When Jesus commanded the men to roll away the stone covering Lazarus’ grave, Martha voiced great concern saying, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days” (John 11:39).
In virtually every culture on earth, men go to great lengths to conceal the decomposition of the dead, because the body’s decay signals the permanency of death. Muslims require a quick burial. In our culture, we even pay people to fill our corpses with preservatives to ensure our bodies don’t rot or stink before burial. The Handbook on the Gospel of John explains,“According to popular Jewish belief there was no hope for a person who had been dead for four days; by then the body showed recognizable decay, and the soul, which was thought to hover over the body for three days, had left.” Thus, when Jesus demanded access to Lazarus’ body, it would have seemed extraordinarily insensitive to the grieving family.
A Word from the Classics
The famous Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky captured this fear of decomposition in his 1880 classic, The Brothers Karamazov. In Russian culture, the premature decomposition of the body was considered evidence of a corrupt life. In one of the novel’s most pivotal events, the Christ-like Father Zossima died. As they prepared his body for a public viewing, the monks discussed whether to include ventilation in the room to help avert the odor of death. These monks concluded that “the anticipation of decay and the odor of corruption from the body of such a saint was an actual absurdity.” But when Father Zossima’s body began to emit a terribly foul odor on the very first day of his viewing, everyone was stunned. The monks concluded, “It must be a sign from heaven.” Thus, Father Zossima’s legacy was trashed.
Friedrich Nietzsche, perhaps history’s most wicked atheist, appreciated the writings of Dostoevsky — even though he was a devout Christian. Two years after The Brothers Karamazov was published, Nietzsche published The Gay Science — offering his harshest attack against Christianity. Nietzsche, who ended his life in utter insanity, ironically penned the famous parable of a “madman” searching for God.
“Whither is God?” he cried. “I shall tell you. We have killed him — you and I. All of us are his murderers…. Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night and more night coming on all the while? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God’s decomposition? Gods too decompose.God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”
In a chilling response to Dostoevsky’s novel, Nietzsche argued that God was nothing more than a decomposing corpse, and — like Father Zossima — God was also corrupt. With this premise, Nietzsche then penned a philosophy, which remains popular on college campuses. Without God, he argued that all meaning and ethics should be reduced to the mere struggle for God’s throne. And like the madman, Nietzsche asked, “What are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"
Do you live as though God is living and active in your life — supreme over all else in this world? Or do you live as though Jesus is still in the tomb? The darkness of Nietzsche’s mind reveals the sharp contrast of faith and unbelief, and it should lead us to worship the brilliance of Christ with greater fervor. If Jesus remains dead, Paul wrote that Christians are to be pitied above all men. The permanency of the grave would extinguish any purpose or hope for our lives. Though we would continue to endure the devastating hardships of this life —depression, addiction, disease, fear, division, hatred, betrayal, injustice, tyranny, hunger, poverty, and loneliness, there would be no purpose to our lives. Death would be guaranteed the final word, and it would forever steal any significance from your pain.
While Nietzsche’s philosophies are extremely abhorrent on many levels, they do present us with an alternative reality of what life would be like if the resurrection were not true. When Jesus declared, “I am the resurrection and the life,” this was no small statement. It floods our lives with eternal significance!
If Christ is our only hope to overcome the effects of this fallen world, then it would make much sense to conform our hearts and minds to that of the Apostle Paul, who wrote:
I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish… that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own (Philippians 3:8-12).
Jesus came into this world to purchase us from the fate of death, but he is no stranger to suffering. As the early church father Gregory Nazianzus explained, “He began His ministry by being hungry, yet He is the Bread of Life. Jesus ended His earthly ministry by being thirsty, yet He is the Living Water. Jesus was weary, yet He is our rest. Jesus paid tribute, yet He is the King. Jesus was accused of having a demon, yet He cast out demons. Jesus wept, yet He wipes away our tears. Jesus was sold for thirty pieces of silver, yet He redeemed the world. Jesus was brought as a lamb to the slaughter, yet He is the Good Shepherd. Jesus died, yet by His death He destroyed the power of death.”
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