Two Sets of Grave Clothes
Orthodox Christians continue celebrating Pascha (Easter) for the seven weeks up to Pentecost. If you've followed the Scriptural narrative leading up to Palm Sunday and Passion Week, you know that in John ch. 11, just before Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, He goes with His disciples to Bethany because His friend Lazarus is sick, as his sisters Mary and Martha inform Him. He tells the disciples, "Lazarus is asleep, let's go wake him up!" (v.11).
Of course, with the wonderful gift of hindsight, we know that actually Lazarus was as dead as a doornail… or so everybody thought. They arrive in Bethany and He asks, "Where have you put him?" (v. 34). Have you ever heard of someone being "put away" because they act so strange? "By now he stinks really bad! It's been four days since he died!" (v. 39). Is there anyone you'd rather not be near because they stink really bad?
But that doesn't bother Jesus one bit: "Lazarus, come forth!" (v. 43). And everyone's eyes pop out: here comes Lazarus, he can barely walk because he's bound head to toe with grave clothes… but he's alive and well! "Loose him and let him go!" (v. 43). So they unwind all those rags that bound him up – can you imagine all those people coming one by one, at first afraid to come near because they think he stinks? But no, he's perfectly fine, no smell at all! I can see Lazarus spinning around and around as they pull the grave clothes off him. Many believed on Jesus, but others went to tell the Pharisees, who said – "This guy Jesus is rocking the boat: we've got to get rid of Him!" (vv. 45-50).
In the Gospel reading for Palm Sunday, John 12:1-18, Mary and Martha say – "Let's have a party with Lazarus and Jesus!" Martha busies herself fixing the food and serving it, but Mary… remember Mary, the one who sat at Christ's feet listening to Him while her sister Martha was fixing food? (Luke 10:38-42). This same sort of thing happens again with Mary! She breaks open a bottle of expensive perfume made from a very aromatic plant, sumbul as the Persians called it or jatamansi as the Hindus called it (TSK), with it she anoints Christ's feet and wipes them with her hair, in preparation for His burial, as He explains to greedy Judas, who would later betray Him for money.
[As an aside, was this the very same woman who, just before Passover in the home of Simon the leper, anoints Christ's head with myrrh (Mat. 26:6; Mk. 14:3)? Like Matthew and Mark, Luke in ch. 7:37 describes it as taking place in a Pharisee's home, but puts it earlier in His ministry and records the Pharisee saying that she was a sinful woman, a harlot. For those who hold to the verbal inspiration of Scripture, this poses a big problem: too many details are the same for it to be different events, but too many details differ. But it's no problem for the Orthodox, who believe in the Bible's overall sense. We worship the living Word of God Who became flesh and dwelt among us, not just a printed Book.]
Now the plot thickens: not only do the Pharisees feel they need to get rid of Jesus, now they also feel they need to kill Lazarus because too many people are believing in Jesus after He raised Lazarus from the dead (Jn. 12:9-11). Jesus makes His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and the crowds go wild over Him: they cut off palm branches, waved them and said – "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!" (Ps. 118 [117 LXX]:26) – a prophecy of the Messiah. And He's riding in like a newly-anointed King on a donkey's colt, as prophesied in Zech. 9:9 – very ominous threats to the Pharisees' authority. Again, John emphasizes the point that the people who saw Lazarus raised from the dead are instigating the crowds to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah. "The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, 'You see that you are accomplishing nothing. Look, the world has gone after Him!'" (v. 19).
The interesting thing about all this is that it appears to be coming together like in a script, as if Christ has it all stage-managed from the start: He knows Lazarus is dead but heads out to Bethany to raise him up, knowing that it will excite the crowds. He lets Mary anoint His feet, knowing that it will provoke Judas' greed and later cause Judas to betray Him. He sends a few of His disciples to find a donkey colt and it turns out that the owners were quite willing to let the colt be taken. He rides into Jerusalem with the crowds hailing Him as Lord and the anointed King, knowing that in just a few days the crowds will be turned against Him. He has told His disciples three times that He will be betrayed, beaten, mocked, crucified and raised from death, knowing that they don't understand, they will forsake Him in spite of their false bravado, and only after His resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit will they begin to comprehend the enormity of these events. All of these mistaken ideas and wrong but free choices of men are woven together by the foreknowledge and sovereignty of God to fulfill His eternal plan.
How quickly the tides changed, from His coming into Jerusalem as the newly-anointed King, to be tried, condemned to death, and nailed to the Cross like a traitor against Rome and a blasphemer. What an anticlimax for this story! Imagine how the disciples felt: crushed, depressed and afraid for their lives. But two men, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, stepped up to the plate, took Christ's Body, "bound it in strips of linen with the spices, as the custom of the Jews is to bury. Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So there they laid Jesus, because of the Jews' Preparation Day, for the tomb was nearby" (Jn.19:40-42).
Then early on Sunday morning, the first day of the week, an explosion of energy blasted the stone off the mouth of the tomb, the earth trembled and shook, and the Roman soldiers fell over like dead men. The women came, found the tomb empty, and reported it to the disciples. Peter and John ran to the tomb and found only the grave clothes and the handkerchief that had been wrapped around His head folded neatly. Those grave clothes and the handkerchief would be treasured by the Church for centuries. Is the Shroud of Turin that same handkerchief with an impression of Christ's face etched into it? It doesn't really matter to me – I don't know and I don't worry about it. The real plaschanitsa – the blood-stained grave clothes folded neatly, not unwound in a heap – testify to the fact that Christ died and rose again.
Now, you're probably wondering how I'm going to tie together the grave clothes Lazarus was wrapped up in with the grave clothes Christ was wrapped up in. I'm not going to! No, Lazarus' raising was just a stage rehearsal for Christ's real resurrection. The first set of grave clothes go back 33 years earlier: "And she brought forth her firstborn Son and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn" (Lk. 2:7b). Those "swaddling cloths" were actually strips of burial cloths, the first set, indicating God's plan from eternity past.
In the beginning, in Genesis, we read that "for Adam and his wife the Lord God made garments of skin, and clothed them" (Gen. 3:21). Jesus is that garment of skin, "God with skin on." As Isaiah prophesied – "I will rejoice greatly in the Lord, my soul shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garment of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness" (Is. 61:10, NOABA). John in Revelation wrote that Christ is "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8b), and "He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God" (Rev. 19:13).
As St. Athanasius wrote, "Without the Incarnation, there is no Salvation." Only if God would take on our weak and sin-stained human nature, could we become partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). For this very reason, some people celebrate Christmas or Easter all year long. They are not the ones who are sort of strange, the rest of us are.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!
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Sources:
NOABA = New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha
OSB = Orthodox Study Bible (used throughout except where otherwise noted)
TSK = Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (e-Sword)
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