Lazarus is Dead

by Richard Beard

  In the simplest terms, after he returns from the dead, is Lazarus happy or is he sad?

  Saint Epiphanios, Bishop of Constantia in Cyprus (367–403 CE) claims that Lazarus will live on for another thirty years. In the next three decades, according to ecclesiastical tradition, he will only smile once.

  This is a possibility.

  On the other hand, the American playwright Eugene O’Neill (Lazarus Laughed, 1925) depicts a Lazarus brimming with joy at his second chance among the living. ‘Laugh! Laugh with me! Death is dead! Fear is no more! There is only life! There is only laughter!’

  Lazarus wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t experienced a little new-world optimism, like Ishmael in Moby-Dick (1851): ‘all the days I should now live would be as good as the days that Lazarus lived after his resurrection; supplementary clear gain of so many months or weeks as the case may be’.

  All the same, the documentary evidence weighs in the other direction. In front of the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus weeps, and weeping is a stubborn feature of the earliest salvaged memories about Lazarus. Johan Huizinga in The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924) describes ‘the popular belief, then widely spread, according to which Lazarus, after his resurrection, lived in a continual misery and horror at the thought that he should have again to pass through the gate of death’.

  On the night before the day known in the Christian calendar as Palm Sunday, Lazarus turns onto his stomach on the roof of his house. Chin on hands, he stares over the moonlit hills of scrub and rock, and a Bedouin fire burns brightly in the distance, like an answering star to the heavens.

  Lazarus has the feeling he’s being watched. He listens for a command, like those received by the prophets, then hugs himself and rolls from side to side. He chants ‘here I am, here I am, here I am’. God does not respond with the consoling near-echo of I am here.

  Lazarus plans ahead for tomorrow, his second day back on earth. He won’t make the same mistakes twice. This time around he’ll keep Jesus close, and value their friendship as he did when they were young. He’ll trust that instinct, once so strong and now rekindled, that he and Jesus will live as heroes. Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of his life: Jesus will explain about Amos, and clear up the differences between life and death.

  ‘Here I am,’ Lazarus whispers. ‘Here I am.’

  His chant loses meaning, becomes a sequence of the sounds of nothingness, until eventually beneath the stars on the roof in Bethany, Lazarus falls asleep.

  2.

  He shakes himself awake. Already the sun is halfway towards noon. He jumps up, makes a fresh start, bundles down the outside steps, shouts at Martha for his breakfast.

  A disciple is sitting beside the door. Nathaniel? Matthew? Lazarus can never remember their names. This one like the others is bearded and dark-skinned, and smells of sweat and fish. His left eyelid is trembling.

  ‘Jesus asked me to thank you. Your hospitality was most welcome.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘They left for Jerusalem, everyone except me.’

  Balthazar or Andrew stands up and sniffs, testing the air. He raises his hand but instead of covering his nose he holds his eyelid still.

  ‘Can you tell me what death was like?’

  ‘He can’t have left. Not without letting me know.’

  ‘Was it very glorious?’

  ‘We haven’t had a chance to talk.’

  Lazarus runs into the village square, as if to catch stragglers before it’s too late. Jesus is long gone, and in the village the mood has changed.

  Bethany is exhausted. The mid-morning sunlight makes sharp edges along abandoned crutches, while bandages brown with tidemarks of blood curl and crack in the dust. There are charred stones around cold fires. This is what the absence of Jesus looks like.

  ‘Peter asks that you stay in Bethany.’ The disciple has followed Lazarus into the square. ‘We’ll send the doubters out from Jerusalem. When they see how alive you are, they’ll believe that Jesus is the one.’

  It is the morning of Palm Sunday and Jesus has left Bethany leading a triumphal procession into Jerusalem. The true believers have escorted him, laying down palm leaves beneath the hooves of his donkey. The one remaining disciple is even now waving goodbye to Lazarus as he turns the corner of the Jerusalem road. He too has gone.

  In Bethany, it follows that anyone left behind is an unbeliever. Three women drawing water at the well complain about a stolen donkey. Lazarus walks towards them. They turn their backs and call in their children.

