Do you smell it? That smell. A kind of smelly smell. The smelly smell that smells… smelly. For Mr. Krabs of Spongebob Squarepants fame, it was the smell of the impending invasion of anchovies on the Krusty Krab. It was the first episode where Spongebob got his job as an Uber gifted fry cook and Mr. Krabs smell observation became a meme. A real attention grabber in this week’s Gospel is a very similar statement. Open the tomb! Whoa, whoa whoa. Can’t you smell that smell, a smelly smell, an awful smell of like four days dead? You don’t want that. It’s an interesting inclusion or fact that evokes a different level of understanding of what’s going on there by the tomb. That’s the kind of fact that brings us along for the ride. We should consider how strong of an influence odor has on us. It brings back the strongest memories, far more effectively than the other senses. Smell goes straight to the amygdala, the area of the brain responsible for processing emotion and the hippocampus, an area linked to memory and cognition (the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding ). Certain smells and boom you feel like you’re back in time. That sort of quick direct link also helps us to recognize the stuff we should stay away from. I did a little research and found some interesting stuff about bad smells. A substance was created to test cleaning products. The idea was to come up with the worst smell possible. They called it “Stench Soup”. Mary Roach, a science writer and author described the smell as, “Satan on a throne of rotting onions.”, but I’m not sure that’s the worst smell, because there are smells that are almost impossible to study. There is a compound called Thioacetone and it’s bad, really bad. In 1889, an attempt to distill the chemical in the German city of Freiburg was followed by cases of vomiting, nausea and unconsciousness in an area with a radius of 0.47 mi around the laboratory due to the smell. They said that diluting it made it worse! The chemists described its smell as “fearful”. Sometimes shorter descriptions can be more terrifying. So some scientists tried messing around with it again in 1967 just south of Oxford in the UK. Here’s their description: Recently we found ourselves with an odor problem beyond our worst expectations. During early experiments, a stopper jumped from a bottle of residues, and, although replaced at once, resulted in an immediate complaint of nausea and sickness from colleagues working in a building two hundred yards away. Two of our chemists who had done no more than investigate the cracking of minute amounts of trithioacetone found themselves the object of hostile stares in a restaurant and suffered the humiliation of having a waitress spray the area around them with a deodorant. The odors defied the expected effects of dilution since workers in the laboratory did not find the odors intolerable … and genuinely denied responsibility since they were working in closed systems. To convince them otherwise, they were dispersed with other observers around the laboratory, at distances up to a quarter of a mile, and one drop of either acetone gem-dithiol or the mother liquors from crude trithioacetone crystallisations were placed on a watch glass in a fume cupboard. The odor was detected downwind in seconds. Now I’ve smelled some nasty stuff, neglected porta-potties, spoiled food, decomposition, and some chemical compounds, but nothing like this. I bet the smell there by the tomb was bad though. With that odor there was no doubt that Lazarus was gone, beyond the pale, really, really gone. Martha points out the stinking odor, confirmation that it was over and beyond hope. It stunk there, but you know what I think stunk worse? Losing one of the people you love. Feeling abandoned by God and both sisters let out their anger and frustration. If you’d have been here, he wouldn’t have died and some major stuff happens here. Jesus joins in and experiences the grief. It’s very interesting. It places squarely at the center of the table the cosmic questions we have about reconciling an omnipotent loving God with heartbreak, death, disaster, pain and suffering. I wish I had a fast answer, but we do see Jesus there in the midst of the pain, experiencing it alongside his loved ones. That brings me comfort, knowing I’m not alone and Jesus acknowledging that pain and that the whole suffering situation stinks. Death’s a thing along with all of its putrid stinking friends. It seems that they have the upper hand here. Their hold is even affecting Jesus and he is hurting and crying and grieving, but Jesus makes a statement, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.” We’ve heard the verse, and I bet many of us have sung it in camp songs, but what is said here is the reason that there are those who want Jesus dead after such an amazing miracle. I’m not going to go into a long explanation, but in the Greek there is what would be considered an unnecessary word. Jesus said Ego eimi, I am…the resurrection etc. The eimi is not used there, it’s understood in many languages. The thing is by using it, Jesus is saying something far more. He is equating himself with God who told Moses to tell the people that “I Am” Sent me to you. Jesus is declaring his divinity and his dominion over death itself, right here right now and he shows that dominion by the restoration of life to the seriously dead Lazurus. Jesus shows that he came so that we can have life and have it abundantly. He shows that its not just an “in the future, sweet by and by, you’re in a better place” kind of way, but now in the present. Benjamin Franklin’s last great quote came from a letter to his friend where he wrote, “Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.” So, yes, as witnessed in the story of Lazurus and what we know about this world, death is a certainty. It’s unfortunate that we are often not as certain about life. Don’t we often gravitate toward behaviors and the like that are not life affirming. For quite some time when I read this gospel I can’t help but think of that Lynyrd Skynyrd lyric Whiskey bottles, and brand new cars, Oak tree you’re in my way, There’s too much coke and too much smoke, Look what’s going on inside you, Ooooh that smell, Can’t you smell that smell, The smell of death surrounds you Angel of darkness is upon you Stuck a needle in your arm So take another toke, have a blow for your nose And one more drink, will drown you. Now they call you Prince Charming Can’t speak a word when you’re full of ‘ludes Say you’ll be alright come tomorrow But tomorrow might not be here for you. The song was about their struggles and almost losing a member of the band to a drunken car crash. We seek a lot of things to deal with emptiness or fear or the struggles of life and as they point out, some are surrounded by the smell of death. Why do we seek them and surround ourselves with those things? A dog that used to spend a lot of time with me loved to roll in a puddle where there was a septic problem. The other day I had to know why. They believe that dogs and wolves roll in terrible smells to mask their scent from predators and prey. Do we do the same thing? Put up a mask, mask pain, sadness, longing, loneliness, hurt, desperation, discomfort? I was talking about a flower that I was infatuated with called Dracunculus vulgaris. It gets pollinated by flies because it smells like rotting flesh or death. A church member said, “friend gave me one of those! When it blooms, I bury it!” She was going to dig it up but saved it for me to see. So there it was, flies and all. That smell of death draws the flies that thrive on death and decay and perpetuate themselves through it. Earlier we talked about God’s name, but did you know that a name that was given for Satan was Beelzebub which means “the Lord of the Flies”. We can see why. The smell of death, bondage, entombment and the Lord of the Flies, and here is Jesus bringer of light and life. We are reminded of Ezekiel’s vision and the good news in Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, to people who consider themselves as good as dead and lost in the darkness. But then, says Ezekiel, God breathes. God breathes release from the despair. God breathes hope into the hopeless. God breathes life into the lifeless, into dried out bones and calls them home. Jesus calls us forth to unbind us, like he did Lazurus. He calls us to life, calls us from the things that entomb us and the lingering smell of death to Life. To unbind one another, to share life, light and freedom through our love and service for one another. It’s coming. Do you smell it? That smell. A kind of smelly smell. The smelly smell that smells like Easter, resurrection, Joy, freedom, life and victory. To be continued. Amen
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