Raising Lazarus.

John 11.38-44.

At the time Jesus raised Lazarus of Bethany from the dead, he had raised people from the dead before: His synagogue president’s daughter, and some unnamed widow’s son. Raising the girl had happened privately, but raising the boy was right out there in public. So this wasn’t a new miracle… except Lazarus had been in the ground four days. The others might’ve been just dead or recently dead, but Lazarus was dead-dead.

That, and the other raisings had happened in the Galilee. But now they were down south in Judea, a few kilometers from Jerusalem. A number of Jerusalemites were there to grieve with Lazarus’s sisters. From their point of view, the stories about Jesus raising the dead were just that—stories. Raising kids who probably weren’t quite dead, and after the story passed through a number of gossips it got exaggerated into him raising the dead. Myths.

Whether they believed those stories or not, here they saw Jesus do the impossible for themselves.

John 11.38-44 KWL

38So Jesus—again, outraged within himself—

goes to the sepulcher,

which is a cave,

and a rock is lying against it.

39Jesus says, “Take the rock away.”

Martha, the sister of the dead man, tells him, “Sir,

he stinks by now,

for it’s the fourth day.”

40Jesus tells Martha,ᴾ “Didn’t I tell you¹

that when you¹ trust me,

you’ll¹ see God’s glory?”

41So they take away the rock

{which is at the place the dead lay},

and Jesus lifts up his eyes to the sky and says,

“Father, I give you¹ thanks that you¹ hear me.

42I knew you¹ always hear me,

but I say this because of the crowd around,

so they might believe you¹ send me.”

43This said, Jesus shouts in a loud voice:

“Lazarus! Come out!”

44The dead man comes out—

his feet and hands bound in linen strips,

and his face wrapped in a sudra.

Jesus tells them, “Loose him

and let him go.”

I kinda got into why Jesus was outraged in the previous passage: His empathy meant he felt the crowd’s anger, and you see some of that anger come out in the previous verse, “Wasn’t this Jesus, who opened the eyes of the blind man, able to do something so that this Lazarus might not die?” Jn 11.37 KWL They were frustrated with him, and he felt some of that frustration.

But now was not the time to vent at their lack of faith; it was time to get Lazarus out of that sepulcher and return him to his family. So for their sake, he prayed the “Lazarus prayer,” in which he reminded them his Father hears him; then ordered Lazarus to come out. Because Lazarus was alive already.

At what point did Lazarus live again?

Most of the time when preachers talk about Lazarus, they describe Jesus’s exclamation Λάζαρε, δεῦρο ἔξω/Ládzare, ¡dévro éxo! (KJV “Lazarus, come forth”) as shouting so loud Lazarus could hear it all the way in the third heaven, and come down from there, climb back into his four-day-old corpse, and stagger to the mouth of the cave.

Well, stagger as best he could, considering how Lazarus was put in the sepulcher. Custom was to leave the body to rot for a year, then come back to collect his bones, put them in an ossuary, and put that in the graveyard. To encourage decay, Lazarus was wrapped neck to toes in linen strips soaked with aloe; not bound together like a mummy, but his limbs individually wrapped so they’d decay faster, which is how he could actually get up and move around, albeit stiffly. His head wasn’t wrapped in the same way, but separately covered with his σουδάριον/sudárion, (Hebrew סוּדָר/sudár), his sudra, his headscarf or bandanna; what Arabs call a keffiyeh, and the KJV calls a “napkin.” It’s the very same thing Joseph of Arimathea did when he prepared Jesus’s body. Jn 19.40, 20.6-7

Now yes, the breath of life coulda come right back into Lazarus the moment Jesus called his name. But he could’ve also come to life the moment the rock is taken away from the cave. Because when Jesus offered the Lazarus prayer, thanking the Father for hearing him, it may be that Jesus is saying this because the Father had just answered his prayer and brought Lazarus back. The poor guy was likely lying on his slab, trying to figure out where he now was, how he was situated, and why he was reeking of myrrh.

In any case the scriptures don’t say exactly when Lazarus came to life; only that he was alive after Jesus told him to come forth.

Which no doubt shocked everyone. Jesus didn’t just raise the dead; he raised someone who’d been dead a while. Someone everybody figured was beyond recovery. Dead and in his sepulcher four days. And nobody, nobody, had ever performed this miracle before. It’s not in the Old Testament; it’s not in Greek or Amorite or Egyptian mythology. Once you’re dead you’re dead, and stay dead. Nobody expected the dead to rise until the resurrection. Even Lazarus’s sister Martha, whose faith in Jesus was outstanding, didn’t expect him to rise until the last day, Jn 11.24 even though she expected Jesus would do something. Jn 11.22 Jesus had done something not just impossible, but unfathomable.

So, as we can see in the next few verses, this act threw the Judean leadership into a panic. If Jesus can raise the dead-dead, what does this mean for them and their power structure? Which I’ll get into when I discuss that passage.

Can we raise the dead-dead?

Jesus says his followers will do as he did and greater. Jn 14.12 Yet in the scriptures, we don’t read of them raising the dead like this.

We do read of the apostles raising the dead. Simon Peter raised Dorcas, Ac 9.36-42 and Paul raised Eutychus, Ac 20.7-12 and Christians throughout history have likewise raised the dead—sometimes temporarily, sometimes longer. But in the New Testament, the apostles don’t raise anyone who’s already been put in the ground. Later Christians have, because they believed Jesus and prayed for the dead to rise, and they did.

So can we do this? Sure. Do we? Sometimes! But not as often as we could. Too often we have the same attitude Martha and the Judeans had: Yes they’re coming back at the second coming, but not before; not when they’re in the ground already. We trust God can empower Christians to raise the dead to a point, like the same day they expired. Beyond that point, we just presume they’re gone. But as Jesus demonstrates in this story, maybe they’re not.

I’m not saying Christians should therefore try to plunder every mortuary and funeral home of their dead. Some of these people want to stay in paradise. If you’re Christian, death isn’t anything to fear! Plenty of us have lived a full life, and even if we die unexpectedly, we’re okay with it. To everything there is a season, and that includes a time to die. Ec 3.1-2 But—and hopefully we’re following the Holy Spirit’s lead in this—if it’s not yet one’s time to die, feel free to pray that God undo this death. No matter how very, very dead this person might be. As was demonstrated with Lazarus, nobody’s beyond God’s ability.