It is the morning of Palm Sunday and Jesus has left Bethany leading a triumphal procession into Jerusalem. The true believers have escorted him, laying down palm leaves beneath the hooves of his donkey. The one remaining disciple is even now waving goodbye to Lazarus as he turns the corner of the Jerusalem road. He too has gone.
In Bethany, it follows that anyone left behind is an unbeliever. Three women drawing water at the well complain about a stolen donkey. Lazarus walks towards them. They turn their backs and call in their children.
He takes another step. The women raise their chins and pinch their noses.
Lazarus runs back to the house.
‘Mary went with him,’ Martha says.
She is on her knees scrubbing the spillage of last night’s perfume from the floor. Lazarus squeezes her shoulder, and she pushes her cheek against his knuckles to be sure he’s there.
‘I’ll make you some breakfast,’ Martha says. She aches to her feet, holding her back. ‘How are you feeling?’
Lazarus finds some bread in a jar, bites, chews, swallows. Takes another bite, more thoughtfully. He is waiting for a surge of strength, a sense of unstoppable euphoria.
‘Everything’s wonderful,’ he says. ‘Impeccable. I was dead and now I’m alive.’
‘Is it the money? Is that what’s worrying you?’
‘I’m not going to worry about money.’
‘Look on the bright side,’ Martha says. She uncorks one jar after another to see how much the disciples have left behind them. ‘At least we’ve got the house to ourselves.’
The gate creaks.
It is Isaiah, who is not in Jerusalem with the believers. He walks into the house unannounced.
‘I’m here to fetch you,’ Isaiah says. He has recovered his priestly composure since yesterday, but Martha won’t give up her brother so easily, not again.
‘Let the man breathe. His head’s still spinning.’
‘We need him to answer some questions.’
If Lazarus is true, then Isaiah and the priests of Jerusalem have wasted their lives. None of their prayers or devoutly observed rituals can save them, not if the saviour is a man who barely respects the Sabbath. Jesus and Lazarus, together, make fools out of every virtuous Jew, and out of the hypocrites too.
‘Lazarus, you have to tell us the truth. Jesus did not bring you back from the dead.’
‘Didn’t he?’
‘Seriously. You followed the rules in Leviticus, and like any sensible man you paid for sacrifices at the Temple. God was appeased and eventually he ensured your recovery.’
‘No one will believe that.’
‘You weren’t as sick as you looked. Lazarus, you did not come back from the dead. I will not allow it. You’ll bring shame on me and my family.’
For the first time Lazarus remembers Saloma, and what a good idea that had seemed, before he died.
‘Leave him alone,’ Martha says, ‘he hasn’t done anything wrong.’
‘He came back to life. Deny it was Jesus and after a decent period all will be forgotten. You can trade again, like before. You can earn some money, marry my daughter.’
‘Can I? I was dead.’
‘Stop it, Lazarus. The Sanhedrin want everything returned to normal. And quickly. You’ve been summoned to reassure them that this will be so.’
‘In Jerusalem?’
‘In Bethany.’
‘As if the high priests would come to Bethany.’
‘They’re already here.’
3
The Bethany synagogue is a single-storey whitewashed building.
Among the seventy-one members of the Sanhedrin are priests who consider the three-mile journey from Jerusalem, most of it uphill, a scandal beyond repair. They console themselves with scriptures, ‘Dust you are, and to dust you shall return’ (Genesis 3: 19), and some have rolled extra verses into their tightly strapped phylacteries: ‘As waters fall from a lake, and a river wastes away and dries up, so mortals lie down and do not rise again’ (Job 14: 11–12).
If only that were so. Isaiah leads Lazarus into the middle of the synagogue and the priests draw back, making space. The status of the man has yet to be decided. An accidental touch might make them unclean — seven days’ absence from the Temple, and at Passover, too.
Lazarus has the peculiar impression of being unwanted, an intruder at his own trial. Light floods through windows high in the walls. He has an itch on the inside of his knee.
A younger priest, who has come prepared for the smell of the dead, covers his nose with a handkerchief. Others are eager for revelation, and they start shouting all at once:
‘Is there a judgement day?’
‘Are you the messiah?’
‘How did you get food and water into the tomb?’
Their eyes pin Lazarus from every direction, searching for whatever knowledge or power they suppose he has, or for physical scars from his dying.
‘Have you witnessed the kingdom of heaven?’
‘Is it overcrowded?’
‘Are there any animals?’
The priests would like Lazarus to confirm what they already believe.
Lazarus scratches the itch on his knee. Stops. Scratches again. He has been bitten by a mosquito during the night, which seems unnecessary.
‘How wide is the lake of fire that divides the righteous from the wicked?’
‘Are the six hundred and sixty-six angels armed with chains of fire?’
‘Are the angels all the same size?’
Caiaphas calls for quiet. He is the high priest of Jerusalem and he prefers to avoid theology. The junior priests quieten down. They acknowledge the supremacy of Caiaphas, and his responsibility for making a judgement.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in his verse play Christus: A Mystery (1872), shows Caiaphas deciding the fate of Lazarus: ‘This Lazarus should be taken, and put to death / As an impostor.’
Caiaphas misses Palm Sunday in Jerusalem because he is examining Lazarus at the synagogue in Bethany. As are Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, both of them Jesus sympathisers who are also members of the Sanhedrin. Jesus enters Jerusalem unopposed because the ruling priests are absent. This explains why on that particular day Jesus, surprisingly, has the freedom of the city.
Thanks to Lazarus. Lazarus is the seventh and greatest miracle, a flagrant breach of natural law that has consequences throughout the week that follows.
‘Lazarus came back to life,’ Nicodemus says, pre-empting Caiaphas and appealing for tolerance. ‘Nowhere in the scriptures is resurrection condemned as unlawful.’
‘We have reliable witnesses to Lazarus emerging from his tomb,’ Caiaphas agrees. His voice is measured, almost tired. ‘I don’t wish to dispute this incident. However, I believe it is true that no one saw him die.’
Sadly, it would seem that Lazarus returned from the dead without any easy information. If he had described to the Sanhedrin what death was like, then that would be knowledge we have. We would have had it since the time of Lazarus, and news this important we would not have forgotten.
We do not have that knowledge. We have no idea what to expect from death.
Many recollections of Lazarus express frustration at his failure to communicate. The British laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson (In Memoriam, 1849) confronts Lazarus directly: ‘Where went thou, brother, those four days? / There lives no record of reply, / Which telling what it is to die / Had surely added praise to praise.’
Lazarus doesn’t know, or he can’t say. This doesn’t stop the question being asked, and in O’Neill’s Lazarus Laughed a chorus embodies the clamour of competing voices demanding that Lazarus should speak: ‘What is Beyond?’