Lazarus

Lazarus Zamenhof is Polish.

Jesus resurrected Lazarus.

I’ve always been moved by the story of Lazarus as it is recounted in the Gospel of John. The basic shape of the narrative is recognizable and relatable: Someone dies, and the heartbroken family pleads for their loss to be reversed. In the case of Lazarus, Christ is so moved by the family’s grief that he interferes with the natural order of things and grants an exception like no other: He brings the dead man back to life. This makes it an exemplar of a kind of cosmic partiality, what we would all hope for at our most wounded and vulnerable. Caravaggio pins the scene down to its material facts: the confused faces of the onlookers, the downcast faces of the sisters, the necrotic body of Lazarus, the supernatural authority of Christ.

Ken Cuccinelli tweaked the famous poem from Emma Lazarus – whose words, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” are long associated with immigration to the US and the nation’s history as a haven – as part of a case for strict new measures pushed Monday by the Trump administration that could dramatically change the legal immigration system.

This was the classic age of all the various exhumations, restorations, and resurrections; it was a retrospective time — a time of ghosts and Lazaruses, more or less decomposed.

1870, Edmond de Pressensé, Annie Harwood Holmden (translator), The Early Years of the Christian Church, Book 3: First Century, page 462, Those who hear the voice of the Son of man and live, are so many Lazaruses called to the life divine.

Finally, in whatever state or condition of life the faithful may find themselves, even if they cannot, like the apostles, assist the Lazaruses to rise from their tombs[…].

And do you not think, that all these poor Lazaruses, that you have persecuted, and do persecute, that when they die, they will not be carried into Abraham's bosom?

These are the Lazaruses who lie prostrate at the gates of our cities and neighborhoods, and these are the needs that affluent Americans have conditioned themselves not to see because reaching out in any significant way would be far too costly.

Do we respond to the poor Lazaruses in our midst with charity (scraps from our table), or do we seek to change the economic conditions that set up these extremes of rich and poor?