John 11 marks another transition point in John. It is the last chapter of John that is devoted to a single tale about Jesus's involvement in a particular situation centered around one particular individual which, in this case, is the death of Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha. Like John 6, this story is a prequel to the main theological event which will be revealed in chapters 13 and 14 of John, the meaning and the purpose of the Eucharist, Holy Communion.
As I have discussed in early posts, the Gospel of John can be compared to some sort of initiation manual for would be converts. The stories are written in such a way as to convey a meaning or pose an intellectual conundrum that an initiate might have to encounter and work through before being considered part of the Johannine community of believers. The initiation rite, per se, involves grasping certain I AM statements made by Jesus which merit some attention before progressing further.
I AM
On the surface, Jesus comes across as some divine narcissist who's obsessed with himself, but it's the writers of John who make him look this way. Their purpose was not to make Jesus sound like a narcissist but rather define Jesus in a faceted manner. The I AM statements that Jesus is making in John recall the answer that God gave Moses in the wilderness when asked by Moses who was sending him back to Egypt to lead the Israelites to the Promised Land. The burning bush story is, in some sense, Moses's initiation into his a leader and prophet. In Exodus, God gives Moses the vague description that has been translated, "I AM that I AM," or the more likely interpretation of the Hebrew text, "I will be what I will be." In copying this I AM definition, John may be cryptic but is not trying to be vague about who Jesus is. In part, John's use of I AM is to say Jesus is God, but then John drops the second I AM by filling out the phrase with a descriptor.
Thus far in my discussion of John, Jesus's I AM statements have been:
I AM the Bread of Life.
I AM the Light of the world.
I AM the Gate, and
I AM the Good Shepherd.
There will be more.
The point John is making is that Jesus is God and, like God, Jesus is multifaceted. There is no singular descriptor that fully captures Jesus, yet in Jesus we encounter the full description of God.
John is demonstrating that Christianity is the new covenant of God which, according to John, has replaced the old covenant made with Israel and represented by Judaism, but since Judaism rejects Jesus as God's only-begotten Son, the "Jews" (John's term for Judaism) broke their covenant relationship and God is selecting a new chosen people from among the nations of the world in Jesus as the Christ.
As such, it is not circumcision that identifies the true believer. Rather it is the believer's intellectual assent or figuratively giving one's heart to Jesus as God (in the form of God's only-begotten Son), the essence of belief and in being recreated through baptism as the entry point into God's divine mystery of Christ. The transformational rite of Baptism is never mentioned but is intimated by the frequent references to John the Baptist and the mention of water; such as the water turned into wine at the wedding at Cana, the living water, in the story of the Samaritan Woman. The initiate is now poised to enter into the deepest, most mysterious and intimate relationship with Christ on this side of death and, by extension, with God - the rite of Holy Communion which is cryptically implied but, again, never directly mentioned.
The initiate needs to figure it out, accept the necessary conclusions before moving on. It is this cryptic side of John that makes me think of it in terms of a mystery religion and Gnosticism. To this day, Christians refer to the mystery of faith when coming to rite of Holy Communion in most litugically oriented churches. This concept is firmly rooted in Johannine theology.
JOHN AS A MYTHICAL GOSPEL
To the modern ear, the story of Resurrection of Lazarus is perhaps one of the most baffling and bizarre stories in the Holy Bible. For the most part, Christians have been so indoctrinated to see it as depicting the compassion Jesus had for Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha that they fail to see what a non-Christian might conclude if this was the only story upon which such a person would base his or her understanding of Christianity.
A modern nonbeliever would likely fail to see a compassionate Jesus and would question why anyone would follow someone who displays such an arrogant disregard to an urgent request to save a friend when he is depicted elsewhere as having the capability of doing so; that his later display of emotion either shows someone who is emotionally unstable, regrets his earlier decision to wait and is in disagreement with his Father's plan or who is faking compassion for affect.
So we need to unpack this story and put it into context.
The first thing Christians and others need to understand is that this is just a story. Like all stories about Jesus in John there is a purpose behind it. What John wants one to grasp is another facet of Jesus as the Christ - as God in the flesh.
CHRISTIANITY'S STRUGGLE WITH MYTH
John could easily be described as a mythical gospel.
The bias that monotheistic religions of the Abrahamic variety have against some of their stories being called myths is that they are mixed in with facts and presented in a linear timeline that resembles history.
The Holy Bible is a mess in that regard.
John, however, has no problem being mythical. John contains editorial comments indicating something was a saying or a metaphor. The writers of John, after all, lived in a time when all religions had their myths and nobody questioned their own because beliefs when the meaning of a story outweighed its factualness.
Myths held truths that were more highly valued in ancient times than they are today, and it is truth, as Johannine theology presents it, that John is trying to portray. John goes so far as to mythologize stories about Jesus life up to and including his death and the story of his resurrection. The synoptic gospels also contain myths, particularly Matthew and Luke, such as stories about Jesus's birth, for example.
The bad rap myths get in Christianity can be traced to the Letters of First and Second Timothy, Titus and Second Peter, where myth is associated as "cleverly devised stories" or lies. In Titus, myths are identified as "Jewish myths." Again, this is where myths become associated with lies as opposed to' truths within Christianity and which point to the likelihood that those pieces of scripture were either written post-John or the writers of those letter didn't have access to the Gospel of John or, since John was Christian, they didn't see anything mythical about it.
PARABOLIC MYTHS
The myths in John of are two kinds: Parabolic myths that address issues of the day at the time John was written and used to illustrate the differences between Judaism and Christianity; such as, The Healing of the Paralytic at Bethesda, and the Healing of the Blind Man from Birth.
