[Dialogue] 8/19/10, Spong: The Origins of the New Testament, Part XXXIV: The Raising of Lazarus and the Identity of the Beloved

Fri Aug 20 20:04:44 CDT 2010

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                  Thursday August 19, 2010                

The Origins of the New Testament, Part XXXIV:
The Raising of Lazarus and the Identity of the Beloved

We began this study of John with the assertion that the author of this gospel was writing a highly symbolic, interpretive account of Jesus of Nazareth.  He created this account some 65-70 years after the events he is describing, which marked the end of Jesus' earthly life.  He tells his readers time and again that his words are not to be treated literally; indeed, he mocks the literalizing tendencies that he finds in the religious community of his day.  To bring this theme into an even clearer focus, I turn now to two uniquely Johannine narratives, not even alluded to anywhere else in the Christian tradition, other than in the Fourth Gospel.  The first of these is the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead and the second is the series of stories through whom the introduction of the strang e and enigmatic figure, known only as "the beloved disciple" or as "the disciple whom Jesus loved," comes into the tradition.  In an interesting way these two apparently separate narratives are significantly interconnected.
    Note first the dramatic place in his drama to which the author of the Fourth Gospel has assigned the story of the raising of Lazarus.  It is for John the catalyst that leads directly to the crucifixion.  He then both compares and contrasts this Lazarus story with the raising of Jesus from the dead, which will be the grand climax that will conclude his gospel.
    We begin our probe of this story by raising the question:  Is it possible that the author of the Fourth Gospel ever entertained the possibility that there was even a shred of historical data underlying his account of raising Lazarus from the grave?  The answer to that question is simple.  Not a chance!  Consider these facts:  Mary and Martha, two sisters who lived in Bethany, have been figures in the Christian memory for quite a while, even starring in the gospel of Luke.  Nowhere in that earlier tradition, however, was it recorded that they had a brother named Lazarus.  John has clearly created Lazarus for his own literary purposes.  Next John describes the raising of Lazarus from the dead as an event that was quite public.  Crowds, consisting of both the friends and enemies of Jesus, have gathered to mourn the passing of Lazarus.  This was not a miraculous event done in private, the details of which might, in the course of time, be exaggerated.  There were eye witnesses ga lore.  The lead-up to this story sets the stage for this event to be the source of great wonder.  Jesus, we are told, postponed his journey to Bethany until the news came that Lazarus was actually dead.  When he finally does arrive, the burial of Lazarus has been completed since it was the fourth day after his death.  Both Martha and Mary express their displeasure by berating Jesus for not coming earlier when, they suggest, he could perhaps have used his powers to save Lazarus and to restore him to health.  There is no hint anywhere in the Christian tradition that anyone anywhere had ever heard about this episode before.  Embrace what that means.  Here is a public event attended by a great crowd in which a man, dead for four days, has already been buried in a cave with a great stone covering its entrance.  Jesus, the itinerant preacher, now proceeds to reverse this death even though the corpse was already in the decaying process.  To accomplish the miracle this teacher, over  the protests of the sisters of the dead man ("already he stinketh," the King James version has Martha say), orders the stone removed and he calls Lazarus to come forth.  The mesmerized crowd then watches as the corpse of Lazarus, bound in the burial bands of cloth that secured both his hands and his feet and into which the burial spice of myrrh had been generously poured, comes staggering out of the cave.  Jesus then orders them to "unbind him and let him go."  If this were history, can you imagine how the account of this event could have been so deeply suppressed that no hint of it would have appeared in any Christian circle until John decided to write about it some three generations later?  No, the raising of Lazarus is not an event that occurred in history. Then how are we to read this story?  What was its origin?
    There is only one other figure named Lazarus who appears in the New Testament.  He is a character in a parable that only Luke records.  We call it the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, who is sometimes named Dives.  This Lucan parable is about judgment.  Lazarus, a beggar at the gate of the rich man, dies.  So does the rich man, who apparently never "sees" this beggar. Lazarus is carried into the "bosom of Abraham" and the rich man is removed to the tortures of the condemned.  In torment, Dives asks Abraham to send Lazarus with water to ease his thirst.  Abraham responds that one cannot get to Dives from where Lazarus is.  Then Dives asks him to send Lazarus back to warn his brothers to amend their lives lest they too come to this place of torment.  Abraham replies, "They have Moses and the prophets to warn them."  If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, "they will not listen even if one is raised from the dead."  John takes this Lucan parable, historicize s it and demonstrates its truth in the life of Jesus.  The raising of Lazarus does not create faith or change behavior; it actually serves to make the crucifixion of Jesus inevitable.  The character we call Lazarus is a literary creation of the author of the Fourth Gospel, based on a parable, which John uses to stand as a symbol for those who see God in Jesus, respond to that experience and move from their religious past into the new consciousness that became available in Jesus.  
    Moving on now to look at "the beloved disciple," we note several other crucial items in this narrative.  First, this character called Lazarus is the only person whom the author of the Fourth Gospel says that Jesus loved.  The message that comes to Jesus from Mary and Martha, notifying him of their brother's illness and urging him to come quickly, is this.  "Lord, he whom you love is ill."  Next this text says, "Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus."  Later Jesus is portrayed as weeping as he makes his way to the tomb, causing the crowd to say, "See how he loved him."  If Jesus had a single "beloved disciple," it is interesting that this gospel never suggests that it could be anyone other than this literary character known as Lazarus.  Second, it is also true that the designation of "one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved" does not enter the Johannine narrative until after the story of the raising of Lazarus.  Only then is the "beloved discip le" pictured as present at the Last Supper "lying close to the heart of Jesus."  He is the one whom Peter implores to ask Jesus to identify the name of the traitor.  We next confront the beloved disciple in John's text at the foot of the cross and hear the dying Jesus commend his mother to the care of this person.  Could the mother of Jesus be a symbol for Judaism, the mother of Christianity, and could the beloved disciple be a symbol of one who sees the meaning of Jesus so deeply that he can carry Jesus' message into a new context in the Gentile world without losing "his mother" Judaism in the process?  Rudolf Bultmann, probably the greatest New Testament scholar in the 20th century, seems to think so and has advanced this possibility in his monumental commentary entitled simply: The Gospel of John.
    The next time "the disciple whom Jesus loved" is mentioned in this gospel is in the Easter story.  There we are told that he comes with Peter to the tomb that Mary Magdalene has reported to be empty, her suspicion being that the grave had been robbed, which would represent the final insult to the memory of Jesus.  Peter and "the beloved disciple" run together, Peter the older, the one who is rooted in the tradition of Judaism, runs more slowly.  The beloved disciple is younger, the one who will guide the Jesus message into its universal future, so he runs more quickly and arrives at the tomb first.  He does not go in, but pauses at the entrance.  Judaism must enter the new place before the Christian movement can do so.  The new tradition must be built on the old.  It cannot be born except out of the old.  Religion always evolves by transcending the limits of the past and giving birth to a new consciousness.  So Peter, arriving later and presumably out of breath, enters the t omb.  He sees the signs.  The grave clothes are neatly lying in place exactly where the head, the hands and the feet of the deceased Lord would have been.  This resurrection was not to be like that of Lazarus, a resuscitation back to life in this world and still bound by the grave clothes.  This was a transformative experience in which death is transcended, limits are crossed and new life is achieved.  "The disciple whom Jesus loved" then follows Peter into the tomb.  Like Peter, he also sees, but he takes the vital next step — this seeing causes him to believe!  They both return home and that evening John's gospel says that Jesus appeared to them, along with all of the other disciples.  This raised Jesus was portrayed as being intensely physical, but at the same time we are told that he entered the house despite the fact that the doors were shut and the windows barred.  Once inside, we are told, he breathed on them the life-giving breath of God.  It was that same brea th that had brought Adam into being at the first creation.  This was the new creation and it was the beloved disciple who first steps into it.  The beloved disciple is clearly a symbol, not a person.  He represents those lives in which the meaning of Jesus leaps the boundaries of yesterday's religious understanding, by which people have always sought to control the wonder of the being that Jesus came to bring.
    This beloved disciple is mentioned once more in the Epilogue to John's gospel.  By the time this chapter was written and added to the text of this gospel, the literalizing process had already begun and John's symbol of the "beloved disciple" is identified with a particular one of the twelve who has clearly died.  The theory apparently had developed that this beloved disciple was supposed to live until Jesus' second coming.  So his death had to be explained and the Epilogue seeks to do so.  The point is then made that Jesus does come again every time another person enters the new life, the new consciousness that Jesus came to bring.  Lazarus and the beloved disciple are one and the same, symbols of those raised to new life, those who in Christ are able to step beyond traditional religious thinking into a new consciousness.            

