John 11:32-44
November 1st, 2015
Are you ready?
After Lazarus had died, Mary came to 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 Judeans who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in his spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. The Judeans saw this and noted how he loved Lazarus. But some of them said, “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind 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 other sister of the dead man said, “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 trusted, 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 know that you always hear me, but I say this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may trust that you sent me.” When he had said this he cried out 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.”
Smelly Miracles
We’re going to begin today’s sermon with a Ghanaian prayer, one that acknowledges the presence of death and the presence of God’s mercy. Pray with me:
Come, Lord,
And cover us with the night
Spread your grace over us
As you assured us you would do.
Your promises are more than
All the stars in the sky;
Your mercy is deeper than the night.
Lord, it will be cold.
The night comes with its breath of death.
Night comes; the end comes; you come.
Lord we wait for you
Day and night.
Amen.
Hey guys, sometimes miracles stink. Sometimes they’re smelly. Sometimes life stinks. It’s smelly.
I mean, I don’t know what else we could pull from this miracle story from the Gospel of John. It stinks; the whole thing.
Lazarus has been in the tomb for four days, well past the day when you could touch a dead body. Well past the time when you were certain, for sure, that someone was dead. Martha (she’s the practical one, right?) is voicing a real concern when she says, “Do not roll away the stone; he smells by now…”
Or, for those of you in love with the old language, a notable scholar pointed out in a podcast this week that in the King James version is says, “He stinketh.”
Which makes sense because, by and large, death stinkeths.
I have been in the room when death was a welcome and prayed for guest. St. Clare, St. Francis of Assisi’s spiritual companion, called death “Sister Death.” That familial and familiar quality of it is something I’ve seen as long-suffering is eased with death. In those cases death can even be beautiful, as beautiful as the changing trees that we see outside in these autumn days. Death is really putting on a show this autumn!
But more often I have been in the room when death has been an uninvited guest. In that case it stinkeths. Stinks to “high heaven,” as we say.
Those of you with Biblical imagination will note how this scene is a lovely, if incomplete, foreshadowing of Jesus’ own resurrection, what with the rolling away of the stone, Mary running around upset, and even the idea of grave clothes needing tending to for the unbinding.
When the stinking man does emerge from the tomb, Jesus invites the gathered to come and unbind him, setting him free from death. This time.
It is not a permanent resurrection. It’s a mini-resurrection. An incomplete resurrection. Lazarus isn’t saved from death. In fact, he’ll die twice now. Which, I imagine for him, kind of stinkeths.
In reading this I took note of Mary’s words. “If you had been here, Lord, he wouldn’t have died.” Jesus, it seems, is only seen as a preventative measure. He can save a life, but he cannot reverse death in the eyes of Mary. He cannot resurrect, he can only stop the need for resurrection.
I kind of liken it to Mary being stuck on the “what could have been” of the situation. It’s easy to do, of course. The mourning is real because the death is real. It’s easy to get stuck on the “could have beens” of life because we feel the sting of death and hurt and pain. And it stinks. Even Jesus knows it stinks. His insides are in turmoil, the literal Greek says here. He cries real tears. The Reverend William Sloane Coffin once wrote that “When our loved ones die it is not so much they whom we have lost. What are really lost are our expectations.” That’s so true here. Mary lost her expectations of Jesus. Mary and Martha lost their expectation of life forward with their brother. And even Jesus lost here…he lost the expectation of seeing his friend alive and well and dining with him.
Surely the one who can do miracles has no need for tears. And yet we have them. Because it’s real. Death is real, and Jesus felt the sting of death here.
And sometimes, often times, death stinks. Often times we feel like death is capstone on an incomplete life. And even when we’re talking about other incomplete deaths like the death of relationships, or the death of our opinions of someone we thought we knew when they turn out to be wrong, or betrayal by a friend we thought we could trust, or even the death of a job or a family pet or anything that exists no longer.
Death, of all these kinds, in all these ways, stinks.
We have to be honest about that. It stinks. Don’t give me any “God needed another angel” platitude, it just makes me want to punch you. And don’t tell me “everything happens for a reason.” I don’t buy it.
Sometimes it stinks. Just acknowledge with me that it stinks. Let’s all just say together one time that it stinks, ready? “It Stinks!”
Even Jesus acknowledges that it stinks. Even Jesus cries. Jesus doesn’t move to, “Oh Mary, where is your faith?” right away. Instead Jesus goes through the gut-wrenching pain of grief.
