Read John 11:38–44
ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“You have been raised to new life with Christ. So set your sights on the realities of heaven…” (Colossians 3:1 NLT)
We live in a world obsessed with image, identity, and self-improvement—but rarely in ways that honor the sacred self God already created. From a young age, we’re taught who to be, how to behave, and what parts of ourselves to silence if we want to be accepted. Some of us spend years trying to become the version of ourselves that others will finally call good. But what if holiness isn’t about becoming someone else? What if it’s about remembering who we were all along—the person God saw and called good from the very beginning?
Part 5: Coming Out of the Tomb. He hadn’t meant to open it. The photo album. It just fell off the shelf while he was reaching for something else. Thick, vinyl-bound. The kind that smells like old glue and ghosts. He sat on the floor and flipped it open—page after page of some other boy’s life.
Except the boy was in dresses. Hair curled. Smiling. Always smiling. And every part of him wanted to scream. Because that was him. And it wasn’t.
He remembered how tight the shoes were. How the lace itched. How the compliments stung. “So beautiful.” “Such a pretty little girl.”
He remembered the way his chest sank every time someone used the wrong name—not just wrong, but impossible. Like they were naming a stranger that only he had to become.
He didn’t have words for it back then. Just a hollow ache. Just a sense that something was off and he was the problem. So he learned to perform. Smile for the camera. Say thank you. Don’t make it weird.
But now, as a grown man flipping through a scrapbook of someone else’s expectations, he felt it like a funeral—one he never asked for but had been made to attend.
Years ago, he came out as a trans man. Not for attention. Not to make a point. He was just done pretending. Done shrinking. Done dying politely.
But the album was still there—heavy as ever, shelved like scripture. And sometimes, someone would still flip it open and smile wistfully, landing on a page and saying, “You were always such a happy little girl.”
He never knew what to say to that. They meant it as a memory. But to him, it was a myth. A horrible lie, sealed in plastic, that almost cost him his life.
He closed the album. Not with anger—but with a strange kind of peace. The past couldn’t be undone, but it didn’t get the final word. He was alive now. Fully, finally, painfully alive. And that’s when resurrection really begins.
When Jesus stood outside Lazarus’s tomb, he didn’t blame him for being dead. He didn’t call him out with judgment. He called him by name: “Lazarus, come out.” And then—this part is easy to miss—he turned to the others and said, “Unbind him. Let him go.”
Friends, resurrection doesn’t end at the moment of awakening. It begins there.
Coming out is a resurrection. And like all resurrections, it’s messy. It doesn’t happen with makeup done and hair perfectly styled. It doesn’t look like a Hallmark moment. It often looks like staggering out of a dark place, wrapped in grave clothes that other people put on you. It looks like truth rising through dust. Like life interrupting someone else’s narrative.
Too many people think coming out—whether it’s as queer, trans, disabled, neurodivergent, or simply not what they expected—is some act of rebellion. They call it selfish. They call it sinful. They call it confusing. But what if it’s holy?
What if resurrection means walking out of the tomb with your head held high, even if your voice still shakes? What if grace looks like unwrapping the grave clothes of shame, fear, and forced performance—and refusing to let other people call that death life? And what if the church’s role isn’t to stand at the entrance of the tomb demanding answers, but to help unbind the ones God has already called to rise?
Because if Jesus called Lazarus by name, you can be sure he knows yours too. And when he calls, he doesn’t say, “Come back.” He says, “Come out.”
THOUGHT OF THE DAY
Coming out is not rebellion. It is resurrection. And Jesus is the one who calls you by name.PRAYER
God of the living, you call us out of shame and into truth, out of silence and into song, out of tombs and into life. Help us to hear your voice—and to follow. When others still see a corpse, you see a beloved. Give us courage to rise, and surround us with people who help unbind what no longer belongs. In the name of the risen Christ, who knows our names and our scars, Amen.
Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).