Lazarus among the Saints

Saints, I am sure, are a good thing.  But I confess to wondering if sometimes we can have too much of them.   Yes, there is the wondrous and inspiring diversity of holy examples, saints in all their rich variety of human experience and their different ways of being Christian.   But it can also get a little dizzying, a fellowship of saints just more vast and numerous than we can grasp.   Perhaps that reflects my training as a historian – fascinated by the sheer multiplicity of the past, of course, but even more by the unique human characters it can reveal to us, by the intricacies of relationships that shape human lives.  All Saints often conjures us a vision of holy activity, slaying dragons, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, that can sometimes slip into a kind of triumphant unity that loses the particular.  The risk is that we lose the intimacy of Christian life, even in our joyous celebration of the company of heaven.

But here our gospel reading might surprise and help us.  Here we do not have a story of dragons and martyrs, but rather that strange and powerful story of the death and then the raising of Lazarus.  It is a particularly intense story of relationships, of the pain of grief and of the possibility of new life called into being by Christ.  We begin when Jesus arrives at Bethany, knowing that his friend is now dead and coming to mourn with the family.  We hear that when Mary comes out to meet Jesus she is in great distress, crying bitterly for her dead brother.  Jesus himself shares her pain, troubled in spirit he also begins to weep – his love for his friend Lazarus so clear that that all the people around can see it.   And when Jesus goes to the tomb to raise Lazarus he calls him by name, underlining the specialness, the intimacy of this great miracle.  Lazarus is not just another follower, he is a friend and brother, loved by Jesus and his sisters for his own sake, for his own quirks and foibles and talents – when he rises from the tomb he is still that Lazarus, and so his friends rejoice.

But the Lazarus that steps out into the sunlight is someone shaped too by his future, by this experience of moving forwards into the light, drawn by the words of Jesus.  We do not know what that future will hold but we do know it is one in which he can be truly free.   For when Jesus calls him by name he also demands that he be untied and unbound, that he be released from the bonds that have held him back in the grave.  This future, this liberation, is not the emptiness of autonomy or individualism but the possibility of new relationship, the chance to grow into the person that Lazarus is truly called to be.   Jesus’s words, Jesus’s summons, these do not end when Lazarus leaves the graveclothes behind, but they continue to shape his life and his being.  Lazarus is called to live in the light of new possibility, the light (as it will turn out) of the resurrection, the light of the adventure that is true friendship with God and with his community.
As I’ve been thinking about Lazarus this past week, it is this image that has stuck in my mind, that very personal image of Lazarus as he hears Jesus say his name, as he steps towards those words and back into the daylight, and as he leaves his bonds and the cold darkness of the grave.   And it is this image, of call and response, of a move into freedom and relationship, that perhaps captures something of saintliness.  Sure, Lazarus is not the kind of person that goes around slaying dragons and rescuing damsels, and in our story we might think he is in fact a little passive.  But surely in his movement towards life renewed, towards a future with God, and once more with his community, we see the risk and the hope that marks the journey of the friends of Jesus.  And that it a journey always from whatever is cold and life-denying, towards the freedom of God’s love.

Yet, for all that our attention is on Lazarus, he is not the only character in this story.  Even as Jesus walks towards the tomb, we are told it is not only Lazarus that he cares about.  Jesus is weeping for Lazarus, for the grief of his friends, but he knows this friendship group cannot be a closed circle or tight-knit in-group.  Always there are people beyond, people whose lives and relationships are just as dear to God as Lazarus, as Mary and Martha.  And so Jesus prays to God so that those standing around can be drawn into this intimacy, into the grace of God at work in Bethany, into the family dynamic of Mary and Lazarus.  This does not break the circle, but opens it more fully to the possibilities of life and joy, to the celebration of God’s liberation that we see in Lazarus’s journey.  For the evangelist, this most personal of stories does not end there, for it is also a cosmic drama, a sign of the power of God over all creation, even over death.  It is a drama whose climax will soon come when Jesus is lifted up on the cross, and God’s glory is shown in all its vulnerability. For this, John tells us, is a drama we too are called to share in, not as faceless extras in the crowd, but in our own lives and particularity, in the intimacy of our own relationships with God and each other.  And, as John is so aware, we who read the gospels are people who live in the time after Easter, in the new horizon opened up by Christ’s death and resurrection.  We know what Mary and the people of Bethany are only just beginning to find out, that the miracle of Lazarus’s raising is not a one off event but it is a miracle for us all.    For just as Jesus calls Lazarus he calls to each of us too, summoning us by name from our own places of coldness and darkness into the light of God’s presence so that we too can live freely and hopefully in true friendship with God. Like Lazarus on the edge of the tomb, we are also in that space between, where the words of Jesus invite us up into life, whatever the bonds might be that still hold us and hurt us.   Those bonds may not be literal gravecloths, but they can be no less rigid.  And it is from them that we, like Lazarus and all the saints, are called forward, into that new life with God through Christ.

So, as we celebrate the feast of All Saints and hear this story, of Lazarus and all the people at Bethany, perhaps we catch something of what the company of saints might be.  There are no slain dragons or rescued damsels, instead this is a community loving, grieving, and rejoicing together, as they share in the new life offered by Jesus, to Lazarus and also to them.  Yes, in Lazarus we have the paradigmatic account of life lived out from darkness and into new light, the intimacy of that very personal friendship and summons.  But as Lazarus’s eyes open in that garden in Bethany, he sees too that Jesus’s words were never only for him, but for his sisters, his friends and even the curious strangers across time and space.  And in the light of God’s all-embracing love, Lazarus rejoices.