"Take away the stone," he said. "But, Lord," said Martha, the sister of the dead man, "by this time there is a bad odour, for he has been there four days." (John 11:39)
This chapter is knee-deep in emotion and filled with evocative spiritual imagery. The open and raw grief of Mary and Martha and all who mourned the death of Lazarus is all too human. The rituals surrounding death, while peculiar to a culture far removed from us, are strangely familiar. In raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus pushed the religious leaders to the point of openly plotting his assassination. Paradoxically, Jesus raises a man from the dead, in so doing making certain his own death.
Coming immediately soon after Jesus making a promise of 'abundant life' (John 10:10), it is too easy to 'spiritualize' a message out of the resurrection of Lazarus. But the story and Jesus himself will not let us do that. Yes, when we live 'believing in him' our dead spirit is brought to life. But Jesus doesn't raise the spirit of Lazarus, he brings back to life the rotting, smelly corpse of Lazarus.
Resurrection is the promise of a new physical reality. In Jesus, God came to redeem, rescue and restore all creation, which necessarily includes the physical realm, including our bodies. We now live in mortal body. At the resurrection we will be given a new, immortal body. In Jesus the last and greatest of enemies has been vanquished - death itself. While in this world we still feel the pain of death, as followers of the Resurrected One we are able to shake our fist at death and taunt it is Paul did, "Where, O death is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" (1 Corinthians 15:56)