בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ וְקִיְּמָנוּ וְהִגִּיעָנוּ לזְּמַן הַזֶּה.

Bārūch atāh Adonai Elohênū melekh ha`ôlām šeheḥeyānû veqîmānû vehigî`ānû lazman hazeh

Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, king of the universe, who hast given us life and sustained us and brought us to this season

Friday, March 31, 2023

Prelude: The Raising of Lazarus


Carl Bloch, "The Raising of Lazarus"

The raising of Lazarus is an appropriate prelude to a celebration of Holy Week, both because it foreshadowed Jesus’ own coming resurrection and because it seems to have been a major cause in the series of events that led to his arrest and death. While the cleansing of the temple appears to be one of the triggering factors that led to the arrest—and eventually the crucifixion—of Jesus in the Synoptic gospels, the gospel of John presents the raising of Lazarus as the proximate cause of Jewish leadership’s decision to try to put Jesus to death:

But some of them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done.  Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, “What do we? for this man doeth many miracles.  If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.”

And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, “Ye know nothing at all, Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.”  And this spake he not of himself: but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation (John 11:46–51)
Similarly, the next scene, The Supper at Bethany, sees Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, anoint Jesus' feet in an act that anticipates the anointing of his head by an unnamed woman midway through Holy Week. Jesus explicitly connects both anointings to his coming death, proclaiming that the women are doing this to prepare him for his burial. This indicates that they are women of great faith and testimony who not only know who Jesus is, their promised king and priest, but also what he has come to do, which is to suffer and die for us.

Ideas for Families

  • Perhaps set a festive tone by making lazarakia as a family. Making these spicy rolls provides a good opportunity for talking about the raising of Lazarus and how it anticipated Jesus' resurrection (see below).
  • If you have been reading a single gospel between Christmas and Easter, hopefully you have read up to where Jesus is about to enter Jerusalem if you are reading a Synoptic Gospel or up through chapter 10 if you are reading John.
  • Read portions of John 11, at least Jesus' dialogue with Martha about how he was "the resurrection and the life" and the story of his raising Lazarus from the dead. Discuss how many began to believe in Jesus because of this miracle but how it hardened the Jerusalem leadership still further, leading them to actively plan Jesus' arrest and death.
  • If you want to make this a full-fledged devotional, consider singing a hymn of comfort regarding death such as those often sung at funerals. 
    • Sing as a family "My Redeemer Lives" (hymn no. 135 with a beautiful text by Gordon B. Hinckley
    • Listen to recordings of beautiful music. My favorites include "Be Still My Soul" and "Oh, What Songs of the Heart." You can also listen to the beautiful Tabernacle Choir's recording of "Death Shall Not Destroy My Comfort" from the Come Thou Fount CD.  
Death shall not destroy my comfort,
Christ shall guide me through the gloom;
Down He'll send some heav'nly convoy,
To escort my spirit home.
See the happy spirits waiting,
On the banks beyond the stream!
Sweet responses still repeating,
"Jesus! Jesus!" is their theme.

Oh, hallelujah! How I love my Savior!
Oh, hallelujah! That I do;
Hallelujah! How I love my Savior!
Mourners, you may love Him too.
  • Perhaps use this music to lead into a discussion of how very few are raised from the dead as Lazarus was and how the resurrection still lies in the future. But just as miraculous is how our faith in Christ takes the fear out of death and hold out the promise of a peaceful and joyful passing to paradise. 
  • Prepare for the kingly portion of Holy Week (Palm Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday) by reading John 12:1-9, noting Mary's anointing of Jesus' feet, and discussing how "Messiah" and "Christ" mean "anointed one."   


