The Smell of Death, the Hope of the Resurrection

 John 11:1-45

All Saints

November 7, 2021

 

Right before Jesus gets to the tomb,

Jesus talks to Martha. She is crying.

She frankly sounds a little angry.

She tells Jesus, “If you were here, Lazarus wouldn’t have died.”

 

I think we’ve all felt like her at some time.

Where was Jesus when we needed Jesus? When we prayed and prayed? What was he doing?

 

And in response, Jesus says: “I am the resurrection and the life.”

And then he asks Martha: ”Do you believe this?”

 

Martha says she does believe.

Of course she believes.

She believes, but her belief is not

changing the situation here and now

where her brother Lazarus is most definitely dead.

 

Most of us here would say the same thing if we were asked that, I think.

We do believe in the hope of Jesus.

We believe in the forgiveness of sins and life everlasting.
We believe that good has the power to conquer evil.

We believe that the arm of the universe bends toward justice.

We believe that God can overcome the power of death.

We believe. Of course, we believe.

But what does that have to do with right now?

 

We believe all those things, but we also know death.

We know what it tastes like, what it sounds like and feels like.

We know from experience that every life will end at some point.

And we know the sadness and horror of life cut short,

by illness, by tragedy, by accidents, by hate, by viruses.

We believe in miracles, but we know death.

 

And we know that for every one miracle of life

for every one story of Lazarus,

there are hundreds of stories of miracles that haven’t happened.

We believe, Lord, but that doesn’t change reality

that doesn’t change that people we love die.

 

Sometimes religion pits belief against reality.

Sometimes religion pits belief against sorrow.

Some people act as if people of faith are supposed to

turn off our minds and emotions, live in denial,

like we are supposed to look at tragedy and sadness

in the face and smile serenely and say “we’re blessed.”

As if people of faith should never be sad.

 

But when Jesus finally gets to Mary and the rest of the mourners

waiting in front of Lazarus tomb, they are all crying

Jesus doesn’t look at them and say,

“If you really believed, you wouldn’t be sad”

He doesn’t say, “Don’t cry, he’s in a better place.”

Or “God just called another angel home”

or any of the other platitudes people give at a time of grief.

 

In the face of the very real death that surrounded them,

Jesus wept.

The shortest, most succinct sentence in the bible.

In the face of death, Jesus cried.

 

Jesus understands our pain,

All life on this earth is a precious thing.

Not disposable, not dismissible, not insignificant.

It counts. It hurts when it ends.

 

Now I read one commentary that said that Jesus wept

out of frustration and anger at the lack of faith of those around him.

 But that’s just silly, isn’t it?

 

Jesus was sad.

His friend Lazarus died. 

His friends Martha and Mary were in sorrow.

 

Jesus was human. Fully human.

And Jesus knows what we go through

Shalom
Youram Raanan

when someone we love dies.

Jesus knows the smell of death too.

And Jesus knows first-hand that as human beings of faith,

we live in a place that is “in between”.

 

We believe in the life to come,

but here life has not yet won out over death

hope has not fully won out over despair

 

We still face the realities of this world.

What a difficult place to be

We are in between with one foot in the world

of overwhelming losses, and grief, and pain,

we have one foot in a world of injustice,

violence, illness, sadness.

And we have another foot in the hope of life to come.

We live constantly straddled in the middle of reality and hope.

And Jesus, is there with us - in this in between place.

Crying at the loss of his friend.

 

Jesus wept and God suffers with us.

If this was the whole story, it would be good news enough,

But it is not the end of the story.

 

The whole story is that at the door of that tomb

in that in-between time when reality

was slapping them all in the face,

Jesus yelled, “Lazarus come out of that tomb”

and the dead man did.

  

When each of them were full of doubt, and anger and sorrow,

Jesus brought a bit of the Kingdom of God into that place.

Jesus brought the smell of hope into the

stench that was in the tomb for four days.

Jesus brought some of that life to come right into

the hard world of reality, in-between time they were in.

 

On All Saints Day,

we remember those people that we have lost

in this year and in years past.

We grapple with the reality of this world,

the fragility of it, the finality of it.

 

These past two years have been full of death.

Even if someone we know hasn’t died from COVID

the stories are all around us.

We have lived with the direct fear of

death near us more in the last two years

than we have in the recent past.

 

Was this trip to the grocery store or the dentist

going to be the one that lead to a

very painful and terrible end for us?

And all this is going on with the same level

of violence and trauma and illness that

goes on in a normal year.

 

The bad news is that we have become so familiar

with the smell of death right now, that it

may not even bother us much anymore.

 

But the good news today is that

But we also believe in God. Not just any God.

We believe in the God who has power over time and space,

We believe in the one who is the Resurrection and the Life.

 
We believe that God has the power to make life out of death.

Here and now. God has the power to make changes in this world

to make justice and peace and to rebuild lives broken by

violence and tragedies and pain and viruses.

We have seen it and witnessed it, like those

people standing at Lazarus’ tomb have seen it.

 

So even though we have one foot in reality, we still live with hope.

We know that God is always making life out of death

here on earth. We know that God is still bringing hope

to hopeless situations, brining help to the helpless,

and joy out of sadness.

 

We believe that even after death,

God’s power is even stronger.

We believe that a time will come when the saints

of all time will be joined with God.

When we will know fully of God’s love,

when we will all eat at God’s banquet table

united into one big family.

 

And when we share communion at this table each week

we know are sharing with all our brothers and sisters in Christ

past and present and future of every time and place,

When we eat at this table,

we are making a testament about God’s power.

 

Right now, we are people living with the reality of death

But we are also people living with hope of the resurrection,

the expectation of new life.


 We have one foot in the kingdom of this world,

and one foot in God’s Kingdom.

And that has the power to change everything.