Jay: Jesus’s decisions concerning the death and resurrection of Lazarus seem different from the decisions he took in the rest of his ministry. A key verse in the story (John 11:4) tells us that when Jesus got the news that Lazarus was gravely ill, he told the disciples: “This sickness is not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it.” Shortly thereafter he told the disciples (verses 14-15): “Lazarus is dead, and I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, so that you may believe; but let us go to him.”
Another key passage is the one where Mary and her companions were deeply distressed that Jesus had allowed Lazarus to die, whereupon Jesus “was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled”. As Kiran noted last week, “was troubled” in the Greek has the connotation of anger or irritation.
In all Jesus’ other miracles, his response to requests to save someone sick or dying was immediate. For example, in the story of the Centurion (Matthew 8:5-13) a total stranger—and a Roman Centurion, to boot—approached Jesus out of the blue and asked him to heal his paralyzed servant. The Centurion had no doubt that Jesus had the power to heal his servant, just as Mary and Martha also seemed to have no doubt that Jesus had the power to heal Lazarus. But unlike Lazarus, the sick person was not even a close family member of the petitioner.
In most of the stories where Jesus heals, there ensues rejoicing. But in Lazarus, his initial refusal to heal caused suffering, which “troubled” him. Why? What was the point of the Lazarus story versus those other, happier, stories? What do they tell us about the mysteries of why god allows pain and suffering, and the mystery of god’s power to transform the dead?
Don: In Lazarus, it does not appear there was a complete reversal of death, unlike in the case of the later resurrection of Jesus. Men had to move the stone blocking the entrance to Lazarus’ tomb and had to free him of his bindings. This was not required at the resurrection of Jesus: The tomb was already open and the shroud was already removed. Somehow, it just doesn’t seem like a true resurrection. Unlike Jesus, Lazarus did not put on the incorruptible and did not put on eternity when he rose from the dead. In the Garden of Eden, at the moment of Fall, what died was Wo/Man’s oneness with god, with nature, and with each other; as we have discussed in previous meetings. Lazarus may have a message for us concerning the reversal of this spiritual death.
Charles: It seems that Jesus’s miracles of physical healing in scripture are really metaphors for spiritual healing. In making the physical faculties whole by restoring sight, hearing, and in Lazarus’ case by restoring life to the physical body (the agents of our human will, choices, and sinfulness) these miracles are also metaphors for Jesus’s capacity to restore spiritual “wholeness”, oneness, and reconciliation with God’s will. So Lazarus’ physical sickness and death can be seen as metaphors for spiritual separation, willfulness (“sinfulness”) and spiritual death. I also believe it was significant that this was Jesus’s last, most profound, and most public miracle before his Passion. In a sense, it is the penultimate example of his power over both physical and spiritual death. It is significant that he told the disciples twice and Martha and Mary twice to have faith, implying that both the disciples and the sisters doubt at one level or another. Perhaps this was why Jesus was troubled. “Here I am about to die for you all, yet you—my disciples and best friends—still don’t get what it’s all about.” Perhaps he wept out of exasperation. His words expressed aloud to God seem to reflect an exasperation bordering almost on sarcasm.
Is it significant that Jesus called Lazarus out of the grave by name and ordered him “unbound”? Is this foreshadowing the day of judgement at “the end of the age” when Christ will call us all out by name? Is the “unbinding” significant in the same sense as that in which it was used in Jesus’s talk with Peter about unbinding in the context of forgiveness of sin? If so, this would strengthen the argument that the Lazarus story is about spiritual, as much as it is about physical, death and resurrection.
