Richard Beard - Lazarus Is Dead

The onlookers expect a man who has been dead for four days to smell. Martha has actively directed their attention to this possibility, even though the idea doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. If Jesus can bring a man back to life he can erase the evidence of decomposition. If not, the miracle is half achieved — the work of a messiah with limitations, so no messiah at all.

Lazarus must emerge from the tomb free of the stink of death and decay.

The smell, however, cannot be ignored. The evidence of the ages strongly suggests that a nasty smell is part of the story, and indeed it is. It belongs with the descriptions of a rotting, half-alive Lazarus: from the time before his death and not after.

His living body is fizzing with a compendium of diseases awaiting their divine signal, but the timing has to be right. Instead of multiplying and overrunning the host organism, the viruses and bacteria in Lazarus mark time and fester, embittering the blood. The full symptoms of his illnesses are for now repressed, but this stench that seeps from his every pore is the stink of calamity on standby.

It is the smell of divine intervention. There are side-effects. No god can act directly in a world such as ours without unfortunate consequences.

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Now is as good a time as any. Several months have passed since the first of the seven signs of Jesus, the water-into-wine at the wedding in Cana. A second sign at this stage will not be out of place.

Jesus’s second miracle, as recorded by John, also takes place in Cana when Jesus is approached by a nobleman. The nobleman’s son is sick, and Jesus is asked to leave immediately for Capernaum to heal him. This is a powerful display of optimism because Capernaum is about twenty miles from Cana, or a day’s walk. Jesus stays where he is. He heals the boy at a distance.

Mary hears this story in the Bethany square, and rushes inside to share the news with Lazarus. He staggers outside to the cistern, stares at his clean-shaven reflection in the water, then plunges his head into the barrel.

The healing of the nobleman’s son is the second sign that Jesus has been sent by god. Lazarus takes a turn for the worse, exhibiting the early symptoms of every common ailment of the age. He has a generalised rash from the scabies crawling beneath his skin, now accompanied by reddish spots on his tongue and inside his mouth. These spots contain the smallpox virus, Variola , and because Lazarus must suffer he has both deadly variants, Variola Major and Variola Minor .

From early-onset tuberculosis ( Mycobacterium tuberculosis ) he has chest pains and a wet cough that doubles him up, bringing the smallpox lesions on the top of his tongue into sharp contact with those on the underside of his palate. The aerobic tuberculosis bacteria have invaded his lungs, where they divide and replicate every twenty hours.

The nausea induced by the malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum comes at him in waves. Often it competes with the abdominal cramps caused by the shigella bacteria responsible for bacillary dysentery.

Which Lazarus also has, and which provokes vomiting and acute diarrhoea.

‘It’s nothing,’ he tells his sisters. ‘Stop your endless fussing.’

For a certain amount of the rest of his life, his first life, Lazarus will be confined indoors, and it is worth providing a fuller picture of how his house may have looked. The pilgrim who visits Bethany today, probably by bus or coach, will be dropped at a dusty roadside on what was once the village square.

There is an official blue sign reading ‘Pilgrimage Sights’, and an arrow points to a narrow road leading steeply uphill. On the right-hand side of this road, before the tomb and the three churches commemorating the miracle of Lazarus’s resurrection, just after the first gift shop, is a two-storey house with a hand-written banner: The Home of Lazarus Martha and Mary.

Accredited tour guides warn that this is probably not the house, but the two young men who sit inside the courtyard will accompany interested visitors past the bay tree and inside the disputed building. They show off the engraved brass teapot and matching set of goblets owned by Lazarus himself, and earthenware bowls possibly used by his sisters. Whatever the truth, this is the only house we have.

There are two large rooms, one on each floor. There is a bench built into the walls of both rooms, wide enough to lie down on and sleep. There are rugs and cushions on the floors, woven decorations on the whitewashed walls, and circular brass trays set on wooden stands to make convenient low tables. The attentive young men hint strongly that the teapot and goblets may be for sale.

Otherwise, Coca-Cola is available from a glass-doored fridge in the courtyard outside.

Lazarus stays mostly in the upper room. It makes his urgent trips outside more difficult, but Martha is convinced that the air upstairs is cleaner. She and Mary move the hand loom upstairs, and take turns to sit with him while working on the betrothal gown and asking him questions about Saloma.

‘What’s her favourite colour?’

Lazarus rarely wants to talk.

‘We should send for Jesus,’ Mary says.

There are awkward silences, and Jesus himself concedes the negative influence he can have on family life: ‘ For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against the mother-in-law ’ (Matthew 10: 35). The Lazarus sisters are not immune. They too are subject to the pressures of the age.

‘Leave him alone,’ Martha says.

‘Jesus is trying to tell us something.’

‘You’re not helping. Check the stitches on the wedding gown. He needs something to look forward to.’

‘Jesus is healing people he doesn’t even know. Complete strangers — the sons of noblemen.’

‘He’s in Galilee,’ Lazarus says. He pulls his knees to his chest, wipes his hand across his mouth. ‘I’m here.’

‘That boy was healed at a distance.’

‘Of about twenty miles. We’re at the other end of the country.’

‘Pray. If you believe he can heal you then he will.’

A smallpox lesion bursts inside Lazarus’s mouth, filling his saliva with bacteria. He is sitting but refuses to lie down. He has vowed never to lie down during daylight hours, because he will not admit to weakness.

‘I have a fever and a nasty cough. That’s all. I don’t want anyone to worry.’

Mary’s lips move fast as she prays for her brother. Then she prays she won’t fall ill, and that Martha won’t fall ill. Most of her prayers are answered.

Lazarus will not send for Jesus, neither at this stage halfway through his illness nor later when his life depends upon it: ‘ So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick ” ’ (John 11: 3). Instead, Martha and Mary will act on his behalf, and only at the very end, when their brother has barely a day or maybe two days left to live.

In the meantime, it is unthinkable that Lazarus does nothing. He has the rest of his life to lead. He will attempt to save himself in every conceivable way except for calling on Jesus.

He has offered penitential sacrifices at the Temple: his fever and his headaches remain unchanged. He has purified himself in the mikveh , but blames the failed cleansing on his lack of sincerity. He has given up Lydia, almost entirely.

Yet he still feels ugly and weak and smells like a one-man plague. Mary can barely speak without mentioning Jesus, and Lazarus torments himself by remembering the past. He wonders whether there was anything of importance he missed at the time, all those years ago in Nazareth. Jesus has extraordinary powers, and Lazarus had noticed nothing.