Resurrection Lutheran Church, St Catharines

Did Lazarus stink? Dead things go that way. If some mice crawled into your car over the winter and somehow got trapped you will eventually find them in the spring. If an injured animal crawled under your porch and then succumbed, you will come to know about it. If raccoons thought your chimney would be a warm place to spend a cold night, they will be discovered.

 

When Jesus finally went to Bethany after the death of His friend, He told them to take away the stone from the entrance to the burial cave. “Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to Him, ‘Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.’” (John 11:39). So too, if we don’t bury our dead expediently, then we are forced to take some manipulative actions. Either the casket remains closed, or there is some form of embalming needed, or the entire corpse is burnt up in cremation, all means of covering up the stench of death.

 

After Martha’s dire warning to Jesus that there would be an odor, they took away the stone at Jesus’ promise that they would see the glory of God. Jesus called and Lazarus came out of the tomb. Was there an odor? Did Lazarus stink? There is no mention of stench or odor in the Biblical account after Martha’s initial warning.

 

But one year I watched a controversial movie and was bothered by the depiction of the resurrected Lazarus. The movie showed a later scene where Lazarus was sitting at table and people would come to see the man who had been raised from the dead. The scene included the sight and sound of flies buzzing around Lazarus as if he did still carry the stench of death with him.

 

I thought, what is their purpose in showing this? Is it a reminder that Lazarus was indeed fully and completely dead, and giving off the stench of decomp when Jesus brought him back to life? Or is it some kind of suggestion that even though Jesus brought Lazarus out of the tomb, He could not fully conquer death which had left its mark or its stench upon the man? If so, why bother raising Lazarus at all? Who wants their brother or friend back from the grave if he is going to stink like that?

 

In our Old Testament reading for today, Job asks why God bothers with divine judgment. In his own distress, feeling the effects of death descending upon himself, covered in festering and stinking sores with no relief, Job cried out to the LORD, “Man who is born of a woman is few of days and full of trouble. He comes out like a flower and withers; he flees like a shadow and continues not. And do you open your eyes on such a one and bring me into judgment with You?” (Job 14:1-3).

 

Why bother judging mankind? Job is not the only one to ask such a question. In Psalm 8 King David asks the LORD, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which You have set in place, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:3-4).

 

Man is a pretty small creature after all, easily mauled by a bear or poisoned by a little frog; tiny beside a stately sequoia; insignificant to all of the supernovas he observes in the night sky. Man does not live to be as old as sharks or tortoises, or sequoias, or stars. Like Moses says in his psalm, “The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away” (Psalm 90:10), so Job agrees “Man who is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble.”

 

80 or 90 years seems like a long time when you are twenty years old, but once you pass 50 of those years, you realize that it is not so long a time after all. It is rather short both in relation to the age of other parts of the Lord’s creation and also when we think about what we wish we could have done, what we know we should have done, and what we hoped we would have more time to do.

 

As short as those years do become we also realize how many of them are full of trouble and sorrow. Sickness hits people at every age of life, but before you are able to give up toiling for your bread, the irreversible aches and pains set in. This body does not last forever. The parts wear out while the whole is said to begin its decay even from the moment of birth. A senior shut in once told me, “I’d like to meet the guy who said these are the golden years, and give him a piece of my mind.”

 

My mom’s side of the family were Scottish Presbyterians, not many of them regular in church attendance. But when the funerals of her ten brothers and sisters began their regular cadence, even the surviving relatives were surprised that the Presbyterian and United Church pastors were no longer speaking of the resurrected life through the death and resurrection of Jesus. There were only promises that the departed would live in on in the memories we retain and the character traits we have through our genetic ties. Not much comfort there. We are left in dust and ashes like Job reflecting, “Man who is born of woman... flees like a shadow.”

 

In the midst of this grim view of life, Job was quite irked that God would bother to judge him. Why not just leave man to the misery of his fading life? Why bother with this insignificant creature that is so easily damaged, and that causes so much damage by his words and deeds? Just let his light go out, let the memories fade, let the body decay to dust and ashes.

 

Of what benefit is it to God to have these frail beings propped up before Him so that all of their evil thoughts and deceitful lies and dirty deeds can be brought forward? Surely there is no pleasure in seeing any of that or bringing it to remembrance. Of what benefit is it to us? What difference does it make as we decompose in the dirt and pass out of living memory? Why the judgment? As Job pleaded with God, just turn away and let me wallow in my own pity, living this life full of trouble till it is done.

