I mentioned this on Sunday, but have you ever had something go so bad in the fridge that you'd rather throw out the container than have to smell what's inside while you toss it in the garbage? Sure you have. If you haven't, then I welcome you to planet earth, where people that we call humans every once in a while forget about the meatloaf that they put into a tupperware container in the back of the fridge, and then promptly forgot about. But if you are from this great planet, then you should know that this issue happens to literally 100% of fridge owners. At some point, something will go bad, and you will face the most insane game of chicken of all time. Everyone in the family can smell that something has gone absolutely rank - who is going to break first, and act to get rid of the stink?
All this talk of bad food should inevitably lead us to talk of Lazarus, Lazarus who had been dead in the tomb for four days. And people back then, they weren't buried like people now. These days, people go to a morgue, then they get embalmed, then they get pleasantly made up and dressed in a sharp suit, and it's all good. But back then, well, remember the story of Jesus? How they laid him in a tomb and didn't bury or cremate him? This was an admittedly brief phase in burial practices, one in which people were laid to rest and were expected to decay over the course of a year. So, obviously, Lazarus wasn't treated with anything to slow down the decay process, it was actually expected to speed up and accelerate. What this means is that by the time he had been dead for four days, that decay process had begun.
Here's a fun experiment you can try at home. Go to the market, buy a fish, a whole fish with the head still on, and leave it out on the counter at your home for four days. Oh wait, on second thoughts, don't try that at all. Don't try it because it would be a horribile experience for everyone. As the fish rots, it will stink up the place something terrible. I heard rumours when I was growing up of people who used to take a frozen carp to their safety deposit box in the bank, lock the carp in there, and then walk away. And yes, as the fish first thawed, then decayed, it would stink up the whole bank.
Knowing all this, bringing Lazarus back from the dead, it ain't as simple as just telling a corpse to get up and walk again. That's zombie movie stuff, where reanimated corpses get up and stroll around. And it's no good. It's not real life at all, it's a pale shade of life. But this is the resurrection of the dead found in Nikos Kazantzakis' book 'the last temptation of Christ.' There, although Lazarus has been raised, he is still decaying. Or to put it only slightly more recently, it's like that film 'death becomes her' starring Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep. You probably don't remember that movie because I believe that according to box office receipts, only three people saw it, and one of them was named Bruce Willis. But in these movies, people die, then come back to life, but continue to decay. This is an immense problem when it comes to resurrection, in that our thoughts are that the best we can hope for is to reanimate a corpse, like Frankenstein, the ladies from death beccomes her, or Lazarus from the Last Temptation of Christ.
But what this does is it plays into how we feel about the limits on the power of God in general. We feel, as Martha did when it came time for Jesus to visit the tomb, that if Jesus had been there at the right time, then Lazarus would not have died, however he did, so, well, I guess we're done here then. Also, when Jesus asks for the stone to be rolled away, Martha gives the very sensible response that he's not going to smell too good, as he has been rotting meat for four days.
But Jesus deals with this stuff. Not with reanimating dead flesh like we're in some sort of late night zombie film, but in terms of unpicking the stitches of death. Of going back, and reworking the body. If you watched the time lapse decaying pig from earlier, you'd know that after four days, you can't just shock the pig with some electricity and have it walk around again. The cells have begun to break down and fall apart. They're broken. The body looks like a body, sure, but it is decaying rapidly from the inside out. The soft tissues, the organs they're turning to mush. Without the electricity and oxygen from the body's processes, the organs that make up the viscera, they just turn to goo. And this is what Jesus was dealing with as far as the work he came to do.
It wasn't just reanimating Lazarus, it was unworking death. It was unwinding the coils that held him in the tomb. It was undoing decay, reversing the goo-making rot that was bloating the corpse. In other words, Jesus was unpicking the stitches that death had made in Lazarus' body, in order that he might sew a new garment.
Now, we believe that Jesus will do this on the last day for us, too. We believe that he will raise us up on the last day, that what is sown perishable will be raised imperishable, we believe this. But we also believe that there is work to be done in the here and now. The book of Colossians tells us that while we were dead in our trespasses, Christ died for us. And what we typically take this to mean is that while we were asleep in our trespasses, asleep in our sins, Jesus died for us. But it's deeper than that - things that die are changed. They are chemically different. They go through changes that make them unable to just decide to get up and walk. They go through changes that twist them and break them and turn them into something completely different.
We are dead in our trespasses. It was while we were dead in our trespasses that Christ died for us. And forgiving sin is more than just condoning it, or pretending it doesn't matter. Forgiving sin as big a deal as raising the dead, really. This is why the religious authorities of the time were so bent out of shape when Jesus claimed to forgive sins, because it isn't as simple as saying 'it's no big deal' or 'don't worry about it.' It's a matter of changing us, unpicking the stitches, of reversing the decay, getting rid of the rot. It's that big a deal. It's winding back the clock, drilling out the decay, cutting out the cancer, reversing the death that infects and awaits us all. It's that big of a deal.
You who are dead in your trespasses, you are as busted as Lazarus. You bring as little to the table as he does. You bring nothing to that particular table. And your sin stinks. You're dead and rotting in your trespasses, and stinking to high heaven. If you're like me, when it comes time to discuss your sin, and Jesus says to you 'roll the stone away,' you reply 'Lord, no. There will be an odor.'
Yes. Yes there will be an odor. There will be an odor because of the stink of your sin and death. But if you leave the stone over the tomb, if you don't let Jesus in becasue you're embarrassed, because you think it's too late to deal with it, if you leave the stone in front of the tomb because you don't want Jesus to see or smell or deal with how rotten you actually are, then that's that. But if you allow that stone to be rolled away, then Jesus will call with a loud voice 'come out.' He will forgive sins, he will grant you peace and life, and he will roll back the clock and undo all the decay that you thought was permanent. The death of Lazarus, thanks to the work of Christ, was reversed. And Christ himself was too good for death to hold! And because of his goodness, because of his merits, because of who he is, death has lost its sting. For the sting of death is sin. If Christ has triumphed over sin and death, if he can rewind decay, if he can undo decay and death with Lazarus, if he can unwind death and sin at that time, he can do it for us. The passion of Jesus is all about this, all about taking the sting, the stink, the weight of death away, undoing sin, reworking death, unwinding rot, and giving us new life.
No comments:
Post a Comment