Red Letters – The Fragrance of Faith – April 27

RED LETTERS
April 27, 2021

The Fragrance of Faith

John 11:41-44, ‘So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I know that You always hear Me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that You sent Me.” When He had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen and a cloth around his face. And Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”’ (NIV)

The shortest and yet most mortal verse in all the Bible to me is ‘Jesus wept.’ (v. 35) In fact, John 11:32-35 tells us, ‘When Mary finally found Jesus outside the village, she fell at His feet in tears and said, “Lord, if only You had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus looked at Mary and saw her weeping at His feet, and all her friends who were with her, grieving, He shuddered with emotion, and was deeply moved with tenderness and compassion. He said to them, “Where did you bury him?” “Lord, come with us and we’ll show you,” they replied. Then tears streamed down Jesus’ face.’ (TPT) If you have ever lost someone you loved, whether suddenly or expectedly, you know the grief that brings your guts out of you, that sews your heart on the outside of your chest and the air you can no longer breathe that toys with your lungs. We feel the grief of Jesus and we find that our Lord felt every bit as much grief and mourning as you and I.

Humanly speaking, we are confused by the series of events leading up to the sorrow of our Savior. He receives word that His dear friend is very ill and might die. We find Jesus in a delay of game that seems to contradict His love for His friends. They have summoned Him, leaned on Him for help, and eventually their tears will echo the belief that he could have made this agony go away. First, Martha meets Jesus outside the village, and even though she is inundated with sadness and accusation, she wholeheartedly affirms her sincere confidence in Jesus. What she doesn’t comprehend is that Jesus lives outside of time. How often do we judge His capability based upon our timeline?

Martha then summons Mary, whispering an echo Mary would love to have heard days earlier, “The Master is here and He is asking for you.” Like an oxymoron. Nevertheless, we find Mary sprinting to where Jesus awaits, pursued by extreme heartache and curious friends. Tragedy brings out the best and the worst in people, doesn’t it? Everyone wanting to know how, why, when, all the gory details that sometimes are too private to share, that sometimes feel like another loss if we give away the secrets we alone possess. Mary, not unlike her sister, feels letdown by the very person she trusted, the one at Whose feet she has logged countless hours, but her belief in Him wraps around her hopeless indignation like a present, her grief trailing like ribbons from the package of promise she holds tentatively in her hands.

The sisters lead the way to where their brother is buried, and I imagine that path is paved with resignation and questions and resentment. Why now? Why are you here now and why does it matter where Lazarus is buried? Had you been here, you wouldn’t need to know, Jesus! I can hear them reminding Him. If you had come when we called, there wouldn’t be a tomb and you wouldn’t be having to say goodbye. By the way, why did you delay, Jesus? We thought you loved our brother! The questions racing along the path on the way to the burial site I am sure are many and they are quickly getting in the way of their steadfast trust in the Master.

But then, then Jesus says something ironic. “Roll away the stone.” It isn’t belief and confidence in His power that responds. They are the words of a grieving sister who has lost a brother and was disillusioned by a best friend. “He’s been dead for days, Jesus. My brother is rotting. Duh!”
Faith can sometimes smell like decay. There is an odor to faith on occasion that we don’t expect. Faith is a positive word so we expect it to be aromatic and fragrant. But what happens when you have to bury your faith in a casket; when your hope seems like a dying dream and the faith to keep it alive smells like something rotted; when your faith has to be laid upon the altar called ‘Wait’, and the mustiness of it reminds you of something aged and long gone; when you have to dig a hole and hide your faith in the dirt, in the ground, in the dark, because you can’t stand looking at it day after day any longer. The fragrance of faith sometimes is overwhelming and consuming, and smells nothing like what you had once imagined. Faith decomposed smells like failure and loss, withered dreams, gangrene promises.

Lazarus I think teaches all of us, not just Mary and Martha, that dead things can come back to life again when summoned from the shadows by the voice of our Savior. That sometimes it takes a faith we don’t even know we have to cause God’s plans to come to life in the dankest of places. That something dead can walk again even though it may be bound in grave clothes and buried in out-of-the-way places. That sometimes faith stinks but what can grow out of our faith may blossom and bloom, become beautiful and fragrant.

I wonder if you have anything in your life that you had hoped would have a different outcome. Perhaps you even thought Jesus would show up in time and bring new life with Him. Maybe it died anyway and you laid it painstakingly to rest, angry because you trusted Him for a different outcome. If so, roll away the stone, reach out your hand and call it to come out. Don’t worry. It is always darkest before the dawn and the stench won’t last for long. There is a fragrance to faith that smells of life in the morning.