 

Because of the curse of sin bringing death and decay, God could just turn His back and let us all live out the life that we deserve. Our life’s trouble will be its own reward and we will end in such a “great tribulation that has not been from the beginning of the world until now” (Matthew 24). And then at death, skip the tedious judgment process and send us directly to hell.

 

The alternative is to hang this tantalizing and teasing promise before us that there is a way for us to pass out of judgment into eternal life, that there is some hope even for the guilty to be pardoned—and not just to return to an extended life of toil and pain, but to have a different kind of life free from those kinds of things.

 

Don’t we find it cruel to dangle that in front of us while we are going through the worst of our suffering? Don’t we join with Job and cry out for God to just end it already. Stop being so attentive to me in my pain. Look away from me so that death might finally win and this will all be over. Give me that pill to take. Send in the doctor with the final injection. Don’t keep pointing me to an eternal home that I can in no way merit.

 

Why do you promise me a day of judgment? Why do you give me a picture of the return of Christ and His cry of command for the graves to empty and the sea to give up her dead (1 Thessalonians 4)? Can such a stench be removed to make that day desirable? Can I be cleansed of the stink of my sins so that I might look forward to that day of judgment and the life everlasting?

 

Job’s question of why God is bothering to look at him or at any “man born of woman” whose days are trouble and sorrow, hinges on his supplemental question. “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?” (Job 14:4). And Job is quick to supply himself with an answer: “There is not one.” No one.

 

And Jesus would seem to agree as He spoke to the Pharisees of His day, saying, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence” (Matthew 23:25). You can clean up the outside of your act with public prayers and acts of charity, but that does nothing to clean up your hearts, greasy with greed for public recognition and power. Similarly, Job could scrape his festering sores with broken bits of pottery and get rid of the sight of the ugly pustules, but the poison in His blood would continue to infect his entire body.

 

But what if Lazarus didn’t stink after Jesus raised him from the dead? What if the life that Jesus gave to His departed friend was not just life on the outside of a body decomposing within but a life that enlivened the inside as well, and did away with all death and decay?

 

That is what a man full of leprosy believed when he saw Jesus and fell on his face and begged Him saying, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” And Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him” (Luke 5:12-13). It was not just an outward cleansing for the disease to make its appearance again later. The former leper was told to go to the priest and make the thankoffering for having been cleansed.

 

The polluting effect of the Gentiles’ worship of false gods was so infectious that the people of Israel were forbidden to have any kind of close contact with them. Initially the Gentiles were to be put out of the promised land lest they tempt God’s people to take up their pagan practices. And that they did, leading them even to sacrifice their children to Baal and Ashtorah. So the Jews learned that they were to stay out of pagan houses that might have demonic idols in them. They were not to eat with Gentiles whose meat may have been sacrificed to false gods.

 

But when an angel commanded Peter to go to the house of a Gentile named Cornelius, the message was accompanied by a vision of unclean animals presented to Peter with the command to take and eat, for what God calls clean, no one may call common (Acts 10:15). And so God cleansed the Gentile Cornelius and all of his household through the word and the water of Holy Baptism.

 

That is what God speaks of all Christians, no matter what cultural context they have come from or what sinful things might be hidden in their past. St. Paul tells us that the Church is the bride of Christ for whom He gave Himself, “that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25-27).

 

That is God’s answer to Job’s question: “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?” Job said, “There is not one!” God says, “There is One.” Futhermore that it is one who was also “born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law” (Galatians 4:4-5). This is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended into hell. The third day He rose again from the dead, He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead. Why? Why does He bother? Because He has secured for us forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

 

No, Lazarus did not stink, and neither do you. Jesus cleanses you inside and out, not just on the outside like hypocrites. Since we have Jesus as our High Priest, the writer of the letter to the Hebrews reassures us “let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” (Hebrews 10:22). He has cleansed our hearts and our bodies. He has made a clean thing from an unclean. He has done that for you here today. “If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

 

Even though you are just “man born of woman”, He cleanses you by His own blood. Even though you are guilty, He pardons you through His own suffering. Even though you are dying, He gives you life through His own resurrection. Why does He bother interrupting your life of slow decay into death and damnation? Because He can bring something clean out of unclean. He can do it in you so that you don’t stink anymore.