The Real Story of Lazarus

Lazarus was a young gay man who lived with his sisters, Martha and Mary, in the village of Bethany, not far from Jerusalem. They were comfortably off, and Jesus numbered them among his friends. He and his disciples would visit their house when they were in the neighborhood. 

One day, Lazarus got sick. Martha sent word to Jesus, asking him to come and heal her brother, but the Lord delayed, despite the urgency of her request. It meant almost certain death for him to venture into Judea, so close to the capital, where the political authorities of the state wanted to kill him. 

Then Lazarus died. Only then did Jesus decide to go to Bethany—a strange decision, on the surface, for a hunted man, if his friend was already dead. By the time he got there, Lazarus had been dead for four days, and the door to his tomb was sealed shut. The house was full of mourners, who had come up from Jerusalem to comfort the two sisters. When she heard that Jesus had come, Martha met Jesus with a reproach: “If you had been here,” she said, “my brother would not have died.” 

Jesus asked to be taken to the tomb. He wept.

“Take away the stone,” he commanded.

“But Lord, it’s been four days. He’ll stink.”

But nonetheless she told the servants to push aside the stone that covered the entry to the tomb.

“Lazarus, come out,” Jesus called. 

And then came the miracle: Lazarus emerged, blinking, into the sunlight. 

The traditional icon that depicts the event stresses its fleshly nature. The tomb is a gash in a rock, and Lazarus is completely bound up in grave bands, upright in the cave’s mouth, but unable to move. The men who have just rolled the rock away are covering their noses because of the stench, but Lazarus’ face shows no sign of decay: he looks happy. His sisters are prostrate at the feet of the commanding Christ, who gestures toward the man whom he has just restored to life. 

John includes only a handful of miracles in his gospel, and this is the finale—the last before Jesus’ own betrayal and death (of which this was a contributory cause). While this one surpasses the others in its power, it’s also a kind of meta-miracle, which contains in itself all the other accounts of transformative healing, not just in John’s gospel but in the synoptic gospels as well, since, through healing, they all bring the gift of new life. 

For gay people like me, the resurrection of Lazarus has another, special meaning. It offers us an archetypal myth that both validates and expands the scope of the coming out narratives that constitute the central event in our own personal stories of liberation and new life. 

Before coming out, like Lazarus, we found ourselves trapped in a kind of tomb, rotting in our own loneliness and shame, hidden away by our fears, cut off from the light of day and the social interplay of normal life, unable to express ourselves and above all, unable to give and receive love.

We were dead.

Here’s my version of the story.

Lazarus, come out.

It’s not that Lazarus, dead and already rotting in the tomb, failed to hear the call. Oh, he heard. All the dead hear everything. But—come out? 

“Jesus, you don’t know what you’re asking.

“Sure, the cave is dark and foul, but you get used to the smell, and the scurrying creatures, and the worms and the drip drip drip of subterrean water and the chirping of the rats, and the voices from the other world. You get used to solitude. It’s never winter, never spring, no night, no day. It’s always the same temperature. Nothing happens. The hopes and dreams and risks and terrors, the uncertainties of life outside: all gone, over, finished. It’s safe in here.”

 Lazarus, come out.

“No. I refuse. Go away. Fuck off. Leave me alone. Besides, I’m disgusting. If you really want me to come out, you’ll have to change me, make me beautiful and young, give me better clothes, fill my mouth with brilliant and delightful things to say, brighten my eyes and my dazzling smile. And what are you offering? OK, so there’s a party and a dinner and I go back to work, and I see my sisters and my boyfriend again, and then you know what happens? I die all over again. What’s the point of that, leaving the safe old smelly cave just to take on all my old burdens and then die all over again, and dying’s no fun, tell me about it, and maybe next time around it will be worse, more humiliating, more painful, more drawn out?  Are you crazy? Or more accurately, do you think I’m crazy?”

Lazarus, Come Out.

“Oh all right. If you insist. I guess. Here I am.”

And out he lurches, half hopping because his feet and arms are bound with strips of filthy cloth, while his melted flesh hangs in maggoty strips—collapsing into unwelcome light.

He looks into the eyes of Jesus. He always thought he knew them well, having hosted Jesus on his various visits and laughed with him, and having, as a small boy, been taught by him. But this time, it isn’t their color (deep brown) or the shape (large, almond, thick lashes); it’s seeing himself, as if reflected in those eyes, or maybe he is seeing himself as Jesus sees him, and there is no hint of rotting flesh, there is no anger and anxiety and fatigue, there is a different Lazarus, radiant, the real Lazarus, as if the poor fleshly mask behind which he has hidden for so long has dropped away, and he is, at last, only himself. He stands naked in the quiet sun, in a silence the texture of which is different from anything he has ever known, except perhaps a momentary pause in rich music. 

He is a free man.

Thank you, he mutters, and now his eyes are blinded by light the source of which is the face of Jesus, and he knows that he must be imagining that; of course, he is imagining that, it has to be an hallucination, but a happy one; and bright as the white light is, he doesn’t have to shield his face or look away.

The moment passes. His sisters wash him and guide his dazed legs and arms, first dressing him in fresh clothes and then leading him, like a blind man, toward the house where they turn mourning into laughter, transforming the funeral refreshments into a marriage feast. And later, exhausted, he falls into bed in his lover’s arms and sleeps the sleep of the living.

That’s what coming out is all about, and it’s always a miracle.