  He takes another step. The women raise their chins and pinch their noses.

  Lazarus runs back to the house.

  ‘Mary went with him,’ Martha says.

  She is on her knees scrubbing the spillage of last night’s perfume from the floor. Lazarus squeezes her shoulder, and she pushes her cheek against his knuckles to be sure he’s there.

  ‘I’ll make you some breakfast,’ Martha says. She aches to her feet, holding her back. ‘How are you feeling?’

  Lazarus finds some bread in a jar, bites, chews, swallows. Takes another bite, more thoughtfully. He is waiting for a surge of strength, a sense of unstoppable euphoria.

  ‘Everything’s wonderful,’ he says. ‘Impeccable. I was dead and now I’m alive.’

  ‘Is it the money? Is that what’s worrying you?’

  ‘I’m not going to worry about money.’

  ‘Look on the bright side,’ Martha says. She uncorks one jar after another to see how much the disciples have left behind them. ‘At least we’ve got the house to ourselves.’

  The gate creaks.

  It is Isaiah, who is not in Jerusalem with the believers. He walks into the house unannounced.

  ‘I’m here to fetch you,’ Isaiah says. He has recovered his priestly composure since yesterday, but Martha won’t give up her brother so easily, not again.

  ‘Let the man breathe. His head’s still spinning.’

  ‘We need him to answer some questions.’

  If Lazarus is true, then Isaiah and the priests of Jerusalem have wasted their lives. None of their prayers or devoutly observed rituals can save them, not if the saviour is a man who barely respects the Sabbath. Jesus and Lazarus, together, make fools out of every virtuous Jew, and out of the hypocrites too.

  ‘Lazarus, you have to tell us the truth. Jesus did not bring you back from the dead.’

  ‘Didn’t he?’

  ‘Seriously. You followed the rules in Leviticus, and like any sensible man you paid for sacrifices at the Temple. God was appeased and eventually he ensured your recovery.’

  ‘No one will believe that.’

  ‘You weren’t as sick as you looked. Lazarus, you did not come back from the dead. I will not allow it. You’ll bring shame on me and my family.’

  For the first time Lazarus remembers Saloma, and what a good idea that had seemed, before he died.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ Martha says, ‘he hasn’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘He came back to life. Deny it was Jesus and after a decent period all will be forgotten. You can trade again, like before. You can earn some money, marry my daughter.’

  ‘Can I? I was dead.’

  ‘Stop it, Lazarus. The Sanhedrin want everything returned to normal. And quickly. You’ve been summoned to reassure them that this will be so.’

  ‘In Jerusalem?’

  ‘In Bethany.’

  ‘As if the high priests would come to Bethany.’

  ‘They’re already here.’

  3.

  The Bethany synagogue is a single-storey whitewashed building.

  Among the seventy-one members of the Sanhedrin are priests who consider the three-mile journey from Jerusalem, most of it uphill, a scandal beyond repair. They console themselves with scriptures, ‘Dust you are, and to dust you shall return’ (Genesis 3:19), and some have rolled extra verses into their tightly strapped phylacteries: ‘As waters fall from a lake, and a river wastes away and dries up, so mortals lie down an
d do not rise again’ (Job 14:11–12).

  If only that were so. Isaiah leads Lazarus into the middle of the synagogue and the priests draw back, making space. The status of the man has yet to be decided. An accidental touch might make them unclean—seven days’ absence from the Temple, and at Passover, too.

  Lazarus has the peculiar impression of being unwanted, an intruder at his own trial. Light floods through windows high in the walls. He has an itch on the inside of his knee.

  A younger priest, who has come prepared for the smell of the dead, covers his nose with a handkerchief. Others are eager for revelation, and they start shouting all at once:

  ‘Is there a judgement day?’

  ‘Are you the messiah?’

  ‘How did you get food and water into the tomb?’

  Their eyes pin Lazarus from every direction, searching for whatever knowledge or power they suppose he has, or for physical scars from his dying.

  ‘Have you witnessed the kingdom of heaven?’

  ‘Is it overcrowded?’

  ‘Are there any animals?’