Pat: I have a different perspective on Lazarus. It seems to me to be a very strategic story. I take the point about the other instances of Jesus’s healing of the sick and dying being instant and loving, and about the contrast between those instances and his response to his friend’s sickness and death; but if he were to have responded and failed, he would immediately have been chastised and people would not have believed in him. But the people who knew and loved him, even through days of waiting for him to do something, of pleading with him, and even perhaps of feeling spurned by him, never lost faith in him, and he knew that. It was necessary that he not be present when Lazarus died, and when he was entombed. It was necessary that he not be involved in moving the rock from the tomb, or in unbinding Lazarus. What he wanted to demonstrate was that he had the power to overcome Death in order to set the stage for his own Resurrection. To do so, he had to remain aloof from the events surrounding it. I believe he wept because he knew that this was bound to cause, and evidently did cause, great pain to those he loved. Yet there was no other way to do it. They could not be Jesus’s co-conspirators. They had to be kept as innocent of his plans as everyone else.
Charles: So why was he “troubled” in the sense of “angered”?
Pat: I don’t know. I think I might feel angry if I had to do something unpleasant and that part of it was being cruel to people I love. I don’t know what I would be angry at—myself perhaps, or the people or circumstances or even God that made it necessary for me to be cruel. Tears are a release from the perturbation.
David: Pat raised the interesting issue of Jesus’s need for credibility. It makes me wonder why he apparently did so few miracles (judging by the number reported in scripture.) Even before the Internet, news of a guy going around raising people from the dead would have spread like wildfire and people would have been flocking to him. This is one of those things that gives me (and, I think, many others) doubts about the bible and its stories. I certainly see Chuck’s point that it’s the metaphor that matters, but the danger is that in presenting physical phenomena or artifacts to represent spiritual ones people will start to pick at threads in the physical fabric, when really the threads might or might not be part of the metaphor. The Lazarus story may have a simple and highly beneficial message about oneness, but the way it is presented produces more questions than answers. As we have discussed, there can be great benefit in provoking questions but there can also be a point at which questions become irrelevant, obfuscatory, and counter-productive. Stories that don’t make a lot of sense when you start to pull them apart can turn people away from faith. It doesn’t make sense that once he started down that slippery slope of miracle-making Jesus would not have fired of miracles like a machine gun spits out bullets.
Pat: Early in life I was an intellectual Christian. It was not until I grew older that I began to appreciate the questions more than the answers, and began to try to understand that there are more ways of knowing than through intellect alone. The scientist in me sometimes screams at the side of me that accepts there are some dimensions, even in the physical realm, I just don’t understand; that beings can and do come into and out of existence; that God is in that flow; and that I am willing to allow for physical manifestations of miracles, as well as spiritual ones.
Don: Whether or not more miracles would have helped, the Lazarus miracle really did represent a turning point in the ministry of Jesus. It forced the Jewish religious authorities to conclude that Jesus was just too much of a threat to the established order to be left out there raising people from the dead, and had to be eliminated.
Jay: As Pat said, it was a very strategic decision by Jesus and in that sense had nothing to do with Lazarus. He performed the miracle not for the benefit of Lazarus or his loved ones but for the benefit of the bystanders. By waiting four days to raise Lazarus he was making sure the bystanders would be left in no doubt that Lazarus was really dead before Jesus resurrected him.
Kiran: Jesus also raised the widow’s son at Nain (Luke 7:13-15) and Jairus’ daughter (Matthew 9:18-19 and 23-26).
Jay: In the latter case, in contrast to the public spectacle that was Lazarus’ resurrection, Jesus made everyone leave the room before he brought her back to life.
Kiran: In these cases, he did not wait, and therefore his miracles could have been put down to misdiagnosis; but by waiting for four days in Lazarus’ case, Jesus was making sure the religious authorities would have no excuse not to take notice and act. This was the one miracle that simply could not be dismissed.
Ben: I am unfamiliar with the bible. I still cannot quite see the point of the Lazarus story as a story carrying its own inherent message.
Jay: I agree. We’re all struggling with that question, and wondering why it is so different from other miracle stories, especially given that it is the last big miracle Jesus performs before he dies. What is it about this miracle and about how Jesus handled it? It’s clearly pivotal, and it is prima facie more than just the story of a miracle; but we are struggling to find answers to why it is pivotal and what are the story’s hidden dimensions. It has t be something more than “Oh well, it’s my last show, better make it a good one.”
