During Passiontide, the story of Lazarus invites us to walk with Jesus toward the places where death, fear and injustice still hold sway. Drawing on themes explored in Advent in Bethlehem, Nicholas Taylor turns again to the Holy Land – where ancient Gospel sites and present‑day suffering stand side by side – and asks how Christ’s promise of abundant life calls us to conversion, compassion and hope.
The village of al-Aizariyah lies on the south-east slope of the Mount of Olives, severed from Jerusalem by the West Bank Separation Wall, and from the rest of the West Bank by the illegal Maale Adumim Israeli settlement and other land seized from the population of this and other villages in the Quds Governorate. This land has been scheduled for military use and further illegal settlement expansion around Jerusalem. The infrastructure of isolation, including separate roads for Palestinians and Israelis as well as the Separation Wall, has been financed through seizure by Israel of customs dues payable to the Palestinian Authority. Al-Aizariyeh is a community in process of being systematically impoverished, economically and socially strangled, and destroyed.
The Arabic al-Aizariyah derives from the Hebrew name Eleazar, most famously that of the high priest who succeeded his father Aaron, founder of the priestly dynasty in ancient Israel according to the Pentateuchal narrative. The Eleazar from whom the village derives its name, however, is a local resident, known to readers of the Gospel of John by the Greek version of his name, Lazaros, or the Latin Lazarus. In the Gospels, al-Aizariyah is known as Bethania in Greek, rendered Bethany in English. The origins of the Greek name are disputed, the vernacular Hebrew or Aramaic being uncertain. It is possible that the Hebrew or Aramaic word denoting poverty and poor people lies behind the Greek. Later historical witnesses indicate that facilities for the care of the poor had been established in the village, possibly as a ministry offered by the same community as left the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran.
In the Gospel of John, Lazarus lives in Bethany with his sisters Mary and Martha, remembered for their supposedly contrasting spiritualities (cf. Luke10:38–42). Their parents are not identified and do not appear in the narrative, nor is there any mention of any of the siblings having a spouse or children. We do not know their ages, but three unmarried siblings sharing a home would have been most unusual in the society and culture of their day. Perhaps they were orphaned at a young age, and too poor to provide dowries for the sisters to marry; we simply do not know. However unconventional, this family provided hospitality to Jesus and his disciples when they attended pilgrim festivals in Jerusalem, just 2 miles away. The Gospel of John implies that the family were well connected with people in Jerusalem, in ways which would not be possible for people living in the village today.
In later Christian interpretation, Lazarus is sometimes identified with the beggar of the same name who occurs in a story told by Jesus in Luke (16:19–31). As there is no suggestion in Luke that Lazarus is an actual person rather than a fictional character, this identification is unlikely. Some later reconstructions identify Lazarus with Simon the Leper, another resident of Bethany in whose house Jesus and his disciples were offered hospitality (Matthew 26:6–13; Mark 14:3–9; cf. John 12:1–8). Lazarus is also sometimes identified as the Beloved Disciple of John’s Gospel, who is known to the high priestly household and has a home in the vicinity of Jerusalem to which he could take Mary, the mother of Jesus, after the crucifixion. This is intriguing, but uncertain. But it does suggest that Lazarus and his sisters are neglected figures in the Gospel story.
Lazarus is remembered chiefly as having been raised from the dead by Jesus, the last of the seven signs which reveal his glory in the gospel of John; the first being the changing of water into wine at the wedding in Cana (John 2:1–11). The narrative in John 11 is long and complex, involving a journey by Jesus and his disciples to Bethany, having heard first that Lazarus was ill, later that he had died; the conversations on the road about sleep and death read like incremental miscommunication. The same lack of comprehension continues in Jesus’ encounters with Martha and Mary. Martha is the first person to declare her faith that God would answer Jesus’ prayers, and that her brother would be raised from the dead at the eschatological resurrection. While the theology implicit in her declarations would have been widely held in Judaism of the day, this is surely nonetheless significant – not least in providing an opportunity for Jesus to declare himself the resurrection and the life, and to promise (eternal) life to those who place their faith in him. Mary, on the other hand, is rather more accusatory, chiding Jesus for having delayed coming to them until Lazarus was already dead. This causes Jesus considerable distress. Eventually he is taken to the tomb, and orders that it be opened. Martha raises the practical objection that Lazarus had been interred four days previously; as well as contending with the stench of decomposing flesh, Lazarus’s spirit was understood to have lingered in the vicinity of his corpse until the third day after his death, and then to have departed for the netherworld. In other words, Jesus had left it too late. Customary funeral rites had been conducted, and as Lazarus’s body was conveyed to the tomb and deposited there, his spirit was despatched on its journey to Sheol.
