After almost 20 years of journeying alongside those experiencing the injustice of poverty, addiction and isolation there is one thing I have got no better at dealing with. There is, at times, a set of smells that comes with those pushed to the margins of society, denied access to those most basic human essentials and suffering from the worst that poverty, addiction and mental illness inflict. They are smells that linger, smells that once in your nostrils seem to take days to leave. They are smells that cause me to hold my breath and to break my heart in equal measure. No one deserves to live that way.

I’m ashamed to say, that there is always the temptation, maybe even desire, to avoid those who come through our doors in such a state. It seems pertinent to move them through our environments as quickly as possible. Minimise the time and maximise the air freshener, and yet, more than anything else, people need time. Time spent in environments of love, hospitality and care are transformative like nothing else.

Don’t get me wrong here, as much as people need boundless grace they also need loving truth. We need to challenge, gently but firmly, those circumstances that aren’t ok and invite people into a journey of change. There has to be a willingness on both sides to address the “elephants” in the room but even when there is, I’ve still been frustrated by how slow this process runs and how much it costs in the journeying.

One of the passages I’ve spent most time pondering over the last few years is John 11 and the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead (a pretty awesome story by all accounts). Recently I’ve been drawn to the ending that hasn’t held much weight for me before. When Jesus himself rose from the dead the gospel writers are very careful to add the detail that his grave clothes were left neatly folded inside the tomb. Death, as it were, had no hold on him. By contrast Lazarus’ experience is very different. As Jesus says, open the tomb, the bystanders basically say “he’s going to stink!” and the whole story finishes with a resurrected Lazarus standing amongst his community who moments earlier were grieving him and Jesus declaring to them

“Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

He’s alive but he’s still got death hanging on him. He’s alive but he no doubt stinks. He’s alive but it is not him that Jesus speaks to, he is in fact probably incapable of unwrapping himself. It is the responsibility of the community to unwrap him from the tangles of death and decay and welcome him fully back to life.

When someone sinks to the end of themselves, to the worst that poverty or addiction or sin can do, it’s as close to death as the living can get. In a spiritual sense it’s fully dead (Paul’s pretty firm on that) and when we come to faith in Jesus it’s every bit a resurrection. It’s coming alive in him but here’s the kicker – none of us are Jesus.

We are very much Lazarus’. We come alive inside the tombs of our broken lives, wrapped in the confines of the choices we’ve made and the myriad ways we’ve been wronged and broken by others and to put it quite bluntly, we stink.

Now, those of us who’ve had the privilege of growing up in stable loving families, in communities of care and support and who’ve had the opportunities that relative wealth affords generally know how to (or have the resources to) play the game a little better. We’ve learnt how to hide the broken bits of our lives, or at least how to not lead with them when we walk in a room. What we, as the church, so often fail to realise is that not everyone is afforded that opportunity. Those who’ve been to the depths, how’ve lived through hell already, have no option but to wear their stories on the outside. To be truthful, often I’ve found that blunt honesty deeply refreshing!

The trouble is I think many of us have bought the lie that we’re supposed to come to life like Jesus, not Lazarus. We might never say it but we expect the addict or the released prisoner or the (insert your own image) to come to faith in Jesus, leave the grave clothes where they lay, and enter our communities smelling of roses and acting the way good, proper Christians are supposed to act (tongue firmly in cheek here).

It is not biblical. It is not true. It is not possible and when people who’ve only just encountered Jesus and abandoned their lives to him, make our churches messy, stinky and not how we think they should be it’s not actually their fault but ours!

Mez McConnell in his co-authored book Addiction and the Local Church writes this

“The big struggle, however, is not evangelism but discipleship and caregiving. The addicted people who come into our building know instinctively that they need help. They readily acknowledge that they are sick and in need of a doctor – they’ll listen and accept the good news of Jesus Christ with little persuasion. But giving up an addiction is often slow and painful. The addicted person has formed and attachment with their chosen substance – and that is not easily surrendered. They live in communities where street drugs are easily obtained. A war for their soul ensues.”

Although he’s writing specifically about addiction I think it counts just as true for anyone coming from any background of chaos, brokenness, sin and pain. Jesus commanded the community to unwrap Lazarus, to get their hands dirty, to support him in doing what he couldn’t do on his own. As we welcome people into life with Jesus it is our job to walk alongside in the messy, often frustratingly slow work of untangling the chains of death, unlearning the patterns of brokenness and sin and allowing Jesus to heal the wounds of deep pain and heartache.

This is not speedy work. It is not linear or neat or fitted easily into our nice perception of church programmes and ordered services but it is the slow work of the kingdom come. It is what the church was always supposed to be.

Are we ready for it? Do we see less “resurrection” than we’d like because we’re not yet able to be trusted with the journey of peeling back the grave clothes?

What if every time someone behaves “like there not supposed to in church” (as if that was a thing we were called to police) we saw it not as a frustrating interruption to our tidy bubble or a sign that they obviously haven’t really, truly met Jesus yet but instead saw the joy of some grave clothes that haven’t yet been peeled off? Saw an invitation to walk in friendship with those learning to walk in the way of Jesus.

Grave clothes are stinky. Grave clothes are sticky. Grave clothes don’t belong on the living. How do we, dear church, become the loving unwrappers we were called to be?