The Background of "Lazarus Saturday"


Ruins of the Byzantine church at Bethany
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the Saturday before Palm Sunday is celebrated as “Lazarus Saturday” (although because most Eastern churches follow the Julian calendar, the events from Lazarus Saturday up through and including Easter usually fall on a later date than they do in the West). This feast celebrates Jesus’ power over death as it was so powerfully demonstrated in his calling Lazarus forth alive from his grave in Bethany.  In actuality, it is not clear how many days before the Triumphal Entry the raising of Lazarus actually took place: the gospel of John records that Jesus withdrew from the public eye to a village called Ephraim for some time before Passover (John 11:54), after which occurred the dinner at which Mary of Bethany anointed Jesus’ feet.   Still, the story of the raising of Lazarus serves as a fitting starting point to our celebration of Holy Week.
Sign to the traditional tomb of Lazarus at Bethany
The revival of Lazarus is the third example of Jesus raising the dead in the gospels, and it is also the most powerful.  When Jesus raised the daughter of Jairus, she had just died, having passed away as Jesus was making his way to heal her of her sickness (see Mark 5:21–24, 35–43; par Matthew 9:18–19, 23–26; Luke 8:40–42, 49–56).  The son of the widow of Nain had been dead longer; Jesus intervened in this case while the young man’s body was being carried to burial (see Luke 7:11–17).  But Lazarus had been dead and in his tomb for four days when Jesus arrived to revive him.  This miracle thus conclusively displays Jesus’ absolute power over death.

Rachel in the traditional tomb
While all three of these cases certainly anticipate Jesus’ own coming forth from the tomb Easter morning, they are only examples of Jesus’ restoring people to mortal life, not of actual resurrection.  This is perhaps most vividly demonstrated by the fact that Lazarus comes out of the tomb “bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin” (John 11:44).  The Greek word soudarion, meaning “handkerchief” or in this case “facecloth” (KJV “napkin”), is the same word used in the case of the Jesus’ grave clothes left in the empty tomb on Easter morning (see John 20:6–7).  Lazarus brought his grave clothes out of the tomb with him because, as a mortal, he would still need them for one day he would die again.  Jesus left his grave clothes in the tomb, however, because he had risen to immortal, eternal life.

A first century tomb in nearby Bethphage
In addition to the stunning miracle itself, the story of Lazarus also occasions an important Johannine dialogue, in which Jesus taught Martha how he was the Resurrection and the Life (John 11:20–27).  Regarding this discourse, I have written the following in my forthcoming book on miracles:
"I am the Resurrection and the Life," Franciscan church at Bethany
Jesus’ famous proclamation that he was the resurrection and the life that followed anticipated more than just the miracle that he was about to perform in raising Lazarus from the dead.  It also looked forward to the glorious resurrection that his own conquest of death would make possible: “He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25).  Lazarus, a disciple who had died, would soon live again.  Yet all who believe in Jesus will also live again, and more than that, they will live forever.  But when Jesus taught Martha that those who believed in him would live again, he was not just referring to the general resurrection.  All who die will be restored to their bodies.  In his Discourse on the Divine Son soon after the healing of the man at the Pool of Bethesda (John 5:17–47), Jesus had taught that all would come forth from their graves, “they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:29, emphasis added). Thus when Jesus referred to believers living again, he probably meant that they would rise in “the resurrection of life,” receiving glorified bodies and eternal life, usually defined as the kind of life that God and Christ have in their presence. 

With that in mind, however, the next verse presents somewhat of a conundrum: “And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die” (John 11:26).  Lazarus had believed in Jesus, yet he had died, as countless of believers in Christ have died since.  Clearly when Jesus spoke of believers never dying, he must have been referring to more than just physical death.  Indeed, in the gospel of John “life” is defined very broadly as the kind of spiritual life that one enjoys, in this life or the next, when one has been reborn in Jesus and enjoys his spirit.   Death, then, represents living without God’s spirit, which death believers lastingly overcome with their faith in Jesus even before the general resurrection.  In other words, even if we temporarily die in regard to our physical bodies, those of us who are alive in Christ never spiritually die. (The Miracles of Jesus, 115–16)
The story of raising of Lazarus thus not only points us towards the resurrection by which Jesus conquered physical death, it also symbolizes his conquest of spiritual death, or our separation from God in this life and the next.