Pat: It seems to me part of it is establishing his credibility as the conqueror of death before his Resurrection. Few people were privy to the Resurrection itself, so the event was open to claims of fraud—that the body had been removed by his supporters, that people who claimed to meet him post-Resurrection were lying or deluded. But knowing, as a result of Lazarus, that Jesus really could conquer death, makes the Resurrection itself more credible.
Charles: I have no doubt that the timings and the mechanisms of these stories were strategic and planned. My sense is that there is something very significant about the symbolism of Jesus’s public “resurrection” of Lazarus from the grave that extends beyond his power over all things physical including death of the body. It is significant that Jesus said specifically “I am the Resurrection and the Life”—which I take to be spiritual Resurrection and Life. I think it is very significant that Jesus told Martha, as he was about to raise Lazarus, that she was about to witness “the glory of God” (Matthew 11:40). Again this raising and unbinding of Lazarus at his command to me seems to foreshadow the Day of Judgment—the ultimate conquering of both physical and spiritual death and that the path to spiritual reconciliation and restoration of oneness with God is through Jesus specifically.
It also seems significant to me that in this final public miracle of the raising of Lazarus from the “dead”, Jesus was quite explicit about his personal role in overcoming death and spiritual healing and restoration to life.
David: I still think it can equally be interpreted as an unnecessary miracle that frustrated Jesus to be forced to perform. The people who were there knew who he was and what he could do. They had faith in him—they said so. They did not need to be shown. The interpretation that he did it to precipitate his arrest and crucifixion would seem to me to be a trite and profane message for a holy and sacred book, and hardly (to my mind) reflective of the ineffable strategy of a glorious god.
Don: This brings us back to Ben’s question about the point of the story. The package may be loose enough to accommodate differing interpretations. To my mind, we may validly interpret this story in the historical / allegorical context of our spiritual death and disunity from god at the Fall from the Garden of Eden. I think that when we do interpret it in that light, we may find pointers to the resurrection from our death in the Garden and our return to unity with god in the Garden.
The “anger” of Jesus is puzzling. It is the same Greek word used to describe the state of a horse that is reared on its hind legs. It seems to be a mix of surprise and distress. The Jewish bystanders to the resurrection of Lazarus had a violent reaction. They suddenly saw Jesus as an existential threat to their religion and their society. This extreme nature of this reaction is what makes me think there may be more to this story than meets the eye. It might include the interpretations that Pat and Chuck have elucidated, and maybe some we have yet to discover.
Chris: It seems to me this story draws a clear line in the sand between belief and unbelief. Martha clearly believed, but at the end there were clearly people who did not. I see it as the culmination of Christ’s ministry. The stories of most of his miracles end up with people walking away believing, but this one ends up with people who not only disbelieve but also go running to tell the authorities so they can put an end to Jesus.
Charles: Another possible interpretation is that Jesus “loved” Lazarus and his sisters and that their relationship (friendship) with Jesus (and his love for them) strengthened their faith/belief. In the case of Lazarus, is it significant that he “died” in friendship (in relationship) with Jesus and that this in some way was symbolic of a path to forgiveness, reconciliation, and resurrection to life?
David: A horse rears sometimes in the course of fighting (over, say, leadership of the herd) and sometimes in fear and self-defense. If Jesus was afraid, perhaps he was afraid that raising Lazarus was not the right thing to do, or simply that he realized his end was nigh.
Kiran: The Centurion came from a family of non-believers, yet he had a simple but strong faith. Yet Lazarus’ family seemed to be paying only lip service to their faith by questioning his judgment.
Ben: By the time of Lazarus, Jesus was the equivalent of a rock star. So had the Lazarus incident not taken place, perhaps we would be looking upon his previous miracle as being the “pivotal moment”. I remain concerned that there may be nothing new in the story; that we are making things up in our desire to interpret meaning that might not exist.
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