Today’s readings: Ezekiel 37, 12-14; Romans 8, 8-11; John 11, 1-45.
The Lazarus miracle reminds me of Morris West’s story Lazarus, about a would-be iron-fisted Pope Leo XIV confronted with open-heart surgery.
Just before the surgery, the Pope recalls: “I’ve always wondered about Lazarus. He had walked through the gates of death. He had seen what was on the other side? Did he want to return to life? Did he thank Jesus for bringing him back?”
The account taken by itself can be misleading. It represents the culmination of a series of ‘signs’ John presents in the first part of his gospel. It comes at a point in the gospel of John which marks a climax in the narration of healings and dealings with different kinds of people experiencing different kinds of illnesses – physical, moral and psychological.
Besides, throughout the account a teaching which unfolds from the Lord’s conversation with Martha, which provides the interpretation of what Jesus was performing.
Reactions to these healings and dealings vary. This highest revelation of Jesus in front of Lazarus’ tomb corresponds a higher opposition on the part of the Jews, who in John’s gospel represent the world of unbelief. The miracle provoked as an immediate reaction in the Jews – the decision to put an end to Jesus’ life.
Even today it is still hard to live in the light of Jesus’ resurrection amid so many forms of death. Despite our belief, we still have to die.
In the City of God, Augustine observes that it is not clear how to describe that time when we hang suspended between life and death. Augustine speaks of two deaths. The first is the death of the soul and the body, but the second death is the death due to sin.
For him this second death is what makes the first death of body and soul so frightening because what we actually fear about death is the idea that death means an endless perpetuation of the loneliness that fuels our attempts to be our own creator.
One of Douglas Coupland’s stories entitled ‘Dead at 30, buried at 70’ in his 1991 Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, tells so much about this theme of life or death. It becomes natural for many to speak of death when love for life dies or there is nothing to look forward to.
Today’s readings show the other side of the coin, when God is able to open the tombs we put ourselves in. The readings from the prophet Ezekiel and John’s account of the raising of Lazarus complement each other and drive home the message that God is the lover of life, despite all that daily augurs otherwise.
Ezekiel’s words, “I am now going to open your graves”, are addressed to a people in exile. Exile was death for those people. Resurrection was for them liberation from exile.
Unlike the description of Christ’s resurrection, the raising of Lazarus is a miracle that happens in the light of day and with witnesses. Lazarus represents the great awakening, the climax of the creation of the new man as narrated in John.
As Valentin Tomberg writes in Covenant of the Heart, the Lazarus miracle is that of the calling forth of light out of darkness. It signifies the awakening of consciousness for all that which is relative – relative for the soul immersed in the sleep of death.
The terrible feeling of dying while still in life creeps in when there is nothing to live for. It’s a feeling which engulfs our whole being for reasons at times known solely to us personally, and at other times it can be imposd on us from the outside.
There is so much pain involved and caused by disappointments, betrayals or just the very often unexplainable sensation of darkness. There is also a lot of pain imposed on people or even entire nations through violence, greed, political injustice, corruption and egoism in all its personal and social forms.
Jesus’s “Lazarus, Come Out!” is not just an invitation. He implores us, irrespective of who or where we may be, not to remain buried in our past and to just look to him who alone can really give us true life.