(Icon from St. Elisabeth’s Convent, Belarus)

St. Nikolai Velimirovich of Serbia and America has written of the raising of Lazarus that,

“our Lord is not only the Resurrector of the body, but also the Resurrector of the soul. During His life on earth, He resurrected only a few human bodies, but countless souls, to demonstrate that the resurrection of the soul is much more important than the resurrection of the body. Almost all human souls were dead when He came into the world, and He resurrected countless souls by His power, and imbued them with His life. Both the Jews and the pagans were dead in soul, and He enlivened the one and the other.

“My brethren, let us lay aside all concern for the resurrection of our bodies, and let us strive, while we still have time, for the resurrection of our souls. For if our souls do not resurrect, and are not enlivened by Christ while still on earth, let us not expect any joy from the resurrection of our bodies on the Day of Judgment, the Day of Wrath. For then the bodies of our dead souls would rise, not unto life, but unto eternal torment.

“O Lord Jesus Christ, our only Resurrection and life, help us by Thy power and Thy mercy, that we may be resurrected and enlivened by Thee, unto salvation and eternal life.”

Thus wrote St. Nikolai to us.

Brothers and sisters, the opening rock of St. Lazarus’ tomb is the opening door for us to Holy Week and Pascha.

Each year at this time we commemorate this so beautiful and powerful account from the Gospel (John 11). We are in the tomb coming out with Lazarus from Lent to Pascha. We know we shall die again but we also know that we shall rise again with Jesus Christ.

The raising of Lazarus calls us to Holy Week with faithfulness and obedience.

Lazarus was a loyal friend to Jesus and Jesus was his friend, just as the dismissal prayers at our service say that Christ our true God is good and the lover of mankind. We need to meet Christ with an open heart as a friend to God, just as like Lazarus we need to be obedient. The stone is rolled away by Christ and He summons us like Lazarus to come forth. Let us be faithful and obedient friends of God this week. Some elders say if only we can hold on to obedience in these latter days, that will be enough

In raising Lazarus, Jesus Christ in His public ministry crossed the boundary toward His voluntary Crucifixion. He left Bethany and then Jerusalem in an uproar with the news, for Lazarus was well known.  I Am the Resurrection and the Life, he declared. He already had caused the Jewish leaders to want to kill him for saying “Before Abraham was I Am.” Now again as several times in the Gospel of John he declared his identity with the “I Am the Existing One” of the Old Testament, the “I Am He Who Is,” or “I Am that I Am” of His theophanies to Moses and others before the Incarnation.

Lazarus’ sister Mary who had been most following Jesus’ teaching seemed most despondent at her brother’s death while the dutiful Martha received Christ’s words that “I Am the Resurrection and the Life.” Perhaps this is a reminder that both the qualities of Mary and Martha are needed for our salvation, both the listening-learning of Mary, and also the willingness to serve dutifully of Martha. It was good for Mary to have chosen the better part of listening to our Lord and not being weighted down by worldly chores and affairs. Yet perhaps Martha had learned from the rebuke, while also then bringing her practical sense of duty to her faith, so that she could receive finally this ultimate teaching from Jesus: “I Am the Resurrection and the Life.”

The enmity of the Jewish leaders turned to the resurrected Lazarus as well, prefiguring the events of Holy Week and displaying their weakness as people of worldly power, St. Nikolai noted.

“’And the chief priests plotted to kill Lazarus too’ (St. John 12:10). They agreed among themselves to first kill the Maker and then His work. For Lazarus was the work of Christ. What is the use, they nefariously thought, to kill the Miracle-worker and to leave a living witness of His greatest miracle? For then, the people would be inflamed at them as evil doers! But, nevertheless, it happened that they killed Christ and missed Lazarus. And then? And then, they and their think alikes – killed scores of His apostles and missed hundreds. Then they killed thousands and missed hundreds of thousands. Then, they killed hundreds of thousands and missed millions. Finally it became clear that behind their backs, even the slain were resurrected to life as mown grass and those designated to be killed before the faces of the murderers, grew as sown grass. In vain did the wise Gamaliel say: ‘But if it comes from God, you will not be able to destroy them” (Acts of the Apostles 5:39). Those who wage war against God throughout the centuries in vain did they hone their own helplessness to mow down the crop of God. The more they cut down, the more the crops of God grew luxuriantly.

