The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. The Lazarus Miracle

[ 1 ] Among the "miracles" attributed to Jesus, the raising of Lazarus in Bethany must undoubtedly be accorded a very special significance. Everything comes together to give what the evangelist relates here a prominent place in the New Testament. It must be remembered that the narrative is only found in the Gospel of John, that is, the evangelist who, through the meaningful introductory words of his Gospel, challenges a very specific understanding of his messages. John begins with the sentences: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God; and the Word was God ... And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of devotion and truth." Whoever places such words at the beginning of his remarks is, as it were, pointing the finger at the fact that he wants to be interpreted in a particularly profound sense. Anyone who wants to come here with mere intellectual explanations, or with other things that remain on the surface, is like someone who thinks that Othello "really" murdered Desdemona on stage. What could John possibly want to say with his introductory words? That he is speaking of something eternal, of something that was in the beginning, he says that clearly. He tells facts; but they are not to be taken as such facts, which the eye and ear observe, and on which the logical mind exercises its arts. The "word" that is in the spirit of the world is concealed behind the facts. For him, these facts are the means by which a higher sense lives itself out. And one may therefore assume that the deepest meaning is concealed in the fact of an awakening of the dead, which causes the greatest difficulties for eyes, ears and the logical mind.

[ 2 ] And then there is another one. Renan has already pointed out in his "Life of Jesus" that the resurrection of Lazarus must undoubtedly have had a decisive influence on the end of Jesus' life. Such an idea seems impossible from Renan's point of view. For why should the very fact that the belief spread among the people that Jesus had raised a man from the dead seem so dangerous to his opponents that they came to the conclusion: Can Jesus and Judaism live together? It is unacceptable to claim with Renan: "The other miracles of Jesus were fleeting events, passed on in good faith and exaggerated in the mouth of the people, and they were no longer referred to after they had happened. But this was a real event that became public knowledge and was used to silence the Pharisees. All of Jesus' enemies were furious about the publicity caused. It is said that they tried to kill Lazarus. " It is not clear why this should be so, if Renan were right in his view that in Bethany it was merely the staging of a sham act intended to strengthen faith in Jesus: "Perhaps Lazarus, still pale from his illness, had himself wrapped in shrouds like a dead man and laid in his family tomb. These tombs were large chambers hewn out of the rock, into which one entered through a square opening that was closed with a huge boulder. Martha and Mary hurried to meet Jesus and led him to the tomb even before he had entered Bethany. The painful excitement that Jesus felt at the tomb of his friend, who was believed to be dead, may have been mistaken by those present for the trembling and shuddering (John 11:33 and 38) that used to accompany miracles. According to popular belief, the divine power in man was based, as it were, on an epileptic and convulsive principle. Jesus - always assuming our acceptance - wished to see the one whom he had loved once more, and when the funeral stone was rolled away, Lazarus emerged in his shrouds, his head wrapped in a sweatcloth. This appearance must of course have been generally accepted as the resurrection. Faith knows no other law than interest in what is truth to it." Does such an interpretation not seem downright naïve if, like Renan, it is linked to the view that "everything seems to indicate that the miracle of Bethany contributed significantly to hastening Jesus' death"? Nevertheless, Renan's latter assertion is undoubtedly based on a correct perception. But Renan cannot interpret and justify this sentiment by his own means.

[ 3 ] Jesus must have accomplished something particularly important in Bethany in order to justify the words: "Then the chief priests and elders gathered a council and said: What are we doing? This man does many signs." (John 11:47.) Renan also suspects something special. "It must be recognized, however, that this narrative of John is essentially different in kind from the reports of miracles, the outflow of popular imagination, of which the Synoptics are full. Let us add to this that John is the only evangelist who had precise knowledge of Jesus' relations with the family in Bethany, and that it would be incomprehensible how a popular creation could have found a place in the framework of such personal memories. So the miracle was probably not one of the legendary ones for which no one is responsible. In short, I believe that something happened in Bethany that could be considered a resurrection. " Doesn't this basically mean that Renan assumes that something happened in Bethany for which he has no explanation? He also entrenches himself behind the words: "Given the length of time, and faced with a single text that shows clear traces of later additions, it is impossible to decide whether in this case everything is fiction, or whether an incident in Bethany really serves as the basis for the rumor." -What if we were dealing with something that only needs to be read correctly in order to arrive at a true understanding of the text? Perhaps then we would stop talking about "fiction".

