Oh, Those Stinky Grave Cloths

The man who had died came out,

his hands and feet bound with linen strips,

and his face wrapped with a cloth.

Jesus said to them, "Unbind him and let him go!"

One of the most intriguing accounts includes this verse. It is found in John 11. Jesus had a close relationship with Lazarus who had two sisters named Mary and Martha. We remember them because Martha was a doer who became frustrated with the more contemplative Mary who sat at Jesus feet listening to Him teach instead of helping Martha serve their guests. The sisters had fist hand knowledge of Jesus' healing miracles and when Lazarus got sick they're first response was to send for Jesus. But, He didn't do what we would expect Him to do.  He tarried where He was for a couple of days. When the time was right He declared to His disciples that Lazarus was dead and that He was glad He wasn't there so that they could believe.

It seems like such an odd statement coming from someone who was known to love this grieving family. Mary and Martha showed faith in sending for Him, but it seemed like He had chosen not to 't respond to their faith. He simply waited. He waited because He wanted to deepen their faith so they would be able to His death, which would soon take place.

When Jesus and the disciples arrived in Bethany, they found a crowd of people had come to mourn with Mary and Martha. The news spread of Jesus' arrival and the confused Martha immediately came to question His delay. He talked to her about the resurrection, in which she believed and then He declared a truth that at the time was probably just as confusing as His delay. He said, "I am the Resurrection and the Life!"

Martha then brought Mary to Jesus. Mary felt the same confusion Martha had about Jesus' delay and when she saw Him she fell at His feet, her favorite place to be. And in her weeping, she questioned Him. I find it amazing that even in her grief and with her questions she took a position of worship. Others notice that on the way to the tomb Jesus begins to weep with them. Some saw love behind the Lord's tears, while others scoffed at His tears claiming He could have prevented the sisters' pain. I have to remind myself that they couldn't see what we can see as we read the account.
    

When they got to the tomb, Jesus asked that the stone be rolled away which exposed the stench of Lazarus decaying body. Standing in front of the open tomb He prayed and then He called Lazarus out of the grave. And Lazarus came out still wrapped in the stinky grave clothes. Jesus instructed others to help him remove the wretched clothes. The thought of touching those smelly clothes makes me cringe, but I know those who loved Lazarus did so. I can't help be wonder if the joy they experienced seeing Lazarus come from his grave was greater because of the grief they bore. Jesus needed them to understand He was not just someone who had the power to raise the dead, He is the resurrection and the life for everyone who believes. This is a lesson they could have found such comfort in when He was crucified had they remembered.   

There are many details in this account, but the stinky grave cloths is what I want to focus on. Jesus could have spoken a word and the cloths would have fallen away, but He didn't. A few years ago I wrote a curriculum called Growing a Courageous Heart. We use it in our women's eating disorder support groups. Anyone dealing with an eating disorder knows disorders are difficult to treat because they're shrouded in denial. I used this story of the grave cloths to represent the layers of denial  women use to avoid to protect their disorders even when they are slowly killing them. As I was reading this story, it hit me that Lazarus' grave clothes are a great analogy for all our sin. Isn't it true that any sin we do has the potential to choke the life out of us? Doesn't it chisel away at our relationship with God? Doesn't it cause the self-centeredness that kills relationships God has called us to? Doesn't it lead to patterns of addictions that literally kill the body and suck the spiritual life out of us long before we die? Doesn't it lead to shame and despair which kills our joy and our purpose for living? Doesn't it lead to the abuses that kill the soul of every victim? Sin is a plague--a horrible stinking plague for which Jesus died to set us free.     

When we accept Jesus by faith we are raised from spiritual death to spiritual life and then we spend a life time working out our salvation through a process of sanctification that weeds out our sinful actions, our sinful thoughts, the lies that we believe, and our prideful attitudes we have. It also exposes self-protective behaviors so we can become more like Jesus and reflect Him to a world still plagued by sin. Maybe the reason God tells us to meet with one another is so we can help each other remove our stinky grave clothes, the clothes representing our old lives. The cloths that bind us and keep us from becoming more like Him. The cloths that remind us of what we once were, not what we are in Him. The cloths that keep our faith shallow and shaky. The cloths that distort the truth with the enemy's lies that render us helpless and useless in God's Kingdom. The cloths that rob us of the joy that we have at our finger tips as His chosen people. The cloths that keep us from giving thanks and enjoying the life in Him. With His help and with the help of others, we can take off the stinky cloths of our past that keep us in bondage and put on the armor of God and live in the truth He has given us. Its a stinky job and sometimes we don't want to rub shoulders with others who stink like we once did, but it is what we are called to.  

