Lazarus Laughed

John 11:40-44

"Then Jesus said, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me." When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.

Jesus said to them, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go."

I have three items to share on the Lazarus account in the Book of John, I'll keep it short. The first is from playwright Eugene Petersen entitled "Lazarus Laughed" in a nutshell: As the Roman emperor Nero was persecuting Christians around the 2nd Century A.D., he met Lazarus and said "I'll kill you!" and Lazarus replied: "HAHAHA!" :p The second, is a personal story, an agnostic friend's brother died in a horrendous motorcycle crash in 2009. I have been talking to her about my faith as a Christian since I became one in 2007. We were High School friends and she was a neighbor then. When I sent my condolences she texted back with a bible verse: "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." —John 11:32. I prayerfully considered my reply at what I felt was a very unfair charge against God. I could've discoursed on the intellectual (logical and probablistic) vs the emotional, problem of evil and suffering and how only the existence of God and further, Christianity makes sense of it all. Discernment prevailed, at such a time of grief, she needed comforting truth about this God who came down to earth to suffer with* us (compassion). She asked me back "when I get to heaven, will I see my brother there?" I replied to the effect: Perhaps. Would heaven be heaven, if what we love and all that's dear to us aren't there? (Not really the most biblical answer, right?) She said thanks. Since 2012, She became a Christian and is now happily married to a Christian husband who finally lead her to Jesus! :) (3) Last, back to St. Lazarus, there was an archaelogical find in 890 A.D. Byzantine, of Lazarus' epitaph. When they uncovered his sarcophagus in Larnaca (Kition, Cyprus) over which the church now stands, they found an inscription which is roughly translated "Lazarus, Bishop of Larnaca. Four days dead. Friend of Jesus" (reports vary so do your homework, friends). If true, that is just amazing! "Jesus wept" (v. 35) and in the Greek, it was more of intense anger rather than grief, a passionate righteous rage, that death wasn't part of God's original purpose when He created. Our Lord Himself finally conquered Death, through the most heinous of evil and humiliating suffering His victory came as most awesome and praiseworthy! Lazarus laughed at Nero's death threat, Petersen imagines, and I thought, in the words of St. Paul: "O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?" (1 Cor 15:55)

Psalm 23:4

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; 

For You are with me; 

Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me."

~17.02.2015