Raising Lazarus

" Now a man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. . . The sisters sent word to Jesus, saying, 'Master, the one you love is ill.'  When Jesus heard this, He said, 'This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified.' . . Jesus told the disciples, 'Master, if he is asleep, he will be saved.'  But Jesus was talking about his death, while they thought that He meant ordinary sleep.
So then, Jesus said to them clearly, 'Lazarus has died. I am glad for you that I was not there, that you may believe. Let us go to him.'
When Jesus arrived, He found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet Him. Martha said to Jesus, 'Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But, even now, I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.'  Jesus said to her, 'Your brother will rise.' . . .
Jesus became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said, 'Where have you laid him?' And Jesus wept. So the Jews said, 'See how He loved him.'
So, Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it.
Jesus said, 'Take away the stone.'  So they took away the stone. Jesus raised His eyes and said, 'Father, I thank You for hearing me. I know that you always hear me; but because of the crowd here, I have said this, that they may believe that You sent me.' He cried out in a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come out!' The dad man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face wrapped in a cloth. So, Jesus said to them, 'Untie him and let him go.' --[John 11: 1-45].


The raising of Lazarus is the last miracle performed by Jesus, before His own death.  In many ways,  the death and raising up of Lazarus prefigures Jesus' own death and Resurrection.

When Jesus tells the disciples that Lazarus has fallen asleep, they reply, "Lord, if he sleeps, maybe he will get better." But Jesus tells His disciples plainly,  "Lazarus is dead."

Jesus Himself dies on the cross. Then, He descends into the realm of the dead; after which He is raised from the dead and is seated at the right hand of His Father. In this sense, Jesus is poignantly both human, descending to the realm of the dead; and divine, rising up to the right hand of His Father.

We Christians know all this, today. We read and re-read the story of Lazarus, followed by the reading of the Passion on Palm Sunday, when Jesus marches into Jerusalem.

But do we LIVE this Resurrection?

My parents brought me to church for the first 14 years of my life, where I was baptized, received my First Holy Communion and was Confirmed. . . .At which point, my parents told me, "We don't believe in that stuff any more."

This is an extremely confusing, even stunning turn of events for a child. Was I just supposed to just "pretend" that I didn't believe any longer?

I was not "unchurched".  I had been "de-churched", as we call it today. It was a long road back to church for me.  I had been cast in an amber era, my Faith frozen in time, believing but not living in community with other Christians.

But, on the inside, in the way I lived my life, I had not changed.

My family seemed very preoccupied with money -- who had it, who didn't have it,  how the other person had made their money, who had more money than others, who had lost a lot of money in business or by divorce or bad luck. I didn't care about money. It was irrelevant to me.

What I cared about, as a child, was if someone loved me or not. Was that person warm, gentle, forgiving, welcoming.

My family seemed very preoccupied with who or what people were -- was the person Jewish? Hispanic? African-American? Italian? Irish?

I didn't care about a person's origin or ethnicity. What I cared about, as a child, was if someone was loving and kind.

One day several years ago, my father awoke and had his cup of coffee, as usual. He then suddenly fell over and died. No one could revive him. He was not Lazarus.

My mother called 911, but in her heart, she knew that before she could even utter their address for the ambulance driver, her husband was gone.

About 9 months after my dad, her husband of over 50 years, died my mother finally agreed to move near me, so that I could take care of her.

Soon my mother began talking about her end of days. She would tell me, "I want NO big funeral. In fact I want NO funeral. It is not worth the time or the money. Just stick me in the ground and forget it."   Since she said this several times, I knew she meant it.

What an awful, sick, sinking feeling I had, every time she said that to me. She was very ill, and in pain in her last weeks. To think that all she was looking forward to was a pit in the ground. . . well, I could not even contemplate that.

Not long after my dad died, I renewed my ties to church. I will never forget the moment when I received the Holy Eucharist for the first time again in decades. I felt lighter than air. Like Lazarus must have felt, I felt FREE!! I had received Christ. I believed, in a very public and communal way.

My Faith was not cast in amber any longer.  I had had my Faith all along, in the Love I have always sought to give and receive in our world.

But letting my Faith free was the most exhilarating experience that I had ever had. I had rolled away the stone.

[Related Posting: "Roll Away the Stone", 4/17/14.]

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