This is today’s reading. I’m interested in Jesus taking Lazarus will rise again literally. Mary knew he would rise again at the end of time. She had that faith: she was not a liberal appeaser (read Saducee).
And she said what we have all said at a funreal/
Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 25Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 27She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”38Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” 40Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” 41So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” 43When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
However, Jesus did not take this figuratively. He asked a tomb to be opened and — when by four days the body would be decomposing — and then commanded Lazarus to come out.
In public.
It is no wonder that the Chief Priests and Scribes — both the liberal and conservative arms of Jewish religions and political life between the Macabees and the Fall of the Temple — wanted to kill Lazarus as well as Jesus.
In the end, I really wonder how much of what we think is poetry in the Bible is sober description.
