03/17/2024
Lazarus invites us to help free other people.
Fifth Sunday in Lent
(Ez. 37:12-14; Rom. 8:8-11; Jn. 11:1-45)
Ever since I was 16 years old, when I watched the TV miniseries “Jesus of Nazareth,” I’ve been captivated by the story of the Raising of Lazarus. That popular miniseries, which premiered in 1977 and was shown on network TV for many years around Easter and Christmas, featured a dramatic representation of that miracle, in which Jesus stood before a tomb with his arms outstretched and cried out (in a plummy British accent) “Lazarus, come forth!” The music swells on the soundtrack, the dead man emerges from the darkness of the tomb and the crowd shrinks back in awe. The scene imprinted itself on my religious consciousness and never left, and just a few months ago, culminated in a book called "Come Forth."
The story, which comes at the end of the first half of John’s Gospel (often called the “Book of Signs,” after the miracles contained therein), is the Gospel reading for the Fifth Sunday of Lent. In John’s Gospel, it is the precipitating factor in Jesus’s crucifixion. Thus, we can see a kind of death/life, death/life pattern at work: Lazarus’s death will lead to new life, which will lead to Jesus’s death, which will lead to new life.
The Raising of Lazarus is what the New Testament scholar John Meier called a “huge theological masterpiece,” and so it is hard to select just one aspect for reflection. But let me suggest one that is sometimes overlooked.
After Jesus arrives in Bethany to raise Lazarus from the dead, the man’s sisters (and Jesus’s good friends) Martha and Mary take him to the tomb, where Lazarus has lain for the last four days. Then he says something strange: “Take away the stone.” The crowd does. Then Jesus prays before the tomb, cries out his famous invitation and the dead man comes out, still bound in his grave clothes. At the end of the story Jesus says, again to the crowd, “Untie him and let him go.”
Why does he say this? Jesus could have easily had Lazarus simply appear, while keeping the stone intact, something akin to the way that the Risen Christ appeared in a room where the doors were locked after Easter. Also, Lazarus could have appeared fully clothed or naked. Why does Jesus ask the crowd to do something that he himself could have done: take away the stone and untie him?
My sense is that Jesus is asking the crowd to participate in the freeing of their friend. And this is what we are meant to do with our friends and family today.
As you may know, the literal translation of the original Greek "Deuro exō" is not “come forth” but “come out.” (This is the translation used by the New American Bible, which we use at Mass.) And of course, “come out” has deep resonances with LGBTQ people, who often have to “come out” of their own dark “tombs” that keep them from hearing God’s voice, inviting them to love themselves, trust themselves and see themselves as full members of society and the church.
But, as with all our friends and family who have been “stuck” or “unfree” or “bound,” and are invited by God to walk into the sunlight of freedom, we are called to help. The fundamental work of freeing, in anyone’s life, is done by God. Our task is to take away the stones that prevent people from hearing God’s voice, and once they hear it, to “untie them” and let them go free.
(This is the Outreach Sunday Gospel reflection. If you'd like to receive this, gratis, just sign up here: https://outreach.faith/weekly-reflections/ Image: "The Raising of Lazarus," by Sebastiano del Piombo, with the image of Lazarus, to the right, painted by Michelangelo)