– John Shelby Spong

                  Question and Answer                  
With John Shelby Spong

Anne Harrison from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, writes:
    How does one respectfully answer or relate to dear friends who want to debate an issue (such as the "sin" of homosexuality)?  I know they are trying to "convert" me!

Dear Anne,
    You need first to separate religious conviction from hostility.  One does not allow hostility to be expressed toward oneself that is demeaning and destructive, even when people package their hostility in the rhetoric of religion.  Religious hostility is no less hostile than non-religious hostility!  You must see it and call it for what it is.  You simply tell these friends that you do not want to discuss these subjects, that their persistent attempts to do so are not acceptable, that you do not welcome it and that if they continue in this behavior, even though they are "dear friends," they will be putting your friendship at risk.  That should get their attention.
    Once you have gotten their attention, you then explain that there are some subjects on which your mind, based on your best study, are settled and thus are no longer up for consideration or further debate even though you are aware that they do not agree with you.  This will certainly put them on notice, and then it is up to them to act in such a way as to continue their friendship with you.
    What I think all people need to understand is that the pious rhetoric of religion, including quotations from the Bible, do not make hostility acceptable.  Religious rudeness is still rude, religious anger is still anger and boorish people who are religious are still boorish.  No one is required to absorb anger even when it is perfumed with a religious scent.
    I hope this helps.

– John Shelby Spong

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