Re-Reading the Raising of Lazarus, Part 1

A Lenten series for religious trauma survivors

This is part 1 of a three-part series on John 11 and the story of Lazarus. If everything goes as planned, the third and final part will come out just after Lazarus Saturday.

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Learning new things is one of the small delights of writing for this Substack. For example, I recently learned that the Eastern Orthodox church celebrates the Feast of Lazarus on the Saturday before Palm Sunday. As James Martin put it, this is “a Lenten feast you’ve probably never heard of.” Lazarus Saturday is noticeably more joyful than other Lenten feasts, as it commemorates the concrete hope of resurrection which Jesus displayed before he went to the cross. This joy can even be seen in the making of lazarákia, or “Little Lazaruses.” Lazarákia may have originated in Cyprus, where according to legend Lazarus became a bishop, and whose remains are housed in the Church of St. Lazarus. Aren’t these little rolls so cute?

See this recipe for lazarákia

While you may not have heard of Lazarus Saturday or lazarákia, there’s no mistaking the fame of the raising of Lazarus, the fame of statements like “I am the resurrection and the life” (11:25), and the fame Jesus’ loud shout, “Lazarus, come out!” (11:44). There’s also nothing cute about this story: “Martha, the dead man’s sister, told him, ‘Lord, there is already a stench because he has been dead four days’” (11:39).

This is one of those familiar stories that is so familiar we are conditioned to miss what’s going on beneath the surface. One of those layers is religious trauma, but before we explore that we need to ask a question: why don’t we see religious trauma and spiritual abuse in John 11?

Bias Beware

I grew up in a non-denominational Baptist church in one of the richest counties in America. We prided ourselves on being a “Bible church” where studying and teaching the Bible were highly esteemed. I then attended Moody Bible Institute, where “Bible” was literally our middle name. I have always loved studying the Bible, and I’m grateful for the heritage that nurtured that lifelong practice. What I didn’t learn in those contexts (which could be entirely my fault, not blaming anyone here) is the influence of cultural spectacles. As Wes Howard-Brooks notes in the introduction to his commentary Becoming the Children of God: John’s Gospel and Radical Discipleship,

“each reader or community of readers comes to the Bible with a panoply of prejudices and commitments that necessarily play a powerful part in shaping how one hears the word of God speaking.”¹

He clarifies,

“This is not to suggest that one particular cultural perspective or sociopolitical ideology is ‘better’ for reading the Bible. Rather, it is to call all prospective readers to the enlightening and humbling task of paying attention to how who we are affects who we believe the God of the Bible to be.”²

While I may risk boring you with this introduction, it is intentional (the introduction, not the boredom). We are going to explore a story that is incredibly well known: the raising of Lazarus, and the faith journeys of his sisters Martha and Mary in John 11.³ What we first need to see is that social conditions condition what we see and don’t see in the text. Our life experiences create points of resonance with moving stories like the death of a brother and his two grieving sisters. Death is universal. Whatever your age, gender, race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status, you know death. Some more intimately than others, to be sure. Statistically, I’d guess that personal experience with death in middle class American evangelicalism is predominantly death due to external non-personal forces: age, illness (physical and mental), and disaster. That creates true and valid resonance for John 11, and from those experiences we naturally resonate with Martha and Mary and their encounters with Jesus.

Jesus addressing grief from physical death is a legitimate layer to how John’s original audience read this story. However, there are other factors that separate us from that audience. Here’s one question to bring that out: have you ever tried to relate yourself to Lazarus in the story? Perhaps you have experienced some form of symbolic death: loss of a dream, a relationship, of community, of health, of faith, etc. And you can picture yourself waiting in the tomb for Jesus to call your name and bring life from that death.

Perspective Shift

As legitimate as that is, you might struggle to put yourself in Lazarus’s shoes through the entire narrative. Can you relate with the last time Lazarus is mentioned?

“But the chief priests had decided to kill Lazarus also, because he was the reason many of the Jews were deserting them and believing in Jesus.” (12:10-11)

Unlike most 21st century American Christians, John’s original audience would have seen their own story in that final narrative comment. Jesus predicted that his followers would be persecuted and killed because of their faith in Him (15:20; 16:2). The religious authorities put out a contract on Lazarus, and John’s audience faced the same threat. Edward Wong explains,

“Although the murder of Lazarus never materialised in the narrative, the [Fourth Gospel] suggests that the Jewish authorities are willing to threaten not only the life of Jesus, but also the lives of anyone involved in advancing the ministry of Jesus. By persuading the FG’s readers, the Johannine Jews are the responsible culprits who have indeed executed expulsions and schemed against Jesus’ associates during Jesus’ lifetime…[and] the enduring risks of being cast out and the threats of death continue for Jesus’ followers (16:2; cf. 12:10).”⁴

What happens when we read the narrative of John 11 in light of 12:10-11? The narrator comment in 11:2 seems rather odd from a storytelling standpoint. Why tell readers that “Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair, and it was her brother Lazarus who was sick”? First-time readers would have no idea what John is talking about. However, when they get to the next section in 12:1-10 they would be able to go back to ch. 11 and understand that seemingly random side note.

This is actually one of John’s recurring storytelling strategies: he invites, even requires, readers to re-read. Two more obvious examples are 5:9 and 9:14 where John narrates Jesus performing a miraculous healing, and then later drops a bomb of a side-note: “oh, by the way, the day Jesus healed that man was a Sabbath.” That detail completely changes the meaning of the story. But one has to re-read the story to see it in light of that detail.

John 12:10-11 does the same thing for the resurrection of Lazarus. Raising a man from the dead is one thing. Raising a man from the dead who then has a death warrant placed on him because of that resurrection is a completely different reality. As with so many of John’s stories, there are multiple valid readings. The religious trauma level reading of John 11 is likely a new one for most of us. It is a perspective that simultaneously comforts spiritual abuse survivors and also challenges the controlling authority of established religious leadership. We’ll begin to unpack that new perspective next time.

Quote from Wes Howard-Brook

“A given interpretation can tend to enforce the (unjust) status quo either by consciously interpreting in order to justify current social structures and practices as divinely inspired or by its attempt to bracket social questions and thereby distract readers from the inherently political message of biblical discourse.”⁵

Question

What are your first impressions on the possibility of seeing dynamics of religious trauma in John 11?

1. Wes Howard-Brooks, Becoming the Children of God: John’s Gospel and Radical Discipleship (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994), 3.

2. Ibid., emphasis original.

3. Sadly, Martha and Mary are often overlooked in this story, but they, Martha especially, are absolutely central. This series won’t look much at these sisters either, but that is intentional, not accidental. The religious trauma angle necessarily focuses on Lazarus, as will be seen.

4. Edwdard Wong, “Representations of Trauma in the Fourth Gospel,” PhD Dissertation (Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh, 2023), 146.

5. Howard-Brook, Becoming, 13.