[ 4 ] It must be admitted that the entire narrative in the Gospel of John is shrouded in a mysterious veil. To understand this, we need only point to one thing. If the narrative were to be taken literally in the physical sense, what meaning would Jesus' words have: "The sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be honored thereby. " This is the usual translation of the corresponding Gospel words; but one gets to the point better if one translates - which is also correct according to the Greek - "for the manifestation (revelation) of God, that the Son of God may thereby be made manifest". And what should the other words mean? Jesus says "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even if he dies." (John 11, 4 and 25.) It would be trivial to believe that Jesus meant to say: Lazarus had only fallen ill so that he could show his art on him. And it would be a further triviality to think that Jesus wanted to claim that faith in him would bring a dead person back to life in the usual sense of the word. What would be special about a person who has risen from the dead if they were the same after the resurrection as they were before they died? Indeed, what sense would it make if the life of such a person was described with the words: "I am the resurrection and the life"? Life and meaning immediately come into Jesus' words if we understand them as the expression of a spiritual event and then in a certain way even literally as they are in the text. Jesus says: He is the resurrection that happened to Lazarus; and he is the life that Lazarus lives. Take literally what Jesus is in the Gospel of John. He is the "Word made flesh". He is the eternal that was in the beginning. If he really is the resurrection: then the "eternal, the beginning" has risen in Lazarus. We are therefore dealing with a resurrection of the eternal "Word". And this "Word" is the life to which Lazarus was raised. We are dealing with an "illness". But with an illness that does not lead to death, but which serves the "glory of God", that is, the revelation of God. If the "eternal word" is resurrected in Lazarus, then the whole process really serves to make God appear in Lazarus. For Lazarus has become someone else through the whole process. Before, the "word", the spirit, did not live in him; now this spirit lives in him. This spirit has been born in him. Certainly, every birth is associated with an illness, the illness of the mother. But this illness does not lead to death, but to new life. With Lazarus, that which becomes "sick" is that from which the "new man", the man imbued with the "word" is born.

[ 5 ] Where is the grave from which the "Word" is born? To get an answer to this question, one need only think of Plato, who calls the body of man a tomb of the soul. And we need only remember that Plato also speaks of a kind of resurrection when he refers to the spiritual world coming to life in the body. What Plato calls the spiritual soul, John calls the "Word". And Christ is the "Word" for him. Plato could have said: Whoever becomes spiritual has allowed a divine to rise from the grave of his body. And for John, this resurrection is what happened through the "life of Jesus". No wonder, then, that he has Jesus say: "I am the resurrection".

[ 6 ] There can be no doubt that the event in Bethany is a revival in the spiritual sense. Lazarus has become someone other than he was before. He has risen to a life of which the "eternal Word" could say: "I am this life. " So what happened to Lazarus? The spirit came to life in him. He became a partaker of life, which is eternal. - One need only speak of his experience in the words of those who have been initiated into the Mysteries, and the meaning is immediately revealed. What does Plutarch say about the purpose of the Mysteries? They served to withdraw the soul from bodily life and to unite it with the gods. Read how Schelling describes the sensations of an initiate: "Through the consecrations received, the initiate himself became a link in that magical chain, he himself became a Kabire,^{1"Kabires" in the sense of ancient mysticism are beings with a consciousness that lies high above the present human one. Through initiation - this is what Schelling wants to say - man himself rises above his present consciousness to a higher one.} taken up into the unbreakable connection and, as the old inscription expresses it, "joined the army of the upper gods" (Schelling, Philosophy of Revelation). And one cannot describe the change that took place in the life of the one who received the Mystery Consecrations more meaningfully than with the words that Aedesius says to his pupil, the Emperor Constantine: "If you once participate in the Mysteries, you will be ashamed to have been born only as a human being."

[ 7 ] Imbue your whole soul with such feelings and you will gain the right relationship to the event in Bethany. You will then experience something very special in John's story. A certainty dawns that no logical interpretation, no rationalistic attempt at explanation can provide. A mystery in the true sense of the word stands before us. The "eternal word" has entered Lazarus. To speak in terms of the mysteries, he has become an initiate (initiate) (see "Mysteries and Mystery Wisdom"). And the process we are told must be an initiation process.