  The priests would like Lazarus to confirm what they already believe.

  Lazarus scratches the itch on his knee. Stops. Scratches again. He has been bitten by a mosquito during the night, which seems unnecessary.

  ‘How wide is the lake of fire that divides the righteous from the wicked?’

  ‘Are the six hundred and sixty-six angels armed with chains of fire?’

  ‘Are the angels all the same size?’

  Caiaphas calls for quiet. He is the high priest of Jerusalem and he prefers to avoid theology. The junior priests quieten down. They acknowledge the supremacy of Caiaphas, and his responsibility for making a judgement.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in his verse play Christus: A Mystery (1872), shows Caiaphas deciding the fate of Lazarus: ‘This Lazarus should be taken, and put to death / As an impostor.’

  Caiaphas misses Palm Sunday in Jerusalem because he is examining Lazarus at the synagogue in Bethany. As are Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, both of them Jesus sympathisers who are also members of the Sanhedrin. Jesus enters Jerusalem unopposed because the ruling priests are absent. This explains why on that particular day Jesus, surprisingly, has the freedom of the city.

  Thanks to Lazarus. Lazarus is the seventh and greatest miracle, a flagrant breach of natural law that has consequences throughout the week that follows.

  ‘Lazarus came back to life,’ Nicodemus says, pre-empting Caiaphas and appealing for tolerance. ‘Nowhere in the scriptures is resurrection condemned as unlawful.’

  ‘We have reliable witnesses to Lazarus emerging from his tomb,’ Caiaphas agrees. His voice is measured, almost tired. ‘I don’t wish to dispute this incident. However, I believe it is true that no one saw him die.’

  Sadly, it would seem that Lazarus returned from the dead without any easy information. If he had described to the Sanhedrin what death was like, then that would be knowledge we have. We would have had it since the time of Lazarus, and news this important we would not have forgotten.

  We do not have that knowledge. We have no idea what to expect from death.

  Many recollections of Lazarus express frustration at his failure to communicate. The British laureate Alfred, Lord Ten­nyson (In Memoriam, 1849) confronts Lazarus directly: ‘Where went thou, brother, those four days? / There lives no record of reply, / Which telling what it is to die / Had surely added praise to praise.’

  Lazarus doesn’t know, or he can’t say. This doesn’t stop the question being asked, and in O’Neill’s Lazarus Laughed a chorus embodies the clamour of competing voices demanding that Lazarus should speak: ‘What is Beyond?’

  On Palm Sunday a sceptical crowd reassembles in Bethany hoping for a glimpse of Lazarus. Lazarus, tell us if you can, what is beyond?

  And how bad is it for sinners?

  Around the edges of the Bethany square, Baruch the assassin slips between shadows. He watches, he waits. The crowd grows with waverers sent by the disciples from Jerusalem—if you don’t believe in Jesus then go and see for yourselves.

  Resurrection is the best of miracles. Every single person in Bethany that day can think of someone dead they sincerely wish were alive. Life after death is everything, but of all the dead, they want to ask, why Lazarus? What about us, and our dead?

  Baruch remembers the strangers he has killed. What would they say if they came back now? He shakes the thought from his head, and replaces it with practical calculations about when and where. Overnight, Lazarus has become as famous as Jesus. Unless he makes an elementary mistake, he will rarely be alone and vulnerable.

  The Sanhedrin Council send Lazarus, escorted by guards, under orders back to his house. The priests are now free to argue amongst themselves.

  ‘Other than his sisters,’ Caiaphas repeats. ‘Is there anyone credible who can vouch that he died?’

  ‘The healer left before the end.’

  ‘There is nothing for us to discuss,’ someone says, in the tone of knowing best. ’Messiahs do not come from the Galilee. And Lazarus can’t have done what they say.’

  ‘Why should he be different from anyone else?’

  Caiaphas tilts his head one way, holds it a second, then tilts it the other. He wants them to appreciate that he has considered this problem from every side, and although judgements other than his are possible, and he respects disparate views, his own opinion, on balance, is probably correct.