Because the miraculous resuscitation of Lazarus probably occurred several days before the Triumphal Entry, and the Bethany dinner and anointing by Mary preceded it as well, my friend Maxine Hanks has suggested that another possible sequence for individuals or families desiring a "head start" to Holy Week could be to observe a "Lazarus Friday" followed by a "Bethany Saturday" before Palm Sunday

 

Treats for Lazarus Saturday


File:Lazarakia On Plate.jpg
Wikimedia Commons
2020 Note: Because of hoarding during the Corona virus pandemic, we were not able to buy any years this year, so all the pictures are from previous years.

One of the fun Eastern Orthodox customs associated with with Lazarus Saturday is the baking and eating of Lazarakia, small holiday rolls in the shape of a shrouded figure. Here is a recipe and directions for making your own lazarakia: http://www.orthodoxmom.com/2009/04/10/lazarakia-recipe/

 Our first attempts at making this holiday roll:



2014 Lazarakia



Easter Quicklinks
Posted by at
Labels: , ,
Location: Provo, UT, USA

A Working Chronology of the Savior's Final Days


For most traditional Christians, the basic chronology of Jesus’ last week is fairly clear: he entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday; taught and prophesied for two or more days; held the Last Supper and was arrested on Thursday evening; died on Good Friday; and rose from the dead the morning of Easter Sunday.  To make a devotional study of the Savior’s Final Week simpler, in past years and in my 2009 Ensign article,[1] I avoided detailed chronological discussions.  Here, however, I have drawn upon some of the conclusions that I drew in God So Loved the World (pp. 129-133) to propose a basic, working chronology that can be used for devotional purposes.

Three basic considerations that I have used in creating this working chronology are the following:
  • To what extent can the historical timing, or at least order, of events be recreated?
  • When there are historical uncertainties or conflicts, it there a theological or symbolic reason for an event's timing, addition, or omission?
  • What is the utility in accepting, or observing, the traditional timing or liturgical observance of events commemorated by Christian communities?
The only securely established day is the day of the resurrection, which is explicitly identified as “the first day of the week” in all four gospels (Mark 16:2; parallels Matt 28:1 and Luke 24:1; John 20:1).  The gospel of Mark, widely assumed to be the earliest of the written gospel accounts, provides relative time markers, which, calculating back from the resurrection on the first day of the week, place Jesus’ triumphal entry on the previous Sunday.[2]

  • Sunday:          “And when they came nigh unto Jerusalem” (11:1)
  • Monday:         “And on the morrow, when they were come back from Bethany” (11:12)
  • Tuesday:        “And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree” (11:20)
  • Wednesday:  “After two days was the feast of the Passover” (14:1)
  • Thursday:      “And the first day of unleavened bread, when they killed the Passover” (14:12)
  • Friday:            “And straightway in the morning” (15:1)
  • Saturday         the “Sabbath’” (15:42; 16:1; more below)
  • Sunday:          “and very early in the morning the first day of the week” (16:2)

In reality, establishing a secure chronology is a little more complex.  Other day markers beyond resurrection on Sunday morning, such as Passover and the Sabbath, are not as clear as they might at first appear.  As will be discussed later in some detail on Thursday, although the Synoptics make the Last Supper a Passover meal, traditionally placed on Thursday, John suggests that Passover began the evening after Jesus was crucified.  Likewise, Mark’s references to the Passover are sometimes obscure.  Should the “two days before the Passover” (14:1) be counted inclusively or exclusively?  The day that the Passover lamb was killed (14:12) was in fact the afternoon before the Passover, which was also the first day of the feast of unleavened bread.

