Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot and Christ Church, Bulkington
Ezekiel 37. 1-14, John 11. 1-45
“Lord, by this time he stinketh”
Giotto, The Raising of Lazarus (1304-6). a fresco from the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua.
Compared with our other senses, there is something particularly potent and unavoidable about smell. You can close your eyes, you can stick your fingers in your ears, but if something around you stinks, there isn’t a lot you can do to stop noticing it while you’re breathing. And the neurologists tell us something else—they tell us that unlike our other senses, smell doesn’t pass through our thalamus, which is the brain’s central relay unit, but instead goes straight to the parts of our brain which control memory, and which control emotion. It’s why particular smells can so easily trigger memories from our earliest years, and why they can also trigger such powerful emotions.
Smell can trigger disgust in us like nothing else can. I hope that none of you have ever smelt an untreated human body after a few days but I’m sure that, like me, you’ve at times come across big animals like badgers or even livestock in that sort of state. This is one of two cases in today’s readings where the King James Version is definitely superior to the NRSV: “there is a stench” isn’t half as memorable as “he stinketh”!
Lazarus stinks because he’s been dead for four days. That’s more important than it might seem on a casual reading. There was an old Jewish tradition that the soul hovered near the body for three days, hoping to re-enter it, and then departed when it saw the face beginning to change with decomposition.
So one thing St John wants you to know here is that Lazarus was totally stone-dead: not out cold, not in a coma, not in the exit lounge, not dead for a day at most like the resurrection miracles in the other Gospels—but absolutely brown bread. So this isn’t a case of Jesus merely healing someone; this is showing Jesus as the Lord of death and life itself, someone who can bring Lazarus’ soul back from the netherworld. This is showing that Jesus is God.
And in case there’s any doubt about that, in the middle of this passage, Jesus tells Martha, “I am the Resurrection, and the Life”. Now, do you remember the story about Moses and the burning bush? Well, when Moses asks God His name, can you remember what God answers? It’s “I am that I am”—that’s the name that God gives to Himself. And there are around a dozen cases in John’s Gospel where Jesus uses this “I am”. Some of them famous sayings like “I am the Resurrection and the Life”, and “I am the Good Shepherd”, but two in particular that are pretty unambiguous statements that He is God—and we’ll come back to those in a minute.
Now, there are only seven miracles in John’s Gospel – he reports far fewer than the others, but explores them at great length. This is the last of those miracle stories, and in many ways the greatest of them. It takes place just two miles from Jerusalem, at Bethany. As well as wanting you to know that Lazarus was really dead, and that Jesus was really God, John wants you to know that Jesus has gone back into hostile territory here, into the heartland of the Pharisees, back to a region where He nearly got stoned to death the last time He visited. That’s why His closest followers try to warn Him off returning, fearing they’ll be killed along with Him.
Now, this reading was long enough, but I’m going to tell you a little bit about what comes next, because that explains why this journey was so risky. The last line of today’s reading tells us that many of big crowd who’d come to commiserate with Mary and Martha believed in Jesus after seeing Lazarus raised. But later it is revealed some of them told the Pharisees about what they’d seen – just two miles away in Jerusalem, remember – and the Pharisees worried that if Jesus became too popular, He would provoke the Romans to crush the Jewish people entirely; and so they started plotting to kill Him from that point onwards. In raising Lazarus, Jesus begins the journey to His own death: but it is through this that He will enable us all to be raised.
Now, I told you there were two of the times that Jesus described Himself with “I am” in John’s Gospel that were particularly unambiguous statements that Jesus is God. One comes at the end of all this plotting, when Jesus is about to be arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, and when told the police were looking for Jesus of Nazareth, simply replies , “I am” – and here’s the point, everybody falls to the ground. And I’ve mentioned the other big moment: the last time Jesus was in this area, when He was nearly stoned to death. And do you know why that happened? Because He told the mob – “before Abraham was, I am.” So He claimed very directly to be God. So, when Jesus tells Martha, “I am the Resurrection and the Life” here, it’s part of a long run of statements in St John’s Gospel where Jesus telegraphs that He is God.
Now, let’s return to the start of this sermon—smells can powerfully evoke memories. So what should this story of stinking Lazarus being raised from the dead help us remember? That Jesus is the Lord of Life and Death; and therefore that Jesus must be God.
I said there was another bit of our readings where the King James Version was better than the modern translations, and that comes from that wonderfully vivid first reading from Ezekiel which I haven’t mentioned yet. “Mortal, can these bones live?” says God in the modern version; but in the Authorised Version, it is “Son of man, can these bones live?” Jesus, of course, refers to Himself repeatedly as Son of Man in the Gospels; so this locates Him very directly in a line that stretches back through the prophets for many centuries.
Now, Ezekiel’s vision of the dead coming to life was metaphorical, and never claimed to be something more in the way our Gospel reading did. But it was written at a time of absolute desolation for Ezekiel’s people: he was himself one of those forcibly exiled from his homeland to the great imperial capital of Babylon; then the Temple, the centrepiece of their religion for four centuries from the time of Solomon, was destroyed. But through Ezekiel, God promised a people that had experienced nothing in their faith but decline and exile and shrinkage that God would once again breathe new life into the dry bones of their faith. And they did indeed return to Jerusalem, after half a century. Their experience was painful, but it made them rethink what they thought they knew about themselves and about God; it made them grow. New life lay on the other side of the cross they had to bear.
Ezekiel saw a valley of dry bones; and God asked: can these bones live? In our own time, with our Church in the state it’s in, we might well ask the same. The answer given in both readings is the same: yes—but only because God breathes life where there had been none.
So trust this: in a world full of war and hate where we can almost smell the power of death on the evening news, resurrection is written into the pattern of things.
As you bear your own cross, walk closely with Christ in these last days of Lent—and He will lead you to His Cross, and then beyond into new life.
Now praise, glory, and honour be to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who is with us in times of plenty and times of austerity, when we are doing and when we are fasting, in all the earth and for ever and ever. Amen.
