Sometimes life really stinks ...
In John 11, we have the account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, and there is much to challenge us in this passage. Verse 1, quoted from The Message, sets the stage:
A man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. This was the same Mary who massaged the Lord's feet with aromatic oils and then wiped them with her hair. It was her brother Lazarus that was sick. So the sisters sent word to Jesus, "Master, the one you love so very much is sick."
When Jesus got the message, he said, "This sickness is not fatal. It will become an occasion to show God's glory by glorifying God's Son."
Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, but oddly, when he heard Lazarus was sick, he stayed on where he was for two more days...
When he arrived (eventually), each sister berated him in turn. "Master, if you had BEEN here, my brother would not have died!"
It was a fair assumption. These people had seen Jesus heal people for years. He stayed at their house with his entourage when he was in town. They were his groupies. They knew he could heal their brother. They had watched him heal people again and again. They were full of faith for healing! Moreover, they had a special relationship with Jesus. Lazarus was an intimate friend. In fact, the sisters used this personal relationship to try to manipulate Jesus into coming faster, by pointing out that it wasn't just anyone who was sick and needed his help. It was Lazarus, they said, "THE ONE THAT YOU LOVE." They expected that Jesus would come right away, heal their brother, and all would be right. Or perhaps they thought he would just pray a prayer wherever he was when the messenger found him, and Lazarus would be healed over in Bethany without Jesus actually taking the trouble to travel back to Bethany. Jesus did that sort of thing. Again, it was a reasonable expectation.
Except he didn't.
Jesus waited two days after he got the message, by the time he got there, Lazarus had been dead and in the tomb for four days. He had chosen not to heal. And that's really the dynamic. God is ABLE to heal, miraculously. And sometimes chooses to do so, but not always. Even when we ask him to do so with many tears.
Lazarus had been dead for days. Long dead. Yet Jesus wanted to do something-- something quite messy.
After Jesus arrived at the tomb, it is recorded that he wept. "Oh how he loved Lazarus!" they said. Then Jesus gave a very strange instruction. "Take away the stone." The tomb had been cut into the rock, a large stone rolled across the entrance, and then it had been sealed properly. He gave the directive, but the sisters immediately started second guessing him. (As we tend to do.)
The sister of the dead man, Martha, said "Master, by this time there's a stench. He's been dead four days!"
Jesus looked her in the eye. "Didn't I tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"
Then he said to the others, "Go ahead, take away the stone."
They removed the stone. Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and prayed, "Father, I'm thankful that you have listened to me. I know that you always listen, but on account of the crowd standing here I've spoken this so that they might believe that you sent me."
Then he shouted, "Lazarus come out!" And he came out, a cadaver, wrapped from head to toe, and with a kerchief over his face.
Jesus told them, "Unwrap him and let him loose."
Most of us are familiar with this story, but let's think about the practical effect of his last instruction to them. "Unwrap him and let him loose." Lazarus was now alive, but my guess is the strips of cloth they had wrapped his body in were nasty. The bible doesn't say what Lazarus had died from, because it wasn't relevant to the story. But I wonder. Was his illness stinky? Did he die of gangrene, or dysentery? Did his body already reek from his sickness, before he started decomposing in the heat? He had already been in the tomb for four days, and would have been quite ripe. But Jesus still instructed them to open the tomb. (Did the smell of death escape when they obeyed and opened it? Then when Lazarus came walking out of the tomb, Jesus told them to unwrap him. Were the strips of cloth they had wrapped him in oozing with pus or decay? Did they smell vile, or did Jesus change all that when he brought Lazarus back to life? The bible doesn't get into such details.
But I think they stank. I think they were absolutely vile. But sometimes, God asks us to do hard things. To do nasty things. To hold our nose and unwrap the grave clothes.
Sometimes we encounter someone who has been spiritually raised to new life, but they still have some of their old grave clothes on them. God wants us to help them.
Or maybe it's a physical need-- dirty diapers or bloody bandages that need attention. And God wants us to pitch in as his hands and feet.
Especially when the situation stinks.
Thank you