There is something else that I love about grave cloths and what they tell us. Fast forward to John 20:6-7, "Simon Peter came following him, and went into the tomb.  He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded up in a place by itself." There is One who needed no help getting out of the grave cloths -- Jesus, the One who knew no sin, the One who became sin for us, the One who made it possible for us to be shrouded in His righteousness instead. 

I want to remember Jesus, who needed no help out of grave the cloths when I battle temptation or when the enemy tries to wear me down with his lies. I want to hold tight to the One who needed no help out of His grave cloths when life is hard. Oh, that I would remember that the sinless One who died in my place slipped out of the grave clothes because His perfect life was the perfect sacrifice for my imperfection. The One who has the ability to lay aside His grave cloths aside like that has my heart is the One who called me out of the grave. 

   

Meeting God in the Hard

Life is hard because of the losses we experience. These include people we dearly love and people we’ve spent years grieving over because some relationships are so broken. Life is hard because of long seasons of loneliness in which we reach out and beg for changes that could build intimacy with spouses or friends only to be met by anger that leaves us wounded or by passivity that leaves us feeling invisible and unheard. Life is hard when we lose relationships or friendships due to divorce or because conflicts couldn’t be resolved; no matter how hard we tried. Life is hard even when we chose to end relationships to preserve our integrity or to stop pain we could no longer bear. After all, aren’t we, as believers, supposed to make it all work? In reality, it is not always possible. Whether loss of relationship is by choice or not it sometimes makes life hard. 

Life is hard when we lose material things–things stolen, homes repossessed, or homes destroyed by natural disasters. Material losses include things we can easily replace and the sentimental items that can’t–baby pictures that burned, wedding albums floating in flood waters, scrapbooks of family vacations taken by a tornado, or grandmother’s china that shattered in an earthquake. And yes, things are things, but some things have special meanings and, yes, sometimes life is hard when we can’t replace those things.

Sometimes life is hard because we face losses due to abuses we’ve experienced. It doesn’t matter whether they were sexual, physical, and/or emotional in nature–victims experience a loss of innocence. They lose a sense of being safe in their home, their family, their community, their church, and even their own bodies. Losses are felt when we experience violence either first hand or vicariously. They are felt when we experience injustices and judgments in the face of divorce and long drawn out custody battles. Losses can be unfulfilled dreams or decreased abilities due to illness or injury, or even the aging process. 

Life is also hard because we are part of a culture that experiences violence such as Nine-Eleven, Columbine, Newtown, Colorado, Taft, churches all over the world, bombings, and now the mass shooting in Las Vegas. Many will grieve because of so many lives lost. Many will struggle as they work hard to physically recover from wounds. And many will struggle the impact of trauma from having been there and survived, having watched it on TV, and having been shocked to realize our sense of safety is being rocked to the core. When there are such big losses some will shut down and not experience their losses for a while as they struggle to come to terms with it. Yes, life is sometimes hard for a season as we face and grieve these losses.   

Ironically, the more we love, the more potential we have to experience hard. I’ve lost extended family and three friends who deeply impacted my life. I’ve lost my parents, my parent-in-laws, my spiritual Dad, and precious friends I met through church. My heart has also ached because I have chosen to walk with many through painful things. Yet, observing them courageously facing their hard and choosing to acknowledge it and move through it so it can no longer control them blesses me! Standing shoulder to shoulder with the hurting is standing on the most sacred ground there is. I’ve watched as friends, both near and far have buried loved ones–parents, spouses, children, and grandchildren. To be honest it has made me angry at death and sin and it has created in me a thirst for heaven where I know there will be no more death, no injustice, no sin, no abuse, no grief, and no tears–no hard-but for now sometimes life is hard.

Friends have just buried their eighteen-year-old son, grandson, brother, and friend. I’ve pondered a lot about how we deal with life in the face of the pain of the hard. The pat answer, of course, is in the promise of eternal life. Yet, I think we are missing something in the now if this is the only tool we use to cope. Israel was instructed to build monuments to remember who God is and what God had done for them. My dear friend Joyce, her husband, her son, and her daughter-in-law have shared monuments of Scriptures that have seen them through this painful time. One monument Joyce shared was a verse that a mutual friend had preached on years ago proclaiming God upholds us with His right hand. When he preached on the verse, it impacted her so much she wrote about it in her journal and she was able to go back to that verse and hang on to it in this season of hard. The last few months I’ve experienced loss and been surrounded by pain to a point I’ve been overwhelmed. A friend reminded me it comes with the territory of being in the business of loving others-my grief has become tinged by thankfulness even in the hard.

