[Dialogue] Lazarus rising and Transubstantiation

[KroegerD at aol.com]

January 31, 2007 
The Raising of Lazarus  

The Gospel of John is dramatically different from the gospels of Mark,  
Matthew and Luke. It begins by identifying Jesus with the "Word of God" spoken  in 
creation. It ascribes to Jesus the holy name of God, "I Am" by placing into  
Jesus' mouth a series of "I Am" statements: "I am the bread of Life," "I am the 
 Resurrection," "I am the Vine," and "Before Abraham was, I am," among many  
others. It tells the story of Jesus through a series of miraculous signs that  
are told nowhere else. These sign begin with Jesus turning water into wine at 
a  wedding feast and include the man born blind and the raising of Lazarus 
from the  dead. It portrays Jesus as speaking in long stylized monologues. This 
last  gospel to be written turned out to be the most constantly quoted and 
therefore  the most influential book in the church's later Christological debates 
and thus  in the development of such primary Christian doctrines as the 
Incarnation and  the Trinity. For example in Mark, the earliest gospel, the fully 
human Jesus was  filled by the Holy Spirit at his baptism, but by the time John 
was written some  thirty years later, Jesus has been transformed into a 
divine invader, a deity  masquerading in human form.  
I use this brief description of John's gospel to provide the context in which 
 to examine the Bible's best-known account of Jesus raising a deceased person 
 from the dead. It is the last of three different episodes in the gospels 
that  claim that Jesus had the power to restore the dead to life. There was the  
raising of Jairus' daughter told us in Mark, Matthew and Luke in three 
slightly  different versions that turned out to be substantially a retelling of an 
Elisha  story. Then there was the raising of the widow's son at Nain, told only 
by Luke  that turned out to be a retelling of an Elijah story. Finally there 
is the  raising of Lazarus story told us only by John.  
When we look deeply at this Johannine narrative, attempts to treat this story 
 literally face problems. First, Lazarus is introduced as the brother of Mary 
and  Martha, who live in Bethany. These two women have been introduced 
earlier in the  gospel tradition and appear to be closely identified with the Jesus 
movement.  Luke tells us that Jesus had been a guest at their home for a meal. 
Bethany  appears to be a place to which Jesus and his disciples go regularly. 
Indeed, it  was in Bethany, and presumably at this home, that Jesus and the 
disciples stayed  after the Palm Sunday procession and from which they 
journeyed the approximate  two miles into Jerusalem, first for the cleansing of the 
Temple episode and  later for the Last Supper. The difficulty here is that there 
has never before  been a mention of a brother named Lazarus. John identifies 
this Mary both as  Lazarus' sister and as the one who washed Jesus' feet with 
her tears and dried  them with her hair when he begins to tell the Lazarus 
story. The only trouble  with this identification, however, is that this story is 
not related until the  next chapter so it is a strange forward reference.  
The next strange detail is that Mary and Martha ask Jesus to come urgently  
since their brother was ill and they obviously ascribed healing power to Jesus. 
 Jesus, however, declines to go until he receives the message of Lazarus' 
death.  Still another baffling detail in this Johannine narrative is that Jesus 
is made  to describe this death as "Lazarus is asleep and I go to wake him." 
The  disciples, who are apprehensive about going into an area of the world where 
 Jesus has so many enemies, demur saying that if Lazarus is asleep, he will 
wake  up with no help from Jesus. Only then does Jesus state that Lazarus is 
dead but  he interprets his death as an event designed to reveal the glory of 
God. These  are the details that give us a sense that this episode, even to the 
author of  the gospel, was not a literal event but an interpretive drama.  
