This Lent, I found the Raising of Lazarus deeply challenging and also life-giving. It began with my sympathizing with the humanity of Martha and Mary when they say to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” (Jn 11:21;32)
Although possibly true, these words also contain an implicit accusation and express a loss of faith. They had asked Jesus to come to Bethany to heal Lazarus and in response he promised that Lazarus’ infirmity would not end in death. (Jn 11:4) Then he deliberately allowed Lazarus to die. On a natural level, it’s understandable that they feel Jesus abandoned them and they no longer know how to trust him. It’s also natural that, to be able to trust him again, they need a sign of his love.
In the Greek, Jesus says Lazarus’ astheneia, literally his “weakness” or “lack of strength,” will not end in death. If humanity has a core natural weakness, it might be doubting that God loves us, that you and I are his beloved children, that he delights in us and will always care for us.
Every temptation attacks this weakness, undermining our trust in God’s love. Satan’s first words to us were, “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?” (Gn 3:1), the implication being that God is harsh and uncaring. Likewise, in the desert, the tempter’s first words to Jesus are, “If you are the Son of God…” (Lk 4:3), a direct attack on the identity of Jesus’ revealed by the Father, “You are my beloved Son….” (Lk 3:22)
If we still “believe in” God while doubting his love for us, we also harbor resentments against him and judge him, and believe (like Adam and Eve) that we have our own insight into what is truly good and evil. We know, better than God, what he ought to do for us.
Interestingly, everybody in the passage about Lazarus presumes to correct Jesus on what he should do. When Jesus finally says to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea,” they argue with him about the danger of doing so until Thomas finally resigns in passive-aggressive despair: “Let us also go to die with him.” (Jn 11:16) We can presume that, before he died, Lazarus joined Mary and Martha in expecting Jesus to come when they called. Finally, some of the Judeans who were with them in Bethany complain, “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?” (Jn 11:37)
Like everyone else, Martha’s trust in Jesus has faltered, but there are embers of faith left: “even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” (Jn 11:22) As Abraham reasoned about God’s ability to raise Isaac (Heb 11:9), Martha knows Jesus could raise Lazarus from the dead right now, but unlike Abraham, and despite Jesus’ encouragement, she does not hope he will. Even after Jesus assures her that Lazarus will rise, Martha assumes he means some general teaching: “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.” But Jesus deepens her faith, taking her beyond merely true beliefs, to trusting in Him:
“I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” (Jn 11:25-27)
From this it follows that Jesus did not abandon them, but she does not dare to hope that he will show his love for them here and now. At the tomb, just as Jesus is about to give her what she asked for, she contradicts her own statement that the Father will give Jesus whatever he asks, warning him that Lazarus is too far gone. I see this as preferring to convince herself that Jesus cannot do it than to enter the vulnerability of trusting him again.
If belief in Jesus is life, then loss of faith is death. Therefore, Lazarus’ bodily death was not the most significant death in the passage; rather it was everyone’s loss of faith: Martha, Mary, Lazarus, the Judeans who were with them, and the disciples (including us) did not trust that God wants to show his love to us here and now, as Jesus makes clear in his prayer to the Father:
“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.” And when he had said this, he cried out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
Jesus is not only raising Lazarus from death, but raising from doubt all who come by Lazarus’ resurrection to believe in Jesus. In the visible, bodily resurrection of one man, he spiritually resurrects all, a prefigurement of what he would accomplish in his own bodily Resurrection.
In Luke, when the Judeans of Jesus’ day demand a sign from him, he says that no sign will be given to this doubting generation “except the sign of Jonah” (Lk 11:30), Jonah’s emergence from the belly of the whale being an implicit reference to the Resurrection. In John, the demand for a sign comes during the Bread of Life discourse: “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you?” (Jn 6:30) He answers that he is the sign, the Bread of Life, and explicitly connects belief in him to the Resurrection: “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day.” (Jn 6:39-40)
This is not at all to say that the Resurrection is a metaphor. Rather, it is a sign. In a beautiful concession to our weakness, God’s gives us a concrete way to experience his love. Only in light of Lazarus’ resurrection can we make sense of Jesus letting Lazarus die because he loved them (Jn 11:5-6) Likewise, only in light of the Resurrection of Jesus can we understand his passion and death on the Cross—as well as our own suffering and death—as signs of God’s love.
There really are different kinds of life and different kinds of death, biological and spiritual, and the spiritual really is greater. This is shown in the passage when, bizarrely, John says, “The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth” (Jn 11:44). Somehow, Lazarus can walk while tied hand and foot, and even though he is now biologically alive, he is still called “the dead man.” That is a perfect description of spiritual death. Martha, Mary, the Judeans, and the disciples, as well as of Adam and Eve and of each of us, might be biologically alive and moving about, but when we have doubted God’s love, we surely die (see Gn 2:17).
Conversely, there is such a thing as being raised to new life, even before our physical death. When we receive God’s love, we may not have yet biologically died, but we already somehow participate in the Resurrection, because we are no longer spiritually dead. Mysteriously, spiritual life can find expression in biological death. As Paul puts it, “life is Christ, and death is gain.” (Phil 1:21)
Therefore Jesus says, “Untie him and let him go” (Jn 11:44). It’s not enough that Lazarus be raised to mere biological life, but be left spiritually dead. Jesus has come “that (we) might have life and have it more abundantly” (Jn 10:10). He wants each of us to be freed from the power of sin and death that binds us and even obscures our true identities as God’s beloved children.
Jesus really bodily rose and we will, too, on the last day, but by seeing Jesus in the Eucharist and believing that he is the sign of God’s love, we already live in the Resurrection now. We live by the Bread of Life and by the Spirit of Adoption, who gives us faith to cry out, “Abba, Father!” (Rom 8:15).
All biblical quotations are from the New American Bible.