“O unreasonable combatants against Christ, those of that time and the present! Your mace rebounds from the city of Christ and strikes your own shed and destroys it into dust and ashes. Throughout the ages, you have had enough allies: besides the devil, with you were heretics, idolaters, fanatics, soothsayers, divinators depraved princes and the wealthy, tyrants and all insensitive sinners. Up to now you have been defeated and without any doubt all of your allies together with you will be defeated to the end of time. For that let it be to You O Almighty and irresistible Lord glory and thanks always. Amen.”

Thus St. Nikolai of Serbia and Pennsylvania speaks to us today.

Lazarus’ work according to Orthodox Church tradition did not end with his rising from the dead. He was made a Bishop of Kition in Cyprus (modern-day Larnaca) by the Apostle Paul and Barnabus, and is said to have worn an omphorion as bishop that was woven for him by the Theotokos herself. According to tradition, Lazarus never smiled during the thirty years after his resurrection, because of having seen unredeemed souls he had seen during his four-day stay in Hades. The only exception happened when, seeing someone stealing a pot, he smilingly said: “the clay steals the clay.” He became part of the story of the early Church, which is the resurrected and redeemed Israel, and St. Lazarus then reposed in the Lord. Medieval Western tradition claims that he also became first Bishop in Marseilles in what is now France, where he went with Martha and Mary after they were set adrift on the sea by vengeful Jewish leaders. In any case, whatever the possibilities of his travels in the apostolic era, his remains were later brought from Cyprus to Constantinople, where a Church dedicated to him survives, and a relic probably brought to a church at a monastery in Pskov, Russia. May the holy resurrected Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha pray to God for our missionary work here in Northern Appalachia.

There is one more lesson from the Gospel account that St. Nikolai teaches us in his Prologue of Ohrid (for February 5):

“’Our friend Lazarus is asleep, but I am going to awaken him’ (St. John 11:11). The Lord of life calls death “sleeping.” O what an inexpressible comfort that is for us! O what sweet news for the world! Physical death, therefore, does not mean the annihilation of man rather only sleeping from which only He can awaken; He Who awakened the first dust to life by His word.

When the Lord cried out: ‘Lazarus!’ (St. John 11:43), the man awoke and lived. The Lord knows the name of each of us. When Adam knew the names of every creature of God, why would not the Lord know each one of us by name? Not only does He know but He also calls us by name. O, the sweet and life-creating voice of the only Lover of mankind! This voice can create sons of God from stones. Why, then, can He not awaken us out of our sinful sleep?…

“Whenever the Lord cried out to someone who was dead in the body [physically dead] all of them awoke and arose. But, everyone did not awaken and arise among those who were dead in the soul [spiritually dead] when the Lord cried out to them. But, for this awakening, for this resurrection, the agreement of the will of the deceased is necessary… In truth, deeper is the sleep of sin than the sleep of death and the one who is asleep [in sin] does not easily awaken.

O Sweet Lord, awaken us from the sleep of sin; awaken O Lord!
To You be glory and thanks always. Amen.”

A younger version of myself wept and wept when I saw this event of the Gospel dramatized on a small black-and-white broadcast television as a 12-year-old. I was in our family home in Chicago. We had troubles, I had grief. It may have seemed ridiculous that a Hollywood biblical epic, The Greatest Story Ever Told, could elicit such a response from me. I sought to hide my tears from my dear parents for they were not so religiously inclined.

For you see, I had never heard this account before in my Unitarian-Universalist childhood, we did not read the Bible in our house. It was so powerful to me even in derivative form. I felt in my own self-centered and sinful self, not knowing Christ or His Church, called from the tomb. Such hope that the ultimate fear of mankind was conquered by the love of our God.

It would be decades later that I would emerge into life in the Orthodox Church from my sinful struggles, and that the dim shadows of iconography from that TV screen would become for me the reality of our Holy Week in the Church.

Lazarus come forth!

So God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. He waits for us to waken like the Apostle Paul and not the heart-hardened Judas. Brothers and sisters, let us in this Holy Week that opens to us today be obedient and faithful like the reborn Lazarus, soberly assured of the Resurrection to come, and called to evangelize those who do not know the Lord as He is present for us in His Church. For truly He Is the Resurrection and the Life. Amen.