A man named Lazarus who lived in Bethany was sick. Bethany was where Mary and her sister Martha lived. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair. It was her brother, Lazarus, who was sick. She and Martha sent a message to Jesus, saying, "Lord, he whom you love is ill." Jesus' reaction to the message was not alarm. He said Lazarus' illness was not a mortal one. "Rather it is for the display of God's glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." To emphasize his point, Jesus stayed where he was for two more days before going to Bethany.  After that, he said to his followers, "Let's go to Judea again," Bethany being in Judea. Calling him "Rabbi," his followers were concerned that Jews would try to stone him again [as they had in Jerusalem during the winter festival of Dedication when he said that he and the Father were one.] Jesus, appearing annoyed, said, "Are there not 12 hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them. Jesus went on to say, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep. I am going to him to awaken him." The followers did not understand that Jesus had meant that Lazarus had died, so he told them plainly. "For your sake I am glad that I was not there, so you may believe. But, come, let us go to him." Thomas, the one called Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us go, too, that we may die with him." When Jesus arrived, he learned that Lazarus had been buried for four days already ...

When Martha heard that Jesus was on his way, she met him on the road and said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died. Yet I know that God will grant whatever you ask." Jesus replied, "Your brother will rise again." Martha said, "Yes, yes, I know: he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." Jesus said to her, "But I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never really die. Do you believe this?" Martha said, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are Messiah, the Son of God and the Coming One." Then she called for her sister, Mary, saying quietly to her, "The Teacher is here now, and wants to see you" ...

Mary came to where Jesus was and knelt at his feet, saying, "Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died." When Jesus saw she was weeping, as were others who had gathered, he was overcome with emotion, causing those standing by to observe that Jesus must have loved Lazarus very much. Some wondered why Jesus, whom they said had restored sight to the blind, could not have prevented Lazarus' death. Jesus asked where the corpse was, and they took him to the tomb -- a cave with a stone across its mouth. Jesus himself began to cry. But he asked that the stone be removed from the cave's entrance. Martha said, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days." Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?" So they rolled back the stone. Jesus lifted his eyes skyward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always have, but I am saying this for the benefit of the crowd gathered here, so that they will believe that you have sent me." When he had said that, "Jesus shouted, 'Lazarus: come out of there!'" The dead man came out, hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said, "Unbind this man, and free him." Many of those who had come that day saw what happened, what Jesus did, and believed in him.

(Translated, condensed and paraphrased by Harry T. Cook.)

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Placed in the lections a week before the beginning of Passiontide, the Lazarus myth is the perfect introduction to the last days of the career of the gospels' Jesus. Fully nine chapter back near the beginning of that career -- by John's reckoning some three years earlier -- Jesus is said to have disrupted in some pretty effective way, perhaps more symbolic than actual, the apparatus of Temple sacrifice. The evangelists of the synoptic gospels suggest that the disruption in the Temple was the last straw that brought the full brunt of statist power down upon the Nazarene. For John, however, that does not seem to be the case. He puts it early in his witness: in the second half of chapter two, suggesting pretty strongly that for John it was whatever he said had happened in Bethany that finally got the full attention of the authorities, leading directly to Jesus' arrest, kangaroo-court trial, torture and death - or so the story goes.

Having said that, it must be remembered that the raising of the dead was depicted as occurring both by mention (Matthew 11:15 and Luke 7:22) and by actual deed at Mark 5:33ff and Luke 7:11ff with no obvious suggestion that such works would expose Jesus to arrest and trial.

Under the rubric of taking the Bible seriously, rather than literally, the first thing that must be considered in dealing with the Bethany narrative is its denouement, viz. a dead man walking. Let us assume that there is some truth to the story, that maybe people by the names of Mary, Martha and Lazarus lived in Bethany. Recent archaeological discoveries of bone repositories near Bethany mention those very names. But who knows? The Gospel of John, as has been observed earlier in this series, introduced details in stories that seem beside the point. This leads some who deal with these texts to wonder if such details were added for the sake of verisimilitude. In any case, whatever else the story is, it cannot be about the re-animation of dead tissue any more than the stories of Jesus' resurrection. Both the Lazarus and Jesus stories are about power and who has it for what purpose.

One can easily credit a story involving the summoning of one to the deathbed of a close friend. One can easily credit the involuntary expression of grief ("Jesus wept."). It is difficult, however, to think of a close friend tarrying a village or two away so that the close friend would die, giving opportunity for his not-dying friend to show off his stuff in bringing the dead back to life. Offensive in the extreme is the mixture of palpable human grief with the bravado of declaring that Lazarus' death would be an opportunity: "It is for the display of God's glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." As a student in one of my homiletics classes some years ago said of the concept: "Screw that!"

A word about the Mary in this story: near its beginning the evangelist identifies her as "the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair." One version or another of such an incident occurs in every one of the canonical gospels: Matthew 26:6ff, Mark 14:3ff, Luke 7:36ff and John 12:1ff. The synoptic accounts name Bethany as the place. Only John says Mary of Bethany performed the ablution. Most commentators are of the considered opinion that the mention of the anointing of Jesus' feet in the Lazarus story is one of those circumstantial details John was wont to add and, furthermore, was probably inserted in the original story by a later editor.

Thomas the Twin (t'oma in Aramaic), if indeed that word was ever really used as a proper name, is a truly odd insertion in the story. His "Let us go, too, that we may die with him" is thought by many textual analysts to refer to the threat of Jesus being stoned in Bethany of Judea, but it could just as well refer to Lazarus as well. In any event, its mention should not for long deter exegetes mining and sifting the material for homiletic purposes.

One important aspect not to miss is the distinction John makes, if only subtly, between the novel Pharisaic belief in resurrection and what is depicted as occurring at Bethany. One of the elements that distinguished the Pharisee from the Sadducee was the belief of the former in resurrection of the dead first mentioned at Daniel 12:2 ("Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake to everlasting life" -- referring to those who perished in the resistance opposing the rule and rules of Antiochus). The Sadducees relied on Torah alone for the basis of their belief system. The resurrection comes up as Jesus in meeting Martha salutes her with a common Pharisaic condolence, "Your brother will rise again." Martha says she knows that, but what about now? John's Jesus, however, was not speaking as a Pharisee but as Messiah: "I am resurrection and I am life . . ."

The Pharisees were not persecuted on account of their belief in resurrection at the end of time. But John wanted his readers to understand that Jesus would be persecuted because he would be perceived as one who could effect resurrection in the here and now -- too much power to concede to a resister of the new world order.

The homilist or study leader might wish to consider the import of that latter aspect of the passage, viz. that bold actions which speak truth to power are at the base of religion's relevance. At the same time, their commission calls attention to the actions' authors. If, as the evangelist John lays it out, the colonial power structure of Roman Judea could not abide the presence of one perceived to have his own power, so, too, would contemporary political and economic power structures seek to undermine or silence those they see as threats to their hegemony.  

Quite incidentally, this edition of FINDINGS V is issued a few days prior of the 46th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Only fools believe that atrocity to have been the work of a single person. It seems impossible not to consider that King's assassination was part of a plot to disempower dissent and dissenters.