Finally, this raising of Lazarus is portrayed as a very public event. A crowd 
 of mourners is present. Authorities from Jerusalem are in attendance. Yet,  
despite this public setting, no mention of this story is found until John 
writes  about it near the end of the first century long after it was supposed to 
have  happened. If this had been an event that actually happened, witnessed by 
a great  crowd of people, it is hard to believe that it would not have created 
sufficient  attention to have been mentioned by someone in the 70 or so years 
that separated  the end of Jesus' life from the writing of John's gospel. So 
even before we  begin our analysis of the text our suspicions are aroused that 
this raising of  Lazarus story is not something that actually happened.  
All of the techniques that we have heretofore employed to assist us in the  
task of interpreting the miracle stories of the Bible do not help us with this  
episode. There is no counterpart to the raising of Lazarus in any of the 
miracle  traditions from the Moses-Joshua or the Elijah-Elisha cycles of stories. 
We  must, therefore, seek another avenue to explore if we are to bring this 
story  into a proper interpretive process. If this narrative is not history, as 
surely  it is not, then what is it, from where does it come and why was it 
written into  the Jesus story?  
The first clue is to search for any biblical connections at all with the name 
 Lazarus (Eleazar in Hebrew). While Eleazar is a fairly common name in the 
Old  Testament, none of them is very significant. The Greek spelling of Lazarus, 
 however, occurs but one other time in the entire New Testament. That comes 
in a  parable found only in Luke that we know as the parable of Lazarus and the 
Rich  Man or Dives. Is there a clue here?  
Did John know about Luke? The overwhelming consensus among New Testament  
scholars is that he did. There are brief but significant similarities between  
John and Luke that are unique, occurring in no other gospel. Both Luke and John  
attribute the betrayal by Judas to the fact that "Satan had entered Judas." 
Both  Luke and John assert that there were two angels at the time of the 
Resurrection.  Luke and John are the only gospels that mention the ascension of 
Jesus. Luke and  John both assert that the resurrection appearances of Jesus went 
on for a  significant period of time after the first Easter. Luke makes it 40 
days, while  John is vague but the passage of time was sufficient for the 
disciples to be  back in Galilee and once more engaged in their fishing trade, 
which points to as  long a period of time as perhaps six months.  
These similarities make it quite feasible to assume that perhaps there is  
also a connection between Luke's parable about Lazarus and John's account of  
raising Lazarus from the dead. With that connection opened for inspection, we  
first explore the content of Luke's parable.  
In that parable, Lazarus is portrayed as a beggar who sits at the gate of a  
rich man's home. He would have been content, the parable says, with the crumbs 
 that fell from the rich man's table. In time both die. Lazarus is carried 
"to  the bosom of Abraham" while Dives, the rich man, is dispatched to the 
flames of  hell.  
In torment, the rich man looks at Lazarus in Abraham's bosom and requests  
that Lazarus be sent with water to quench the rich man's thirst. Abraham  
responds that no one can journey from the realm of Abraham to the pits of hell.  
Then Dives asks that Lazarus be sent back to earth to warn his brothers "lest  
they too come to this place of torment." Abraham replies, "They have Moses and  
the prophets. If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not  
listen even if one is raised from the dead." On that note of warning, the  
parable ends.  
Is it possible that the author of the Fourth Gospel simply historicized  
Luke's parable in order to make his point? Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead  but 
nobody listened or took notice. Indeed, in John's gospel the raising of  
Lazarus becomes the event that makes the religious authorities determined to rid  
the world of Jesus. They immediately conspire to destroy him. Abraham's 
warning  in Luke's parable becomes the behavior acted out in John's gospel. If they 
hear  not Moses nor the prophets neither will they be persuaded even if one is 
raised  from the dead. That is the theme of both Luke's parable and this 
Johannine  narrative with a person named Lazarus central to each. I suspect that 
the  original readers of John's gospel, who would be very much aware of Luke's  
parable, made the connection immediately and they would surely have 
understood  the message that John intended to communicate through this particular sign. 
 Underneath the power of the writing skill of the author of John's gospel, 
the  interpretation of Jesus as "the Source of Life" began to unfold.  
