Lazarus Troubles

Jione Havea

And going near Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb.
And straightaway, going in where the youth [Lazarus] was, he stretched
forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, looking
upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with
him. And going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth,
for he was rich. And after six days Jesus told him what to do and in the
evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked
body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the
mystery of the kingdom of God.1

Lazarus Trauma

The John 11 storyline is traumatic: Jesus is away from Bethany when

Lazarus falls ill. Dis-ease. Martha and Mary, the sisters of Lazarus, send
words to inform Jesus that the one whom he loves affectionately (philein;
11:3, 11) is ill. Ache. The narrator and the sisters do not explain what they
hope Jesus will do in response. Doubt. But we know that they, together
with their brother, hold a special place in Jesus’ heart, for he loves them
unconditionally and sacrificially (agapan; 11:5). Hope.

1. Excerpt from Secret Gospel of Mark, which Morton Smith claimed Clement of
Alexandria cited in a letter (Smith 1973, 447). Though scholars question the authen-
ticity of the gospel and the letter (cf. Jeffery 2007; Esler and Piper 2006, 48), I am
interested in the excerpt because of its queerness.
This chapter is a revision of “Lazarus, Darling, Come Out,” presented at the joint
session of the Gender Group and the Bible and Cultural Studies Section, Society of
Biblical Literature, San Diego (17 November 2007). I am thankful to all who gave
critical feedback on that occasion, as well as for research assistance from Peleti Lima.

-157-

07.HornsbyStone.indd 157 4/27/11 6:56 PM

 158 BIBLE TROUBLE

Jesus takes his time to respond. Fear. Two days after receiving the mes-
sage, Jesus leaves for Bethany. Apathy. By that time, Lazarus was already
dead. Tears. We do not know when Lazarus died in relation to when Jesus
received the message from his sisters, or how long Jesus and his disciples
took to return to Bethany, but it is unambiguous that Jesus arrived four
days after Lazarus had died. Loss.
Jesus goes to the home of Martha and Mary first. Questions. Then he
goes to the tomb in the eyes and ears of onlookers, some of whom were
his advocates but more who seem to be his antagonists, and calls Lazarus
to come out. Rise. Then Jesus tells some of the people who were there to
unbind Lazarus and let him go. Stagger. At that point, the attention of the
narrator shifts from the raised body of Lazarus to the brewing resentment
against Jesus by the Jews. Anguish. The story turns to Jesus as if the raised
body of Lazarus was no longer needed. Neglect.
Jesus calls a dead body back to life. Power. Jesus did not let Lazarus
rest in peace. Troubles. The story of Lazarus, a dead man who walks, is
haunting. Lazarus troubles.

Queering Lazarus, in Prison

The story of the raising of Lazarus has caught the attention of preachers,
theologians, artists, and scholars, who interpret the story with a swarm
of perspectives and appropriate it for a multitude of interests. Instead of
repeating those findings, I have a simple goal for this chapter: to engage
the story of Lazarus under the shades of experiences in the salt-water part
of Oceania from where I come.
I will share some of the ideas of prisoners (or inmates) from the Pacific
Islands who met me during 2007 in Parklea Prison, New South Wales,
Australia (cf. Taylor 2004, 54). Regulars to my weekly visits agreed that I
may share one of their names: ‘Amini, Tu‘ifua, Sāmiu, Sione (x2), Va‘inga,
Filisione, and Mafi (others came from time to time). I asked them to read
John 11, to talk about Lazarus in the yard, to enact their understandings
during our visits, in order to help me see the story in their tattooed, knifed,
scarred, shot, pierced, and penetrated bodies. The prisoners also rapped a
ridiculous beat titled “the gospel of Lazaroos,” the lyrics to which changed
every time they rapped it. (The titles of the following sections are phrases
from their rap song.) I agreed not to rap their song (they said that I do not
have the tongue to rap!) but to share some of their views about the Lazarus
story and what I saw in their embodiment of the unwrapping of Lazarus.

07.HornsbyStone.indd 158 4/27/11 6:56 PM

 HAVEA: LAZARUS TROUBLES 159

There is of course no one prisoner understanding of the Lazarus story,

just as there is no one native, indigenous, or Asian perspective (cf. Kang
2004). I honor the multiplicity of prisoners’ views in this chapter, hoping
to elude the imposition of dominating discourses toward legitimating per-
spectival control (cf. A. Jensen 2007).
This chapter will not echo the call by Jesus, “Lazarus, come out!” but
queries “What da??” (cf. Althaus-Reid 2005, 7) on behalf of Lazarus. This
chapter is about the troubles of Lazarus and how the story of Lazarus trou-
bled us (as a group, for almost four months). I queer the story of Lazarus
in the footsteps of Stephen Moore’s understanding of “queer” as “a supple
cipher both for what stands over against the normal and the natural to
oppose, and thereby define, them, and what inheres within the normal and
the natural to subvert, and indeed pervert, them—this opposition and
subversion privileging, but by no means being confined to, the mercurial
sphere of the sexual”2 (Moore 2001, 18; cf. Althaus-Reid and Isherwood
2007; Stone 2001, 117). In this chapter, the mercurial sphere of the sexual
overruns with the spheres of death out of respect for Lazarus and as sug-
gested in one of the exchanges in Act 1 of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for
Godot (premiered in 1953):

Estragon: What about hanging ourselves?

Vladimir: Hmm. It’d give us an erection.
Estragon: (highly excited) An erection!
Vladimir: With all that follows. Where it falls mandrakes grow. That’s
why they shriek when you pull them up. Did you not know that?
Estragon: Let’s hang ourselves immediately.

