By Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky)
Dear reader, have not you noticed the fact that in all the parables, told by Christ there is only one proper name? And if you have noticed, have you tried to understand why the Lord called Lazarus by the name, while what was left to his rival was the general name of the Rich? Evidently the Divine teacher wanted His followers to remember well both the terrestrial and beyond-the grave-lot of poor Lazarus, though the main idea of the parable is concentrated on the Rich man: Lazarus is silent in the parable, while the Rich talks and begs for himself and his brothers. The desire of the Savior did not remain unfulfilled: Lazarus became the hero of the favorite chant of good Christians: the poor find consolation in it, fighting against covetousness and everybody is taught to remember about death, the judgment of God and mercy towards the poor. But anyway, our question remains unresolved. Still the parable about the prodigal son is the favorite subject, if not of folk, then of church chants, – together with the others, in which mercy and repentance are glorified; but there are no proper names in them, and the songs about Lazarus give the inspiration to those who sing them not because Lazarus’s name is mentioned there, but due to the description of heaven and hell, of hard-heartedness of the rich on earth and his late repentance in hell.
Maybe, we shall find what we are looking for sooner, if we try to analyze the separate thoughts of the parable of the Lord. Is everything in it clear to us? Does our heart agree with the hopeless answer of Abraham to the rich man, who feels pity about his brothers: «If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.» These strict words embarrassed many of the listeners of the Lord probably due to the power of thought, and till now have embarrassed the readers of the Gospel, for they looked like an exaggeration, till they were proved by real events. Not Lazarus of the parable, (the poor), but another Lazarus, known to all Jews as a friend of Christ, evidently resurrected from the dead, in front of a great crowd of people, being a breathless stinking corpse for four days. «Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him.» Many but not all. «But some of them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done» (John 11:45–46). And what was about the Pharisees? They gathered and not only did not repent in their persistent disbelief or to be more exact, disobedience to the truth, but on the word of Caiaphas decided to kill the Conqueror of death; and that seemed not enough for them. The high priests planned to kill Lazarus as well, for because of him many of the Jews came and started believing in Jesus (John 12–10,11). Note that in their decision there is neither any negation of a miracle, nor any feeling of being guilty: the predetermined unrighteous execution is the unique means for keeping the people in the state of disbelief, and they agree with it.
Like that the words, put by the Lord into the mouth of Abraham, about the degree of human hard-heartedness, came true in their horrifying exactness: the one, who does not wish to listen to Moses and the prophets, will not believe, even seeing the resurrected dead man. Apostle John does not refer to the parable about the Rich and Lazarus, but quotes the words of Christ, which compare Jewish disbelief, concerning His miracles, with disobedience to Moses and hidden disbelief into his law, which proceeded from moral hard-heartedness and looking for personal glory, but not for the glory of God. «There is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words? » (5:45–49).
There still remains one more puzzle, which is often suggested to the theologians: why neither that Evangelist, which narrates the parable of the Lord about Lazarus, inheriting heaven, nor the other two Evangelists testify to the resurrection of Lazarus? Metropolitan Philaret posed that question at one academic exam and when no one dared to answer it, gave such an explanation: when the first three Gospels were being written, then Lazarus was still alive. He always found it hard to listen to the questions of the neighbors about what his soul experienced when it parted with the body, and would have found himself very upset and embarrassed, if this event, while he was still alive, would have been discussed in all churches, that was why it was described only in the fourth Gospel, written after the death of Lazarus.
The scientific biographer of Holiest Philaret was surprised with the wisdom and simplicity of the explanation, but did not know that this explanation was taken from the Synacsarion of Lenten Tryodion. The advantage of the late Eminence before his interlocutors was in the fact that the interlocutors followed the way only of negative critics in the Biblical research, trying to defeat them, using their own weapons, and studied the Bible very little beyond the boundaries of this policy, but the Metropolitan tried to understand It and the Church legends, not only being interested in the critics’ opinion, but developing the positive point of view, without depending on the polemics.
The similar point of view will help us clarify the matter better. From the very sequence of speech of the fourth Gospel one can see that the apostle adds some narration to the books, which had been written before, about the same events, known to his readers. Such an additional narration is the description of the miracle, which happened to four-day Lazarus. St. John introduced such details and depicted everything with such clarity, which make his narrations differ from those of the first three Evangelists and absolutely destroy the miserable thought of the German objectors about the falsity of the fourth Gospel, as about the one, compiled in the middle of the second century by the «misty philosophers”- Gnostics.
This way, St.John wants to tell about the resurrection of Lazarus to those readers, who know about the anointment of the Lord at the supper, about His entry to Jerusalem, and the betrayal of Judas, but do not know about the great miracle of the Lord, so that thanks to it people can start believing into common resurrection.
The readers of the first Gospels could be perplexed, why the people, who met the Lord in Jerusalem with suspicious curiosity and arguments before, later came out so unanimously to meet Him, worshipping Him as a king or even God. Though Evangelist Luke says that the people are glorifying Him for all His miracles, but this hint is little understandable for the reader, because the miracles of the Lord were known to the teachers of Jerusalem already at the time of His previous visits of the holy city, so only Evangelist John, establishing connection of this event with the miracle of the resurrection of Lazarus, makes perplexity of the reader disappear.