  ‘Yesterday, the Roman governor arrived in Jerusalem from Caesar Maritima. This level of excitement is not what he was hoping to find. However, we can’t dispose of both Jesus and Lazarus. That would be too much.’

  ‘You’re getting ahead of yourself,’ Nicodemus says. ‘We don’t have power over life and death. Only Rome has that.’

  ‘I know,’ Caiaphas says. ‘But apparently Lazarus has already died. This is what is being said.’

  The Jewish god promises salvation through proper conduct and respect for the priesthood. After thousands of years god is unlikely to change his mind and offer salvation through a man.

  ‘So which one?’ he asks. With great care he pulls from inside his clothing a large silk handkerchief. ‘The raiser or the raised?’

  Caiaphas looks left and right. Nicodemus knows his law. The Sanhedrin can’t sentence anyone to death, but the priests seem slow in understanding his suggestion about Lazarus. Killing a dead man is hardly a crime. He shakes out his handkerchief, and places it elaborately over his nose. He holds it in place, moving only his eyes.

  Slowly at first, as if at any moment they might change their minds, the Sanhedrin priests begin to cover their noses. Not all of them, but nearly enough. Caiaphas looks at Isaiah, who returns his gaze. Caiaphas does not look away until, with obvious reluctance, Isaiah gathers up the front of his tunic, and presses it over his nose.

  ‘Kill him?’ someone asks.

  The priests with covered noses nod their heads.

  ‘Kill him.’

  ‘Kill Lazarus.’

  4.

  The Bethany tombs blacken the afternoon brightness like broken teeth. Every stone door has been rolled back or smashed, leaving dark arched gaps the length of the sunny escarpment.

  Resurrection is a wonderful idea. Everyone agrees on that, but only Lazarus has risen up. The stench of rotting bodies settles beneath the breeze from the desert. No wonder so many people in Bethany are covering their noses.

  Lazarus flattens his back against a rock. Caiaphas had explained that the Temple guards were a precaution, for his own protection. They are stationed outside his door, so they missed his escape when he jumped from the roof. He is now alone, but feels someone is watching. Lizards skit like quick beige sticks. He should turn back. He can run to the village whenever he wants.

  He jogs over to his tomb, hesitates at the open entrance, peers inside.

  The rear wall is dark. A hand reaches out and Lazarus leaps backwards. A beggar with no teeth hustles towards him on one knee, smi
ling the red of his gums, but stops at Lazarus’s footprints. He wipes up the dust and sucks his fingers.

  ‘Get out! Go away!’

  The man bows low. He touches his forehead to the ground. Lazarus is confused, but then it comes, the edge of euphoria he’d been expecting earlier. This man is a beggar, but he knows. Lazarus is the one.

  Lazarus waves his arms and shouts out loud. He aims a kick that makes the beggar scuttle out of range. He picks up a stone and throws it, because he can.

  ‘And don’t come back!’

  Then he plunges into the coolness of the tomb, where he listens to his living heart. Even here, where no one can see him, he feels he is being watched.

  The tomb is part of the Bethany tour.

  Follow the signs from the bus stop, walk past the gift shops and the house that is most likely not The Home of Lazarus, Martha and Mary. Keep going. Further up the hill, in the lower half of a wall on the left-hand side of the road, is the narrow entrance to the tomb. There is no wheelchair access.

  In Lazarus’s time, this would have been a natural escarpment, but efforts over the centuries to keep his story alive have contributed the road and the al-Uzair mosque, built directly over the tomb. On either side of the mosque stand two churches, one Roman Catholic and the other Greek Orthodox. These additions are not relevant to the central experience.

  The tomb remains a cave cut into the rock, a man-made underground space. It is one of the better tombs, with two levels, and when Mark Twain visited in 1869 he said, ‘I had rather live in it than in any house of the town.’

  Lazarus paid for an upper and a lower chamber. Seven steps descend steeply to the lower section, which is grey-black with the limited light that filters down. Lazarus steadies himself with a hand against the rough-cut wall. There is a strong smell of spices, of excess aloe and myrrh.

  He waits for his eyes to adjust, tries to remember the events enacted in this place. He is searching for clues. Where did he go? How did he get back?