Many things in this world smell bad, but I’m told there is no stench like that of a decomposing corpse. Mercifully I have no first-hand experience. One reason we put our dead into graves and tombs is to insulate us from the smell of decay. So I can only imagine the shock to those gathered outside Lazarus’ tomb when Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”
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 sister of the dead man, said to him, “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 believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone.
Martha, ever the housekeeper, so much more earth-bound than her spiritual sister Mary, has no trouble speaking what everyone was no doubt thinking. “The stench, Lord; did you forget the dead smell?” I can hear the subtext: “Are you so lost in the clouds in your holiness and preaching, you don’t know what a dead person can smell like?”
Martha, bless her, is naming reality. The world needs more people like her, who will just say what needs to be said. And yet, that very gift, of stating the unpleasant facts in a given situation, can also keep one from believing in an outcome better than anyone can imagine. And Jesus was promising an outcome that no one could ever have imagined.
We have a notion that holiness smells good. There are psalms about our prayers rising before God as incense. This story reminds us that, on the way to seeing the glory of God, we often pass through some pretty revolting messes. We want to be protected from the messes, but as Good Friday, not to mention our own experience, teaches us, that’s not how God works. Our Good News says that God walks through the muck and mud with us, enduring the reek of things dead and decaying, and shows us in ways we cannot imagine how life can break forth, even there.
Think of the way a rose bush might grow through, even because of, the dung used to fertilize it, its fragrance the sweeter for the fetid ground in which it was born.
Jesus knew life was breaking forth. Martha trusted Jesus.
So they took away the stone.
No comments:
Post a Comment