Notwithstanding that Lazarus’s spirit had been sent to the afterlife, and there was deemed to be no incorrupt body to which he could return, Jesus prays in some anguish, and calls Lazarus to return from the grave. He emerges, not to the resurrection life but to resumption of his mortal terrestrial life, presumably with some reversal of the decomposition of his body. This sign of God’s glory becomes the occasion, no doubt, for rejoicing in the family, as well as for conspiracy on the part of mourners from Jerusalem who had brought condolences to Mary and Martha. Notwithstanding the plot that would bring him to the cross, Jesus and his disciples return to Bethany shortly before Passover. The home in which they are entertained is identified in Matthew and Mark as that of an otherwise unknown Simon, described as a Leper, who is not mentioned and does not speak in the narrative. Some traditions identify Simon as the father or brother of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. This can be no more than speculation. Simon’s absence may be attributed to his having contracted a progressive skin disease deemed to be ritually contaminating, and accordingly having to live apart from his local community. It was the prerogative of priests to pronounce whether or not the symptoms were cured, and the sufferer permitted to return home. The presence of Lazarus, with his putrefying body restored to life and health, contrasts perhaps with Simon’s affliction and absence, but this would be to conflate the stories as recounted in the different Gospels. It is in the setting of this meal that Mary anoints Jesus, which he interprets as an act of funereal significance. Jesus recognizes in Mary’s action an anticipation of the journey he would make from his earthly life, through death on the cross and burial in a grave, to resurrection. That journey would begin from Bethany, as Jesus and his disciples continued their journey, appropriated a donkey at nearby Bethphage, crossed the Mount of Olives, and entered Jerusalem, where he would be arrested, tried, and crucified. His glory, manifested in the resuscitation of Lazarus, would be definitively revealed when Jesus was raised from the dead.
An ancient tomb, now several flights of steps below street level, has since the third or fourth century been identified as that in which Lazarus had been laid, and from which Jesus called him back to life. It stands flanked by modern Greek Orthodox and Latin (Roman Catholic) churches, built on the sites of more ancient structures destroyed in the aftermath of the Crusades, and by a mosque, reflecting Islamic tradition identifying Lazarus/‘Azir as the person raised from the dead by Jesus in the Qur’an (Surah 3, Al-Imran 49). The Separation Wall passes close by, with a gate normally opened only once a year, for the Palm Sunday procession to Jerusalem. It is unlikely to be opened this year.
In ancient Christian custom, preserved in Orthodox Christianity but known also to have been observed in the Latin Church of the early centuries, the day before the commencement of Great or Holy Week is observed as Lazarus Saturday. The raising of Lazarus is commemorated as a foretaste of what Jesus would accomplish in his Passion; not merely the resurrection of Christ, but the general, eschatological, resurrection of the dead. A brief respite between the rigorous fasting of Lent and the observance of Great or Holy Week allows for some muted festivity: caviar is permitted, fish eggs anticipating the birds’ eggs with which Easter would be celebrated. In some Orthodox countries bread is baked in the shape of a corpse wrapped in a shroud. The liturgical observances similarly provide a foretaste of Easter, as those who have observed Lent prepare to follow Christ through the Great Week which culminates in the celebration of his Passion.
The Scottish Episcopal Church, in restoring Lazarus Saturday to its liturgical Calendar, adapted from the Troparion of the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom the following Collect:
O Lord, who, before your passion, raised Lazarus from the grave,
and, in restoring to life him for whom you had wept,
showed your power over death and opened to us the way of life:
May we, who have received the promise of your victory,
so follow you on the path to the cross
that we may share in your triumph over evil,
rejoice in your resurrection,
and live as God’s children,
now and in eternity. Amen.
As we recall Lazarus enclosed in his tomb, we remember too the people of al-Aizariyah today, imprisoned and deprived of sustenance by the Israeli “security” apparatus. The deliverance they need, and which they legitimately and urgently seek, is not otherworldly salvation but the restoration of sustainable living conditions in Palestinian communities today, respect for families and their homes, and restoration of the land on which they can produce their food. It is not enough for the gate to Jerusalem to open once a year for a liturgical procession to pass through; the Separation Wall must come down, so that human communities can flourish. The raising of Lazarus demonstrates that the abundant life for which Christ came into the world, is to be lived in this world. The anticipation of resurrection and eschatological life in Christ requires that Christians work for that abundant life, which requires the establishment of enduring justice and peace, in the present world.
Advent in Bethlehem is available now in paperback and e-book.