Also, while it is true that Luke 23:53 says that “the Sabbath drew on” at sunset after Jesus was buried, John and Mark present potentially conflicting data.  John 19:31 refers to the Sabbath as a high day, connecting it with the “preparation day” of the Passover (see also 19:42), suggesting that perhaps it was a festal sabbath and not necessarily the weekly Sabbath (contra the explanatory LDS KJV note for 19:31c, it is just as likely that the “high day” was the Passover and not the day after the Passover meal).  Mark 15:42 also speaks of a preparation day in connection with Jesus’ death, which was “the day before the Sabbath.”  The Greek here is unclear on whether the day before the Sabbath was the day on which Jesus had just died or whether it was the day which, in accordance with Jewish tradition, had just begun with sunset.  Finally, and perhaps significantly, Matthew 28:1, which reads "In the end of the sabbath" in the KJV, actually has "sabbaths" (sabbatōn, genitive plural form) in Greek.  While some argue that the weekly Sabbath could be referred to in the plural, the form leaves open the possibility that there had been both a festal and a weekly Sabbath that week.

This ambiguity has led some to propose that Jesus actually died on a Thursday, sundown Thursday to sundown Friday being a festal Sabbath, the first day of Passover, and sundown Friday to sundown Saturday being the weekly Sabbath.  This proposal is attractive to some, particularly to a few in evangelical circles, because it preserves more completely Jesus' prophecy of being in the tomb for three days and three nights (Matt 12:40) better than the standard explanation that Jesus’ body was in the tomb for only parts of three different days.  While this chronology may also be attractive to some Latter-day Saints because of its apparent correlation with the Book of Mormon’s account of three days of darkness (Helaman 14:20, 27 and 3 Nephi 8:19–23), early Christian tradition nevertheless placed Jesus’ death on Friday from a very early time.

These rather complex chronological discussions are matters of detailed study or a scholarly investigation, not of a devotional (and hopefully inspirational), approach to the Easter season.  I mention them only because the symbolic potential of the events of the last week is sometimes greater if one is not too rigidly attached to a specific chronology.  However, in order to foster greater solidarity with other Christians who are observing Holy Week, and for purely practical reasons of convenience, my approach to the week before Easter this year follows a more-or-less traditional sequence of events.  Links are provided below for each of this year’s Easter posts:   

 
Two final notes.  First, most treatments of the anointing of Jesus assume that the versions portrayed in John 12:1–8 on the one hand and in Mark 14:2–9 (par Matt 26:6–13) on the other represent the same event.  I feel, however, that the details are different enough that they warrant separate treatment.  Even if historically there was only one anointing, the fact that John places it before the Triumphal Entry, and Mark and Matthew place it after the Olivet Discourse,[3] suggests that the evangelists were using its symbolism to stress different theological and symbolic points (see The Symbolism of Jesus as Anointed King and Priest in God So Loved the World, 133-135). 

Second, many Latter-day Saint harmonies of the final week list “No Events Recorded” for Wednesday,[4] but the sequence in Mark strongly suggests that the plot to kill Jesus, the unnamed woman’s anointing of Jesus, and Judas’ decision to betray Jesus happened on this day.  This is also in accordance with Christian tradition, which has since the Medieval period referred to Wednesday as “Spy Wednesday” because of Judas’ actions.


Easter Quicklinks
[1]Eric D. Huntsman, “Reflections on the Savior’s Last Week,” Ensign, Apr 2009, 52–60
[2]See Marcus Borg and john Dominic Crossan, The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus’ Final Week in Jerusalem (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2006), ix–xi.
[3]Compare this with the traditional harmonization of the Cleansing of the Temple, which John places at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and all three Synoptics place at the end.  Even if one assumes that there was only one cleansing, most recognize that John and the Synoptics provide different emphases about the nature of Jesus’ public career and the timing and nature of the opposition that it inspired.
[4]See President J. Reuben Clark, Jr. Our Lord of the Gospels: A Harmony of the Gospels (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1957), which was, in turn, based upon late nineteenth century Protestant commentaries
Posted by at 2 comments:
Labels:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)