Be Right VI - Halloween

Take away the stone.

 - From John 11

This gruesome scene.

There is so much about Bible stories, and Bible times, that we don't really get. We act like it's a fairy tale about a wolf eating Grandmother and then a lumberjack later opening up the wolf, thus saving Grandmother. To the eyes and ears of young Baby Boomers, and every single generation prior to them, it was a fun and magical story that taught kids to be wary of strangers. They didn't entertain thoughts of gore and horror, as Millennials do. Everything wasn't taken to the most ridiculous or disgusting extreme. 

And yet, the story of Lazarus, and his resurrection, should be treated with the utmost literal and gory imagery. 

The man had been dead only a few days. He had been embalmed, according to the practices of the day. His sisters feared that there would be an odor if the tomb were opened. 

When my Dad was prepared for viewing, and left overnight in the church, for his funeral the next day, there had been an incident within the church facility, where a college men's group had been kind of horsing around, not far from the room where they kept my Dad. The church had never struck me as the most secure place in town . . . there were many people with a key to the church. And I dreaded leaving Dad there overnight. Almost anybody, I thought, could go in there and mess with my Dad. 

This is only the beginning of the emotions present during the week of the death of Lazarus. 

Jesus had talked about actually going into the tomb, and even handling the lifeless body of Lazarus. It seems so inappropriate, extreme, disrespectful, gory, and even horrible. It feels a little sick, if you're responding to it the way anybody would, in any situation that did not involve Jesus. 

And besides, people today would believe that the person's spirit flies away to Heaven at death. Their paradigm does not really contemplate this idea of the person being asleep, and then being awakened by an outside force. It certainly did not make sense, if decomposition had started. 

Christ had ultimate knowledge. He understood everything about life and death. He had the knowledge of the Tree of Life, and the Tree of Knowledge Good and Evil. But he was able to handle that knowledge. It was not more than He could handle, as it was for Adam and Eve.

Focus on this: Christ's knowledge enabled Him to overlook the desperate emotions present: the anger, the fear, the horror. He simply knew exactly what He was doing. He knew what to do, and how to do it. And He understood that His knowledge, or His faith . . . would be sufficient to restore life to His friend. 

Faith and Knowledge are pretty close to the same thing. 

Our gut instinct is that Truth is a good thing to have, and to seek. But we have to seek it from the right Source. Let us begin with One that knew enough to resurrect a dead man.