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Karen Hollis | March 22, 2026 Lent 5 – Innovative Prayer
Different approaches to prayer:
Everyone has a unique approach to relationship with God and prayer. Prayer is human, universal. So, approaches to prayer go beyond denomination or even religion. Writing with a Christian context, Patricia Brown identifies 4 particular styles of prayer and suggests prayer practices to support them. Brown offers one starting place for exploring what draws us in and engages us. My hope is that during this season of Lent, each of us may resonate with something and have more tools for grounding ourselves as we walk through these challenging days.
(next slide)Here are 4 different personal styles of prayer:
Searching: brings a logical mind to prayer. Their insights come through observation, study, and debate or conversation.
Experiential Prayer: They appreciate a step-by-step approach, being in the present moment, and appreciate practices that have worked for others.
Relational: They look for personal meaning, prayer practices that help them attend to internal work, and aim for authenticity in both inner and outer life.
Today we consider an innovative approach. Someone who gravitates toward innovative prayer may be an optimistic and hopeful person. They may enjoy embodied prayer that includes movement and the senses. They may rejoice in new insights, the imagination, creativity, and novelty. Contemplating the mysteries of faith, they may look beyond the nuts and bolts of spiritual ritual to see vast possibilities for meaning, growth, and change. They may see beneath an event, story, or practice to find connections and deeper meaning; and be able to synthesize ideas, experiences, interactions with people, and scholarship to adapt and adopt traditions and rituals for prayer.
Before we hear the story of Lazarus, I have another prayer practice to share with you. This is called Ignatian Imaginative Prayer. Ignatius was the founder of the Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits and he developed a number of prayer practices. In this practice, you choose a story from Jesus’ life and enter into it in your imagination. First get familiar enough with it that you can play it in your mind like a movie. Then put down the text, close your eyes and play out the story with your imagination, allowing yourself to enter into the story as one who was present, maybe as a witness, as one of the characters, or even as Jesus.
As you enter the story, experience it with your senses. What do you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch? What is your character thinking, feeling, experiencing? What stands out to you as the story unfolds?
Ok, let’s look at the excerpt of text. Mary and Martha sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it, he said, “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.” Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
We’ll begin and end with the bell and I’ll lead you through the exercise with my voice. *bell* Allow your imagination to show you how this story begins. Notice your surroundings. Where is Jesus when the news comes, who is with him? Who is he speaking to? What is your vantage point? What do you see around you? What do you hear? Are there any scents in the air? Do you experience touch? What thoughts and emotions are you experiencing as the scene unfolds? You can rewind or fast forward, look or listen again. Experience what is here for you in this story. With some mindful breaths, and welcoming gratitude, let’s bring our attention back into the worship space. *bell x3*
John 11:1-45 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it, he said, “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.” Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble because the light is not in them.” After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” Thomas, who was called the Twin, [d] said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus [e] had already been in the tomb four days. 18 Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”
Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house consoling her saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 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 he 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 he 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.”
Many of the Jews, therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did believed in him.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be reflections of your word to us today, in Christ’s name we pray. Amen
TIE IN INNOVATIVE PRAYER
We return to John’s gospel today for this strange and extraordinary story. John’s narrative is much slower and more detailed than other gospels, so we can almost see people’s faces, hear their voices, experience the scene in full colour, and even feel their emotions. Their emotions and experience are also our own. We’ve all been in the shoes of Mary and Martha. We’ve all held the hand of someone who was slipping from this world into the next. We’ve all wished desperately that we could stop it or longed for the circumstances to be different. There is nothing more embodied in this world than the stuff of life and death, the gateways of this life, where, ever so briefly, we are able to experience this world in the flesh. We are gifted these bodies to carry us through this life, that allow us to smell, taste, hear, see, touch this world that can so easily take your breath away. The world is especially magical this time of year, where the birds are singing in the morning, there’s a warmth and freshness to the air, and the sunshine reflects off the morning dew. Even in our sorrow, even in our aches and pain, even in our particular suffering, it is good to be here, it is good to be alive and to pray with this body. It is good to be human.
In this very human situation, Jesus sees beyond what is unfolding and invites everyone present to glimpse the bigger picture. In order to do that, Jesus does some things that are confusing and distressing, especially to Martha and Mary. After hearing of Lazarus’ illness, he delays the journey 2 days – after our imaginative exercise, maybe you all can now shed light on how he spent those two days – so when he finally arrives in Bethany, Lazarus has been dead 4 days. Unless we place the story in the context of Judaism, it’s hard to understand the significance of this detail. So, let’s learn a little more.
Judaism teaches that when someone dies, their body must be returned to the earth within 24 hours. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But the spirit lingers with the body for another 2 days, and on that third day after death, leaves the body and returns to live with God . . . until the “great and awesome day of the Lord,” when everyone will be resurrected together, bodies long since decomposed, will unite with their souls. According to Jewish author, Maurice Lamm, “Judaism has always stressed that the body, as the soul, is a gift of God—indeed, that it belongs to God . . . Resurrection affirms that the body is of value because it came from God,” and it will be renewed by God. Not only is it an affirmation of the body, it is an affirmation of community, because everyone gathered from all times and all places, to one space, together. Everyone is restored to each other, no one is separated or left out.
With this context in mind, Jesus is in conversation with Martha. In their dialogue, Jesus invites her to see the resurrection differently. Martha begins: ‘if you had been here, my brother would not have died . . .’ Jesus replies, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day’. But then Jesus says: ‘I AM the resurrection and the life.’ Gosh, what does that mean? The resurrection means that spirit and body are reunited. Life is to be animate, to engage with the stuff of this world. Jesus isn’t talking about a resurrection that is in some unknown future and space, he’s talking about our bodies and lives here and now, renewal right here in our very lives. Imagine it.
Lazarus, who has been dead now four days, who has no chance of being resuscitated, because his spirit has already returned to God . . . he can have new life here and now. And if he can, any one of us can have it.
Jesus goes to the tomb, thanks God for having heard him, as if the healing is already complete, and he simply tells Lazarus to come out, which he does, burial cloths and all. Jesus says, “unbind him and let him go.” Unbind him . . . it makes me wonder about the metaphor. What has been restricting and constraining Lazarus? What was oppressing his spirit or holding him back? What prompted this journey through death and into life? Having come through, he suddenly and unexpectedly is back home in his body, feeling the weight of gravity, his lungs expand and contract, he can move his limbs, walk on the earth, and share an embrace . . . he has been given his life back as a gift and is invited to live.
If Lazarus can leave his body, return to God, come back again, and live fully, what is possible for us? Hearing this story sometimes washes the window through which I look at my own life. Like anyone else, I get distracted by the dailyness of it all and forget the gift of this life. Sometimes I forget that God’s got me. I was in some gathering this past week when someone said a particular phrase and I remembered . . . and it really does make all the difference.
There are so many ways in which the presence of Christ is available to us. Or perhaps you have a different name for what shows up as hope, possibility, and extravagant love, here in what Mary Oliver calls the soft animal of our bodies. Where do you connect into the light in this physical existence? It is everywhere, it knows us, is for us, and is here to serve us here and now that we might truly live.