John also seems deliberately to compare the raising of Lazarus with the  
raising of Jesus as a way of countering, I believe, the interpretation of the  
resurrection of Jesus as an act of physical, bodily resuscitation. John's Jesus  
was not raised back into the life of this world. He was raised into the life 
of  God. His body was not flesh and blood but the transformed body of the realm 
of  God. He could walk through walls and appear and disappear at will. He 
could be  known to them in the breaking of bread. The points of comparison are 
clear.  Lazarus emerges from his tomb in his grave clothes. Jesus leaves his 
grave  clothes behind. Presumably Lazarus would have to die again. Jesus was 
alive unto  God forevermore.  
The story of the raising of Lazarus was never intended by this author, I am  
convinced, to be the relating of a supernatural event, even though that is the 
 way we have generally read it throughout history. It was rather John's way 
of  saying that what he believes God is had been encountered in Jesus and that 
even  his crucifixion and death could not separate Jesus from God or Jesus 
from life.  To literalize the scriptures is not to save them from the erosion of 
doubt; it  is to distort the whole purpose for which they were originally 
written. The  miracle stories of the gospels tell us a great deal about what it 
was that  people experienced in Jesus, they tell us nothing abut the things that 
he  actually did.  
John Shelby Spong  
_Note from  the Editor: Bishop Spong's new book is available now at 
bookstores everywhere  and by clicking here!_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060762055/agoramedia-20)   
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Rev. Robert Gilman, a retired UCC pastor writes:  
I have recently read your account of your dialogues in Norway and Sweden. My  
cousin is a Lutheran pastor and believes the wine in communion is transformed 
 literally into the blood of Christ. Apparently this is a belief in many  
denominations. If that is such a pillar of their faith, how can such a tradition  
be replaced without destroying the liturgical foundation of their faith? My  
Congregational Church doctrines were in keeping with what you express.  
Dear Mr. Gilman,  
What you describe - the wine being transformed into the literal blood of  
Christ is identified more with the Roman Catholic traditions than with that of  
the Lutherans. This view is called "Transubstantiation" and it was one of the  
things against which Martin Luther fought. The traditional Lutheran 
perspective  is called "Consubstantiation" and it means that when one receives the bread 
and  wine of the Eucharist one is also receiving Christ, who is somehow 
joined to the  elements of the Eucharist. Just to complicate the issue, the 
Episcopalian or  Anglicans defend something called the "Real Presence" by which they 
mean that in  the Eucharistic act one receives the presence of Christ without 
tying anyone to  a specific definition of how that is accomplished. Anglicans 
have never liked to  be committed to too much specificity.  
If the Lutherans relate to Consubstantiation as loosely as we Episcopalians  
relate to the "Real Presence" then it is quite possible for an Episcopalian to 
 interpret the "Real presence" or a Lutheran to interpret "Consubstantiation" 
in  terms of a literal transformation of the bread into the body of Christ 
and the  wine into the blood of Christ.  
However, to do that is to literalize the interpretive symbols but there are  
some whose minds are so constituted that if something is not literally true, 
it  is deemed to be not true at all.  
The thing that will kill the Christian Eucharist, to say nothing of the  
Christian faith itself, is for all of its symbols to be literalized. Indeed you  
are correct when you say that if the literal symbols are replaced, it will kill 
 their faith. That is true. It might be fair to say, however, that when the  
symbols of our faith and worship become literalized, they become idolatrous.  
Perhaps idols should be destroyed for they prevent us from seeking the true 
God,  whoever and whatever that may be. However, when idols are destroyed, howls 
of  protest are heard and intense pain is experienced. Much of the pain that 
is  obvious today in various forms of Christianity is nothing less than a 
defense of  the idols of their religious past. One should not try to make that 
easier or to  remove the pain for it is the prelude to growth.  
Enjoy your retirement.  
John Shelby Spong 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20070131/ffdfeba4/attachment.html