Lazarus of Bethany

Scripture: John 11:1–57; John 12:1–11; Luke 10:38–42

Lazarus was from Bethany, the brother of Martha and of Mary, the woman who anointed Jesus with costly perfume and wiped his feet with her hair (John 12:3; Luke 10:38–42). John 11:5 carries a distinctive note before any action begins: "Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus." The Greek verb is agapaō (ἀγαπάω), the same word John uses throughout his Gospel for the love of YHWH toward the Son and toward the world. This is not incidental. The love is established before Jesus does anything, so the reader cannot mistake what follows for indifference.

When word reached Jesus that Lazarus was ill, his response was immediate and orienting: "This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it" (John 11:4). Then John writes one of the most theologically loaded sequences in all of Scripture: "Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was" (11:5–6). The word "so" is the hinge, it is because of the love that he stayed. He did not stay despite caring; he stayed because the sign would only be complete if he arrived after the death was beyond any human remedy.

By the time Jesus reached Bethany, Lazarus had been in the tomb four days (11:17). The number was not incidental. Jewish tradition held that the soul remained near the body for three days before its final departure; by the fourth day, in any frame of reference a witness could hold, the death was irrevocable. Martha met Jesus on the road: "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you" (11:21–22). Jesus said to her: "Your brother will rise again." Martha answered from what she knew: "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." Then Jesus said: "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?" (11:25–26). The claim is not merely that he can raise people; it is that he is the ground of resurrection itself.

Mary came out next, fell at his feet, the same posture she held at his feet in Luke 10:39, and said the same words Martha had said. The crowd of mourners was weeping with her. When Jesus saw her weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled (11:33, enebrimēsato, a word that carries something like controlled grief shot through with righteous anguish; some scholars read it as anger at death itself, at the reign of the curse). Then: "Jesus wept" (11:35, edakrysen ho Iēsous). The shortest sentence in the Greek New Testament. The crowd said: "See how he loved him!" Others said: "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?" (11:36–37). The question hangs in the air, and the answer Jesus gives is not a word but an act.

He came to the tomb, a cave with a stone against it. He said: "Take away the stone." Martha warned him: "Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days" (11:39). Jesus answered: "Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?" They took away the stone. Jesus lifted his eyes and said: "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me" (11:41–42). Then he cried out with a loud voice: "Lazarus, come out" (11:43). The dead man came out, his hands and feet still bound in linen strips, his face wrapped with a cloth. "Unbind him, and let him go" (11:44). Many who saw it believed. Some went to the Pharisees. A council convened. Caiaphas, the high priest that year, declared: "It is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish" (11:50). John notes the prophetic weight of this: "He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad" (11:51–52). From that day they made plans to put him to death. The man Jesus raised from the dead precipitated the death of the one who raised him. The sign of resurrection pointed straight to the cross that would make resurrection universally available.

In the Sanctum, Lazarus stands at the intersection of the seventh sign and the Passion, the figure whose restoration from the dead YHWH used to set the final events in motion. His story is a permanent witness that the love of YHWH does not always look like prevention; sometimes it looks like waiting, and then doing what no human power can do. Every verse of John 11 is available in the Sanctum for study, original language, and theological depth.