11 I SEE DEAD PEOPLE WALKING

11

I See Dead People Walking

Jesus wept.

Then the Jews said, "See how he loved him!"

But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"

Jesus Raises Lazarus From the Dead

Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. "Take away the stone," he said.

"But, Lord," said Martha, the sister of the dead man, "by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days."

Then Jesus said, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"

So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me."

When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. 
 Jesus said to them, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go."

Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. John 11:35-47

Where, O death, is your sting?

You're walkin' along, singin' a song, snappin' your fingers to the beat and all of a sudden you're rhythm goes off and you drop dead of a heart attack. You were just getting to your favorite verse, too.

So what happens to your body once the living is over? Everyone who's ever seen a few detective dramas, such as CSI in its multiple replications, knows time of death can be estimated by changes in the corpse. First, when you die, all your muscles say, "I'm off the clock" and relax. You fall and the body may flop in all kinds of awkward positions because of this. Then you begin to cool.

Okay, your sprawled out, a "stiff", but not yet stiff at all and your body is still warm when they find you. That tells them you haven't been dead more than three hours, because after three hours you may still be warm, but rigor mortis is going to have set in and set you like stone.

They find you all stone stiff and stone cold, then you've been gone somewhere between 8 hours and a day and a half. If you are still stone cold, but not stone stiff, but flexible again, then you died more than a day and a half ago.

From this point on it doesn't get pretty, and neither do you if you haven't been embalmed. Putrefaction begins, a long way of saying you begin to rot. You may be deceased, but everything within your body hasn't stop living. Your digestive system is full of bacteria. Back with I was a child in school Bacteria was considered a plant. Now it is considered something neither plant or animal called "prokaryotes". It doesn't matter what you call it, it's going to start eating you from the inside out.

The prokaryotes have a certain distinctive effect on the body. The first indication of these things at work may be a slight greenish discoloring on your abdomen, but the real calling card of prokaryotes at work is the putrid odor. These guys put out gas like you wouldn't believe. This smell begins about the second or third day after death. After a week, they really wreck havoc on your good looks, but we're not going there. We only have to worry about four days here.

Of course this timetable depends on conditions, such as weather and how the body has been prepared.

The climate around Jerusalem has been called unique and ideal. (Wow, wonder why God's central city climate would be unique and ideal.) Summers are hot, dry with clear air and lots of cool evening breezes to keep one comfortable. Winters are temperate, if rainy. January seems to be the harshest of the winter months and it would be in winter that Lazarus died and was raised. The average high in January there is 51 degrees Fahrenheit, with a record high of 59. The average low is 40 degrees, with a record of 30. There are occasional snowfalls. The average snow days are 2 and the average numbers of days below freezing are 2. (These conditions are just for January, although December and February aren't much different.) So chances are Lazarus wasn't subjected to extreme heat, which could have sped up the decomposition, or to extreme cold that could have impeded it. He wouldn't have been preserved in any kind of frozen state either.

What about rain? The average precipitation in January is 21 days, only slightly less in December and February. How the dampness would have affected the body depends on burial conditions.

Jewish burial was not a matter of delay with the Jews. The body would have been prepared and entombed on the day of death and before sunset. Women most likely washed the body, perhaps adding spices or oils. It would have been wrapped. A linen band or girdle may have been tied tightly about the body (perhaps binding the arms straight. The feet may have also been bound for the same purpose.) A long linen sheet would have then been wrapped about the corpse and also a tillich or prayer cloth about the head.

There was no coffin. There was no removal of any organs. There was no embalming. If the person was of meager means, the body would have been buried in a standing position in a hole and covered with dirt. If the person had any means, they would have some sort of tomb, a natural cave or one carved out of the rocks. If they had a tomb, they would have been placed inside upon a ledge and then a stone would have been rolled over the entrance to seal it off.

Obviously, if simply dropped in a hole at this time of year, the dampness would have quickly got to the corpse. If placed in a rock, much less so for a short period. It would have been protected especially from contact with moisture from the rains. Lazarus was placed in a tomb, again an indication that this family was not poor, they had houses, they had tombs. (Another reason to say this Lazarus and the beggar Lazarus were not the same man.) We know Lazarus was in such a tomb because Jesus tells them to take away the stone.

It is interesting the timeline. The messenger arrived in Perea with news that Lazarus was sick. Jesus knows Lazarus has now died. He delays two days and then makes the trip to Bethany. He is told Lazarus has been dead and buried for four days and he will give off a bad odor. Yes, exactly in line with the timetable of being dead. Yes, the distinctive odor would have begun after the second or third day. The body might have a slight greenish tint, but would be in pretty good shape still (even insects may have been less likely to do a lot of damage yet since it was the dead of winter), but there would be a real stench in the sealed up tomb.

I can see a very mixed group of people now. Both kind of leaning forward in curiosity of what is going to happen, yet at the same time kind of pulling back in anticipation of that horrible smell.

Jesus orders the stone taken away. I wonder if there was an absence of the stench? I bet that wasn't the case. I bet when that stone was pushed aside a wave of putrid air hit everyone in the face. Why do I think that? Because Lazarus had been dead four days and this would have been a proof to those witnessing his resurrection that this was so. If the air had been odor-free, you can be sure some skeptic would have been quick to say Lazarus had never really been dead, and no one ever suggested such a thing.

In the illustration people are shown pulling Lazarus up out of a hole in the ground. There is even a ladder. That isn't how it was. Again, Lazarus was in a tomb about ground. First Jesus does what we all should do when about to tackle a task, he prays. And his prayer makes clear what the purpose of this is, "for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me". Jesus tells Lazarus to come forth and Lazarus kind of hops out of his tomb on his own. His hands and feet are bound still and the prayer cloth is still over his face, so Jesus tells them to free him of these restraints and let him go.

And what of the reactions of the witnesses to all this? How would you have reacted? And what about Martha and Mary?

Illustration: "The Raising of Lazarus" by Alessandro Magnasco (Il Lissandrino) year unknown