REVELATION MYTHS
Then there are the Revelation Myths in which Jesus makes his I AM statements; such as, The Feeding of the Five Thousand, The Woman caught in Adultery, and the story commonly referred to as the Resurrection of Lazarus which we will now examine.
BRINGING LAZARUS BACK TO LIFE
Lazarus is an interesting biblical character. The only place in the Bible that treats Lazarus as resembling a real person, is the Gospel of John. There is a Lazarus parable told by Jesus in Luke, but a Lazarus as the brother of Mary and Martha and friend of Jesus is found only in John. Since we know very little about Mary and Martha, it's entirely possible that they had a brother, Lazarus.
One cannot help wonder if the writer of this story in John was melding together two stories found in Luke; one of which only mentions Mary and Martha, but not a brother called Lazarus and Jesus's parable about Lazarus and the Rich Man. It seems possible that the Lazarus in Luke, who goes to heaven but cannot warn the rich man's brothers to straighten out their act is resurrected in John as Mary and Martha's brother to make the point about Jesus being The Resurrection and The Life. In many of John's stories about Jesus there seems to be a link (highly altered) to other stories about Jesus or, in this case, a parable of Jesus found in Luke's gospel.
JOHN 11:8
I will not review the entire story of Lazarus being brought back to life, but rather mention some of the themes and features in this story that are specific to Johannine theology. In verses eight, for example, Jesus's disciples question why Jesus would return to Judea when the reason he left and his presumed reluctance to heal Lazarus when requested was to avoid being killed. Jesus is depicted as being on the run or going into hiding for much of the first part of John to avoid being killed. At the time of John being written, this probably made all kinds of sense, but to a modern reader this seems to argue against the case of Jesus being fully divine.
I would suggest that John having Jesus go into hiding or being incognito when in Jerusalem contains a cryptic message: Jesus remains hidden until asked to appear directly or indirectly as in during a conversation about him. This becomes a more evident feature in John's post-resurrection stories.
As usual, Jesus doesn't directly answer his disciples' question, but gives a cryptic response couched the familiar theme of light and dark in which being the "world's light" [as in I AM the Light of the World] is a way of saying he sees what they cannot see and knows what they cannot know; that he is not blindly stumbling into something unaware, that he is the light of the day and those who don't get it will stumble.
JOHN 11:16
Verse 16 gives us a foretaste of doubting Thomas, who is the pragmatic one in the group of disciples. In spite of Jesus's previous claim in verses nine and ten that he knows what he is doing, Thomas believes Jesus is walking into a trap and is willing to die with Jesus. This an important factoid to hold on to which will come into play later on in John.
MARTHA
Knowing that Lazarus is dead and buried by the time he arrives, Jesus encounters a household of mourning and grief. Martha is there to greet Jesus and chides him for not showing up earlier to save Lazarus, but confessing her belief that God will do whatever Jesus asks.
This the point at which Jesus reveals his I AM statement, "I am the resurrection and the life, that whoever believes in him, though he dies will have eternal life. Martha then makes the essential statement of her belief that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, who has come into the world and then goes off to find Mary.
MARY
After another mild chiding by Mary who is greatly distressed and weeping, Jesus also weeps. In an otherwise gospel that depicts Jesus beyond human emotion, John sends a poignant message to his followers: Jesus feels your pain. At this point, John's portrayal of Jesus shows Jesus having greater interaction and intimacy with those who believe in him.
JESUS'S AFFECTUAL PRAYER
After his dialogue with Martha and Mary, Jesus brings Lazarus back to life. What I find interesting in that event is the prayer Jesus offers to the Father. I can't help but think he prays for affect on his audience rather than it being or effective in bringing Lazarus back to life. This is one of several moments in John when Jesus offers his own editorial commentary on what he is saying. The prayer consists of Jesus offering thanks to his Father for listening to him and then goes on to say that he knows he's always be heard by God and, in a somewhat apologetic tone, says he is saying that for the benefit of the people within earshot of his prayer so they can believe (as if bringing Lazarus back to life after four days wouldn't do the trick).
We're back to an arrogant depiction of Jesus. If this wasn't meant to be serious, such a display of overt attention seeking would be seen as having a comic or cynical affect. Its intent in John, however, is to underscore the oneness between Jesus and the Father. The way in which John writes about this; in Jesus's voice, again is a poorly disguised attempt to hide such editorial comments by making them come from Jesus's mouth.
A THEOLOGICAL CONUNDRUM
If taken any other way than myth, Lazarus being resurrected poses a theological conundrum. First, according to the Letter to the Hebrews, it is appointed once for humans to die. This obviously isn't going to be the case where Lazarus is concerned and raises the question whether the writer of Hebrews knew about the Lazarus story in John and treated it as a myth or was unaware of that story. The other conundrum is that Lazarus's resurrection seems to be more a resuscitation than a resurrection. What supposedly happened to Lazarus appears to be far different than what happened to Jesus. If it were to be treated as a precursor to Jesus's resurrection, it would argue against Jesus being the first fruit of a new creation. As we will find out in my next post the "Jews" not only plot to kill Jesus, they plot to kill Lazarus. In fact, we hear no more about Lazarus's character in the New Testament. This all argues for this story being a myth.
This mythic story allows the writers of John to make the claim that Jesus possesses the power to give life to those who believe. John's use of this story is to make clear that all who remain steadfast in their belief, the belief of Martha and Mary, will be given eternal life even though they die, which is the bottom line and ultimate goal of Johannine and salvation theology in Christianity.
There is more to discuss in John 11, and will do so in my next post.
Until then, stay faithful.
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