Jesus, it stinks.
And then my thoughts went to what could be. I mean, this doesn’t look like a long scene, but then again, there was limited parchment and words were of a premium, as they usually are with important stories of life and death. Perhaps we’re dealing with hours here. Lots of walking. Lots of tears. Lots of silence.
That’s how I imagine it.
And after lots of hours. Lots of walking, pacing. Lots of tears and silence, the wailing and the staring off into space that happens with loss, complete or incomplete, then…then the prayer.
Then the thinking of what can be. Life for the living is not about what could have been, but is ultimately about what can be. Eventually, in time, with love and space, we move there…or we should move there…we have to move there if we’re ever going to do something with our lives.
Because, and I think this is really true, the unbinding of Lazarus at the end of the story is also the unbinding of Mary and Martha. Yes, sure, Lazarus is the dead one. But in this moment, so were Mary and Martha. Their faith in Jesus was dead. Their faith in a God who seemed not to show up on time was a dead faith.
And so often in moments of loss and death both complete and incomplete our minds get stuck in the dead place of what could have been. Our hearts get stuck in the dead moments of what is missing, and we become bound to it like a millstone around the neck, like a scarlet letter across the chest, like a wound that will not heal up but keeps bleeding, reminding us of what is not.
But in time Jesus does the thing that God does with time which is turn the focus to what can be, even here, even now. And turning that focus does not in any way detract from the stink of the situation.
It’s not like Lazarus came out smelling like roses and everyone thought, “Oh, that’s not so bad…”
No. It was so bad. Bad as death. Bad as tears and sobbing. That kind of bad.
But sometimes the miracles in this world aren’t clean and tidy. Sometimes they’re smelly and happen in the midst of the graves of this world.
But even there God can cause something new to happen. Even then we don’t have to live bound to what could have been; we can, in time, see what can be…
This is even true with situations that seem not to be matters of life and death, but rather just matters of circumstance.
What if, when we looked at this building, we thought to ourselves, “Well, it stinks that we have so many stairs, bad lighting, asbestos floors. Wish they would have done it differently, but they didn’t…” and we just shrugged our shoulders and didn’t do anything about it? Are we bound to what could have been? Can we live into what can be, unbound? I mean it’s not life or death, but…
You know, I say it’s not a matter of life or death, but for me stairs aren’t a problem. For me bad lighting isn’t a problem. It might be for someone else a matter of life or death, especially if you’ve ever tried to walk down those stairs with bad lighting at night…man, that’s tricky, over there by my office. Might as well install a slide for as often as I’ve slid down those steps in the dark…
On this All Saints Day, let us acknowledge together the stink of death. Let’s acknowledge together that sometimes life is smelly, and sometimes what we go through in this life stinketh to high heaven.
But let us also remind ourselves that that which stinketh to high heaven is smelled by a God who does not want us to be bound to death, but binds us to the life of his Son who conquers death. All deaths, complete and incomplete.
And while death of loved ones, death of relationships, death of jobs, of status, of friendships, of trust, of anything in this world most often stinks…and there’s no denying that…the God who shows up in Christ invites us to smell the resurrection flowers of spring in due time, reminding us that we need not be bound to death any longer, even as we weep and our guts turn within us.
We can weep without fear, you know. This is what I think Jesus embodies here: genuine sadness without fear of missing out on what could have been. When he unbinds Lazarus, when he unbinds Mary and Martha, he does not fully take away their sadness…both will feel sadness again at death, we know this is true especially with Mary and Martha as they weep for Jesus at the cross.
But perhaps the thing that is missing from the equation after this smelly miracle is the fear.
Maybe that’s what hope really is, after all. Optimism is naively thinking everything will work out. Hope, though…the hope of faith…is that, no matter how things work out, we need not fear. As the ancient poetry of the Psalmist says in Psalm 23, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear not, for you are with me.”
Fear not the smell. Fear not the stink. I smell it. It hurts. I mourn it. But I do not fear it.
Or to bring in another poet, a Jewish poet of the 18th Century (and we’ll leave it with this thought) perhaps Jesus’ unbinding work in our lives is best summed up by the poet Reb Nachman in his short piece, _The entire world is a very narrow bridge_
He writes:
The entire world is a very narrow bridge./The essential thing is to have no fear at all.
Thanks, Nachman…and I guess I have to say that I haven’t quite found out how to do that without being constantly reminded of the smelly miracles that God in Jesus does in this world.
Amen.
An Endless Falling 
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