[ 8 ] Let us imagine the whole process as an initiation. Lazarus is loved by Jesus (John 11:36). This cannot mean love in the usual sense. That would contradict the meaning of the Gospel of John, in which Jesus is the "Word". Jesus loved Lazarus because he considered him mature enough to awaken the "word" in him. Jesus had a relationship with the family in Bethany. This only means that Jesus prepared everything in this family that would lead to the great final act of the drama: the resurrection of Lazarus. He is a disciple of Jesus. He is such a disciple that Jesus can assume with certainty that the revival will one day take place with him. The final act of a revival drama consisted of a figurative act revealing the spiritual. Man not only had to comprehend the "die and become": he had to accomplish it himself in a spiritual-real act. The earthly, of which the higher man has to be ashamed in the sense of the Mysteries, had to be dismissed. The earthly man had to die the figurative-real death. The fact that his body was then put into a somnambulistic sleep for three days can only be described as an external process in comparison with the greatness of the transformation of life that took place, which corresponds to an incomparably more significant spiritual one. But this act was also the experience that divided the mystic's life into two parts. He who does not know the higher content of such actions in a vivid way cannot understand them. They can only be understood by comparison. The whole content of Shakespeare's Hamlet can be summarized in a few words. Anyone who uses these words can say in a certain sense that they know the content of Hamlet. And logically he knows it too. But those who allow the whole richness of Shakespeare's plot to take effect on them recognize it differently. His soul is imbued with a life content that cannot be replaced by mere description. The Hamlet idea has become an artistic, personal experience for him. -Through the magical and meaningful process associated with initiation, a similar process takes place in man on a higher level. He experiences pictorially what he spiritually attains. The word "pictorial" is meant here in such a way that although an external fact really takes place sensually, it is still a picture as such. We are not dealing with an unreal image, but with a real one. The earthly body has really been dead for three days. New life arises out of death. This life has survived death. Man has gained confidence in the new life. - This is what happened to Lazarus. Jesus prepared him for the resurrection. It is a figurative-real illness. An illness that is an initiation and that leads to a truly new life after three days: ^{1What is described here refers to the old initiations, which really required a three-day sleep-like state. No real newer initiation requires this. On the contrary, this leads to a more conscious experience; and the ordinary consciousness is never down-tuned within the initiation drama.}

[ 9 ] Lazarus is ripe to perform this act on himself. He wraps himself in the robe of the mystics. He locks himself in a state of lifelessness, which is at the same time figurative death. And when Jesus came, the three days were fulfilled. "Then they removed the stone where the deceased lay. But Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, 'Father, I thank you that you have heard me'" (John 11:41). The Father had heard Jesus, for Lazarus had come to the final act of the great drama of knowledge. He had recognized how to reach the resurrection. An initiation into the mysteries had been accomplished. What had been thought of throughout antiquity as such an initiation had taken place. It had happened through Jesus as the initiator. This was how union with the divine had always been imagined.

[ 10 ] In the spirit of ancient traditions, Jesus performed the great miracle of the transformation of life on Lazarus. Christianity is thus linked to the mysteries. Lazarus had become an initiate through Christ Jesus himself. He had thus become capable of rising into the higher worlds. At the same time, however, he was the first Christian to be initiated by Christ Jesus himself. Through his initiation he had become capable of recognizing that the "Word" which had come to life in him had become a person in Christ Jesus, that therefore the same thing stood before him in sensual personality appearance in his awakener which had become spiritually manifest in him. - From this point of view, Jesus' words are significant (John 11:42): "But I know that thou hearest me always: yet for the sake of the people which stand by I say this, that they may be led to believe that thou hast sent me. " That is, it is a matter of revealing that in Jesus the "Son of the Father" lives in such a way that, when he awakens his own being in man, he becomes a Mystic. Jesus thus expresses that the meaning of life was hidden in the mysteries, that they led to this meaning. He is the living Word; in him what was ancient tradition has become a person. And the evangelist may express this with the sentence: in him the Word became flesh. He may see in Jesus himself an embodied mystery. And the Gospel of John is therefore a mystery. Read it in such a way that the facts are only spirit; and you will read it correctly. If an old priest had written it: he would have told of a traditional rite. This rite becomes a person for John. It becomes the "life of Jesus". When a great recent scholar says of the mysteries - Burckhardt, Die Zeit Konstantins - that the mysteries are things "about which one will never come to a clear understanding", he has not recognized the path to this clarity. Take the Gospel of John before you and look at the drama of knowledge presented by the ancients in pictorial and physical reality, and you have your eyes fixed on the mystery.

[ 11 ] One can recognize in the words "Lazare, come out" the call with which the Egyptian priest-initiators called back into the life of everyday life those who, in order to die to the earthly and gain the conviction of the existence of the eternal, underwent the world-transcending processes of "initiation". But Jesus had thus revealed the mystery secret. It becomes understandable that the Jews could no more leave such a process unpunished in Jesus than the Greeks could have left it unpunished in Aeschylus if he had betrayed the mystery secrets. In the initiation of Lazarus, it was important for Jesus to present a process to all the "people standing around" which, according to ancient priestly wisdom, could only take place in the secrecy of the mystery. This initiation was intended to prepare for the understanding of the "Mystery of Golgotha". Previously, only those who "saw", i.e. were initiated, could know something about what took place with such an initiation process; now, however, even those who "believed, even if they did not see" should be able to gain a conviction of the secrets of the higher worlds.