Respond to the Word: Are we our bodies?

Wrap a willing volunteer tightly in thin sheeting as everyone watches, before the Gospel is read. (Choose the volunteer carefully, making sure they are fit to cope with the exercise. Encourage them to stand very still during the story.) As Jesus’ words are read in a loud voice ‘Lazarus, come out! Unbind him and let him go’, rapidly unwrap and release the volunteer! Ask how it felt to be trapped and then freed.

On strips of paper or bandages encourage people to write or draw those things which bind people: it may be things that bind them personally or it could be things which bind other people. Or they may wish to identify things which they feel bound them in the past — and also those ways in which other people are ‘bound’ in debt, in relationships and in other ways. At a given point allow the strips to be dramatically torn or cut to show that God wants each of his children to be free!

With a small fan in one hand, and a concealed handful of 20 or 30 torn 2cm squares of tissue paper in the other, tell a story of freedom — perhaps of caterpillars becoming butterflies, or of an island where the birds didn’t know they could fly until one was brave enough to take off from the cliff face. At the appropriate moment in the tale allow the pieces of tissue to escape from your hand quickly but one at a time (with a movement like fanning a hand of cards) at the same time wafting the fan under them so that they twirl and fly upwards dancing and swooping around. This is very effective if done from a pulpit or another high place.

Ask some volunteers to practise and perform a dance of freedom using brightly coloured ribbons on sticks. Florist’s ribbon is cheap and comes in beautiful colours which can easily be taped onto short (12' length) garden canes. A soaring piece of music like a track from Jan Gabarek’s Officium would complement their movements.