The Unity of John

Sermon Notes 26th March 2023
Desiree Snyman

John 11

No amount of priestly training can ever prepare you for the confrontation of smell and the roller coaster memories of pastoral encounters the memory of smell speeds you through. It really, really messes with your head. One year, in Holy Week, I was called to the hospital to baptise a still born baby and pray the last rites. When I entered the hospital room I was hit by the overwhelming smell of death. In the rite of baptism, the chrism oil which has the potent scent of nard is used so that all may know the baptised person as “a little Christ”. When touching the still born child with the chrism oil, the smell of spiked nard fumigated the room, but the smell of death refused to budge. I spent a very long time with the grieving mother, even holding her still born precious child. I don’t know if the mother was aware of it but the whole experience was saturated in the tango of these two smells: pungent death and spikenard. Ever since, the stunning smell of spikenard is twinned with the pungency of death. 

The unity of John 11&12

I share this memory with you because my exegesis of John 11 is directed more by smell than any intellectual analysis of the Greek and literary structure of the text. The opening verses of John 11 are like falling down a rabbit hole: “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill”. The story of Lazarus and the story of Mary are inextricably linked for me…by smell. The opening verse of John 11 refers directly to John 12 where Mary anoints the feet of Jesus with expensive spikenard. When Mary anoints Jesus with spikenard, Lazarus is there alongside her, still carrying the odour of death, much like my pastoral encounter of the still born child anointed with spikenard and death. While the smell of death mingled with spikenard is what connects John 11 and John 12 for me, other researchers and academics have more sophisticated ways of noticing the connection between John 11 and 12. 

In arguing for the literary unity of John 11 and John 12, some authors remark that the three main characters: Lazarus, Mary, and Martha, are central to both John 11 and 12. Secondly, the raising of Lazarus in John 11 is stated as the reason the religious elite put Jesus to death in John 12. Thirdly, the glorification of Jesus also connects John 11 and 12. In John 11 Jesus says that the death of Lazarus is so that “the Son of Man may be glorified” (11.4). 11.4 connects to John 12.23; “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” There are not only literary features that unite John 11 and John 12, the theme of belief also joins John 11 and 12 into one literary unit. 

While our translations separate John 11 and 12 with chapter demarcations, the raising of Lazarus is directly connected with Jesus’ anointing by Mary and his sermon about death being the birthplace of new life (John 12.24). In other words, the anointing of Jesus is the major clue in fully appreciating the meaning of the raising of Lazarus, in the same way that Lazarus being raised foreshadows Jesus being Resurrected. The three scenes are a triptych, held together by the anointing: the Raising of Lazarus, the anointing, and Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. The stench of Lazarus death (John 11.4) is co-mingled with the scent of spikenard (John 12.3).

When trauma challenges faith

By holding onto the memory hinted at the start of John 11, the anointing, we are held safe to face the trauma of illness and death in the remaining chapter. I use the word trauma deliberately because I suggest that this is how the story of Lazarus holds us when trauma challenges faith. If the point of John’s Gospel is that we might believe in Jesus Christ and believe that he is the Resurrection and the life and the light, what happens when there is death not life, the darkness of a cave and not life? Martha verbalises our struggles with faith: if you Lord had been here, my brother whom you loved would not have died. Mary repeats the same struggle: “if you Lord had been here…” These are our words too. If you Lord had been here, my loved one would not have suffered with cancer, with pain, with Alzheimer’s. If you Lord had been here, the longed-for child would be in my arms…. If you Lord had been here, my marriage would have survived…if you Lord had been here, my adult son or daughter would not have ignored me for 5 years. The trauma of faith is this – if Jesus is Life, why is there death? If Jesus is light, why must there still be darkness? 

The wounds of our doubt and our questions and our struggles with faith and belief are anointed by Mary. In the moment of this anointing, we might learn two important things: that Resurrection does not abolish death, it transcends death. Resurrection is the transformation of pain, not the banishment of pain.

Lazarus Mary Martha are a trinity that help us deal with the underserved pain, the unexplainable tragedy, the insanity, the absurdity and the pain of life. Death is anointed by Mary. We journey through death and pain not around it. Our faith wounds are anointed so that the scars are no longer obstacles to resurrection but the sacred wounds of resurrection.

Transformative spirituality 

The story of the raising of Lazarus and the anointing of Mary teach us that unless we make our wounds into sacred wounds, we are destined to be pain transmitters and not pain transformers. The death and raising of Lazarus, the anointing of Jesus and the crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus become a universal archetypal map on how we alchemise pain; pain that is not transformed is transferred.

If we cannot find a way for our pain to be transformed, we may become bitter, cynical, and negative. If we do not allow our pain to be alchemised, we scapegoat our pain onto others, we export our hurt onto others, most often those closest to us and very often children. Psychologists call the process of transmitting our pain onto children the cycle of abuse, describing how abused children become adult abusers of children. Our human reaction is to fix pain, to control it or most foolishly of all to try to understand pain.

The story today is about the radical transformation of pain and consequently of history. The story today invites us to be fully present and conscious to our pain, so that we can break through to a deeper level of faith and consciousness becoming the wounded healers of the world. The story teaches us to hold onto pain until it becomes our resurrection. One poet who knew well the wisdom of tenderly holding onto pain until it transforms into Resurrection is Leonard Cohen. For example, Leonard Cohen explained that we are to forget our perfect offering, because there is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. I end with his “psalm” that describes how Resurrection does not abolish pain but transforms pain.

O gather up the brokenness and bring it to me now
The fragrance of those promises you never dared to vow
The splinters that you carry, the cross you left behind
Come healing of the body. Come healing of the mind.
And let the heavens hear it, the penitential hymn,
come healing of the spirit, come healing of the limb.
Behold the gates of mercy in arbitrary space
And none of us deserving, the cruelty or the grace
O solitude of longing where love has been confined
Come healing of the body, come healing of the mind
O see the darkness yielding, that tore the light apart.
Come healing of the reason, come healing of the heart.