Exactly with this thought he ends the narration, saying: «For this cause the people also met him, for that they heard that he had done this miracle» (12:18).
The detailed explication of the events, known, but unclear for the readers of the first three Gospels, can be found in St. John’s description of the miracle with five breads and the following it walk of the Savior upon water. The fourth Evangelist described that being amazed by the miraculous visit, the people wanted to catch the Wonder-Worker by force and make Him a king. To avoid this insanity of people the Lord hid himself for some time in the wilderness, having let the disciples go into the boat. When people fell asleep, He postponed the fulfillment of their plan for the next day and left, miraculously walking upon the waters of the lake.
The legend of the Church about the fact that the Evangelists hush up about the resurrection of Lazarus, performed by the Lord till the moment of his second-time death, makes one think that the whole 11th chapter, or at least the first 45 verses of it, and equally the half of the first verse and verses 9–11 and 17, 18 in the 12th chapter are written by the Evangelist after he had compiled the Gospel, exactly after Lazarus died for the second time. The second look of the narrator at the day of the resurrection of Lazarus (the extract «the six days before the Passover,» and further) and the triumphant supper, which was held at that day in his house, draw our attention to this thought. Here is mentioned the fact of Mary’s anointment of the feet of the Savior with ointment, and in the 11th chapter, in which we see the first mentioning about Mary and Martha, it is said – «It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair,» – as about the event, already known to the reader (but not from the first two Gospels, for there the talk was about the pouring of Myrrh on the head of the Lord in the house of Simon the Leper).
It is very probable that the Gospel of John was written while Lazarus was still alive, and the narration about his resurrection was added by the Evangelist only after the death of Lazarus the same way as the entire 21st chapter of this Gospel was written by the apostle afterwards, because of those being spread during his elderly years rumors that he would never die; that is why let us add that the Gospel of John has two final footnotes, very similar to each other: one at the end of the 20th, and another at the end of the 21st chapter, where the attempt to conceal the appearance of the Lord on the sea of Tiberias is explained by the words: «And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.»
So the parable about the Rich and Lazarus, which was written down by one of the three Evangelists-forecasters, compared with the event of the resurrection of Lazarus and unbelief of the Jews, which was described by apostle John, represents the explanation of the words, causing bewilderment: ««If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded». But did the Evangelist mean the inner connection of the event and the parable? To that there are no direct references in the Gospel, but despite his will he says about the invincible persistence of the Jews’ unbelief and then, having finished the description of the events of these two great days of terrestrial life of the Savior, he, again despite his tradition, leaves the tone of the objectively impassionate narrator and says: «That the saying of Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report? And to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed? Therefore they could not believe, because that Esaias said again, He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them. These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory, and spake of him» (John 12:38–41).
Really, the unbelief of the Jewish leaders and most powerful teachers of Jerusalem, which did not disappear after such a striking, obvious miracle, which was performed in front of the crowd of people, is an amazing phenomenon in the history of mankind; since that time it stopped being unbelief, but became conscious opposition to the obvious truth («but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father,» John, 15:24), which influenced the behavior of the high priests and the multitude of people at the law court of Pilate.
Evangelist John in all his five creations reveals to the readers the main thought that the world, i.e. human persistence and malice, fought both with Christ, though His truth shone to the world, and with His followers, hating their righteous life, as Cain hated Abel (1 John 3:12), and will hate God and His servants till the end of times, in spite of the obvious acts of His power and just retribution (Rev. 9 and etc.).
For long we wished to give the interpretation of the creations of John, as of those making the New Testament doctrine of the first Evangelists complete, for the sake of encouragement of Christian martyrs and confounding of those fainthearted (21:8), who waited for the century-long glory of Christ at the time of their generation (2Thes. 2); though the official aims do not let us fulfill this graceful task soon, and we suggest the other admirers of the word of God to fulfill it. If they do it, they would see that all the narratives of the fourth Gospel are bound with the above mentioned thought; and the whole Revelation, as well as the three epistles of the Apostle, is dedicated to it.
The mentioned obstacle does not give us the opportunity to prove our supposition, why the Lord called the blissful poor of His parable by the name, but still we know that the teaching of the Church has an authotoritive explication for that. The service of the whole sixth week of Great Lent for six days glorifies four-day Lazarus and Lazarus of the parable. Appealing not to the rivals of Christ, but to His praying men, who gather in the holy temples for praying exploit, the Church teaches us to see in both Lazaruses the power of mind and conscience, which the sinner neglects, as the Rich neglects Lazarus, and which, being found dead in the soul of man, can be revived (as four-day Lazarus) only by the power of Christ. This union is almost similar to that, mentioned at the beginning of the article, only with the difference, that, firstly, historical (four-day) Lazarus becomes a moral symbol here. It shows that after the struggle of belief and disbelief, in human soul there starts the fight, involving passions and conscience, (the same way as the unbelievers and the praying ones cannot stand each other). And secondly, according to the teaching of Christ, the fight of faith and disbelief happens not in the sphere of abstract thought, but in the sphere of the good and evil in our soul. It is the fight of passions and conscience; so in this statement one can find the explanation of the words of the Lord: ««If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded.» The unbelief of the embittered Jews in the resurrection of Lazarus gave to this utterance such power, that it can be in no way treated like an exaggeration.