I've been thinking about specific monuments God has given to me, many of which came through seeking God in the process of healing from past emotional pain. One of those monuments occurred after a counselor friend asked me to choose a word to describe how I viewed myself. Without hesitation I told her, “Invisible!” Several months later I was praying with a prayer director who told me she sensed God wanted me to renounce something she had never come across before. I asked her what it was and she said, “God wants you to renounce the spirit of invisibility.” I had not told her about feeling invisible and became overwhelmed at God’s goodness in revealing this to her so I could be set free from a stronghold. Shortly after the prayer time, I came across Hagar’s story. After becoming pregnant by her mistress’ husband, Hagar developed an attitude and was sent away by the slighted, bitter Sarah. Alone in the desert where life was hard, she sat down and wept. She was all alone or so she thought. God met her there in the hard of her being used, her loneliness, her invisibility, and her rejection. In an act of worship, she ascribed to God, the name El Roi, which means “The God who Sees!” This means He is also the God who sees me…even in the hard!

This name for God has so many implications for us. He sees little ones abandoned by their parents physically and/or emotionally. He sees little ones whose spirits are crushed by abusive words spoken by caretakers or bullies. He sees little ones being pounded by those who are supposed to nurture them. He sees girls and boys trying to scrub away the shame of perverted people who violated them. He sees girls trafficked by their parents and girls taken off the street by pimps and shipped to who knows where-to be used to death. He sees those displaced by natural disasters--tidal waves, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, and landslides. He sees families struggling to understand why loved ones were killed violently by angry people they don’t even know. He sees those struggling with flashbacks and anxiety in the aftermath of violence and abuse. He sees the parents watching children struggling with horrific illnesses and painful syndromes no one can explain or heal. He sees families wracked by addictions, infertile women sitting through sermons for moms on Mother’s Day, and women fighting down a mountain of shame for babies they chose to abort and moms who did everything they could to carry their children but couldn’t. He sees tiny babies that fit in the palm of a hand fighting to live the life God created them to live and the parents pleading for Him to grow little ones out of the womb too soon. He sees parents weeping as they bury babies in tiny coffins and parents who’ve buried, not just one child, but two, three, or more. He sees people struggling with depression so deep and dark they grasp desperately for hope and the families left in the chaos created by an unpredictable world of mental illness. He sees parents and grandparents standing before flag-draped coffins as well as soldiers coming back physically and emotionally scarred for life. He sees families burying loved ones taken by accidents too soon, families facing the ugly truth that suicide has forever marked their family with deep pain. He sees families standing over hospital beds to say goodbye and those who are too late to say or hear a last, “I love you!” He sees little ones orphaned as well as those of us who are learning to live as adult orphans. EL Roi! The God who SEES! He Sees! He Sees! He Sees! Oh, how I love that name!

God isn’t just in the mountain tops, He is in the hard. We know that because God is the El Roi--the God who sees. He is also the God who creatively acts. Many of His names reveal to us His actions in response to what He sees! In response to the pain He saw His people in He came to love by taking on flesh and rubbing shoulders with people just like us--people who were in bondage to sin, in bondage to deep pain, and those with overwhelming needs no person on earth could fill. He died a cruel, unjust death-suspended between Heaven and Earth-so our shame, guilt, and ugly sin could be placed on Him. He died so His unending grace, peace, goodness, and love could be poured out upon us. He bore unspeakable abuse so we could know He, too, has experienced the hard and know He understands our pain in the hard!

In the moments, I'm overwhelmed by what I see others going through, by what they've survived, by what I know they will face in the future, or by what I am experiencing, I can look to the truth that God is the God who sees, who loves, and who acts in ways I am only beginning to understand. I remind myself that the cross preceded the empty grave and the hope that the resurrection brings. I remind myself that the cross preceded the gift of the Comforter who leads us to repentance, gives us supernatural strength to overcome sin, helps us endure the hard, and gives moments of connection to the wounded Savior that heals hearts and instills hope and peace. 

Maybe we live in this life with the hard so we can learn to thirst for the completion promised when we are face to face with Jesus where pain, suffering, and the constant tug of sin on our hearts is once and for all removed. Maybe we live in this life where the hard is not removed so those of us who know the Savior can be used by Him to be His eyes and His ears to a world of people who have lost their way in the hard. We live in the hard so the message that His Resurrections speaks of hope and power and joy is more readily received by the hurting. We can rest in the promise of His return and the promise of life eternal, which tells us the hard in this life is all the hard there is. I will remember the monuments He has given me personally and I will cling to the truth of who He is and know He sees me all the time--even in the hard!