in the human experience. The moment of turning — the moment when something shifts and the movement toward healing begins — that can happen in a single encounter, in a session, in a moment of prayer or honest conversation or unexpected grace. But the unbinding is slower. And it almost always requires other people.
The grave clothes of grief are not removed all at once. The wrappings of shame, of burnout, of long-held beliefs about our own unworthiness — these come off layer by layer, in community, in relationship, in the presence of people who are willing to do the slow, careful, sometimes awkward work of helping us get free.
We are not meant to do this alone.
Isolation is one of the grave clothes. And you cannot remove it by yourself.
This is why community matters so much in the work of healing. Not because healing cannot begin in an individual encounter — it can, and often does. But because the unbinding requires witnesses. It requires people who will name what they see — who will say, gently and honestly, “that thing wrapped around you is not who you are” — and who will stay in the work of helping remove it.
Support groups, cohort programs, faithful friendships, soul care relationships — these are all, in different ways, forms of the unbinding. Spaces where people who have begun to come alive again are helped out of the things that still cling to them. Where the work that cannot be done alone is done together.
There is also something in this passage about the dignity of the person being unbound. Jesus does not do this privately, behind closed doors, away from witnesses. Lazarus is unbound in the presence of the community. His restoration is witnessed. And that witnessing is part of what makes it real — part of what anchors him in his new life rather than in the tomb he has just left.
Being seen in our restoration matters. Not just in our brokenness, though that matters too. But in the process of becoming free — of the grave clothes coming off, of the light reaching places that have been wrapped in darkness — we need people who can see it and name it and reflect it back to us.
At BRKN Soul Care, this is part of what we are trying to create. Not just a space for the first encounter, but a community of people who are willing to do the unbinding work together. To show up, to stay, to help each other out of the things that still cling from whatever season of death or grief or loss each person has come through.
You may have already had your moment of turning. Something may have already shifted — the decision to seek help, the first honest conversation, the beginning of the movement toward life. But you still have grave clothes on. And that is not a failure. It is simply the nature of the journey.
Let the community help with the unbinding. You were not meant to do this part alone.
If this resonates with where you are today, BRKN Soul Care is here. Book a free Introductory Conversation at brknsoulcare.org and take the first step. You don’t have to carry this alone.