Lazarus, Your Sentence Is Death

Some of the prisoners I consulted are murderers; the relatives of the vic-
tims and their circle of friends agonize when my friends receive light
sentences. But my inmate friends agonize when pale faces receive lighter

2. “I have said elsewhere that theology is a sexual act, and therefore to reflect on
the theologian, her vocation, role and risks means to take seriously the changing geog-
raphies of Christian kneelings, and confessionary movements, and how they relate to
positions of affection in Christian theology. In this way, queering who the theologian
is, and what is her role and vocation is a reflection on locations, closely linked to the
locale’s events and spaces made of our concrete and sensual actions” (Althaus-Reid
2005, 11).

07.HornsbyStone.indd 159 4/27/11 6:56 PM

 160 BIBLE TROUBLE

sentences for similar crimes.3 In the prison environment, death stings at

several levels, and my inmate friends emphasized the sting and stench of
death in their understanding of the story of Lazarus.4
For the prisoners, John 11 is first of all a story of death, of confine-
ment in a dark tomb from which family and friends are barred. Lazarus
received the sentence of death, and he rots in seclusion, bound up with
a cloth that would not let his body disintegrate even at death. The tomb
and the wrappings of Lazarus trouble my death-dealing friends, one of
whom squirmed restlessly on the ground like a fish out of water to illus-
trate how he imagined the rotting body of Lazarus. The story of Lazarus is
simply about death, not because there is hope for resurrection but because
death and death sentences are real. “Don’t mess with death,” the prisoners
advised me, for the hope of people with life or death sentences is in death
itself. Death is always at hand, and they do not fear death as much as I do
(cf. Byrne 1991, 10–11).

3. Issues of race and color are unavoidable when dealing with people in prisons.
While the prison population in New South Wales (NSW) is predominantly inmates
with European roots, like the world outside the prison walls, the percentage of inmates
with darker skin color is disproportionate to their population outside of prison.
The NSW Legislative Council on Social Justice (www.csa.nsw.gov.au) reports that
in 2001, 19 percent of young detainees in Western Sydney were Pacific Islanders, and
the number grew to 33 percent in 2002. In 2003, indigenous Australians made up 20.5
percent of the total Australian prison population (4,820 of 23,550) and 22 percent of
the total NSW prison population (2,150 of 9,800) in 2005.
On October 21, 2007, indigenous Australians made up 20 percent of the male
population, 30 percent of the female population, and 21 percent of the full-time prison
population in NSW. This is appalling, given that indigenous Australians make up
around 2.38 percent of the total Australian population.
This does not mean that people with darker skin colors are inherently lawbreak-
ers but that the eyes of the law look more closely over their neighborhoods. Most after-
noons at the block in the Sydney suburb of Redfern, for instance, where many indig-
enous Australians live, one will meet pairs of officers around every other corner. The
eyes of the law watch intensely the streets where people with darker skin colors roam.
4. Outside of prison, the sting of death is strong against victims of Western col-
onization, which continues to deliver death sentences to many people and cultures
throughout the world. This charge needs no explanation. But it still needs to be made
because the colonizing nations of the West have yet to account for their destructive
actions, because the ash heaps of colonization do not seem to affect how the world
powers operate, and because the victims of Western colonization are mostly people
with darker skin colors (so Dube 2006; Sugirtharajah 2003; Liew 2005). For people
with darker skin color, the sting of death is real.

07.HornsbyStone.indd 160 4/27/11 6:56 PM

 HAVEA: LAZARUS TROUBLES 161

The inmates easily identify with Lazarus. The more violent criminals
saw his death as a symbol for the chance to escape confinement, a view
that scared small-time offenders who were not ready for death but who
see the tomb of Lazarus as a figure for prison cells. Some were envious of
Lazarus, imagining that he had a tomb all for himself. For them, it would
have been cruel if Lazarus had a tomb-mate, as inmates have cell-mates,
and he is raised but the other was not. Lazarus’ resurrection thus troubled
the prisoners who realize that though many have life sentences, a few of
them, not all, will be released.

Where’s the Love?

The death-dealing prisoners imagined that Martha and Mary were desper-
ate when their brother fell ill. The story does not mention who was older
than whom or who their parents were, so this was probably a family of
three siblings.5 The illness of one family member, male or female, would
therefore be stressful to the other two siblings.
The sisters sent words to Jesus because he loved Lazarus (John 11:3).
As North puts it, “what matters now is not who Lazarus is as much as
how he stands in relation to Jesus; Lazarus is someone whom Jesus loves”
(2001, 41). What kind of love did Jesus have for Lazarus? Did Jesus love
Lazarus the same way as he loved his sisters?
Jesus relates differently to the sisters, and they respond to him differ-
ently. Martha is the busybody who hustles like an older sister to provide
for Jesus and his friends (Luke 10:38–42), and she comes outside their
home to meet Jesus upon his arrival (John 11:20). Mary is an indoors kind
of sister (cf. Byrne 1991, 59), preferring to sit (Luke 10:39) and kneel (John
11:32) at the feet of Jesus; she anoints his feet and then wipes them with her
hair at least once (John 12:3).6 Mary likes the feet of Jesus. Jesus must have
loved the sisters for the attention they gave to his needs, but he probably
did not love them the same way because they attended to different needs,
and their attention aroused different points of attention. When Jesus saw
Mary weeping, along with the Jews with her, he was “greatly disturbed in

5. This is not to say that their parents were physically dead or literarily murdered
by the narrator. Rather, as in the case of prisoners, the parents may be alive but no
longer involved in the lives of their children.
6. Cf. Matt 26:6–16 and Mark 14:3–11, where the feast was at the home of Simon
the Leper and the woman is not named. Cf. Esler and Piper 2006, 45–74.

07.HornsbyStone.indd 161 4/27/11 6:56 PM

 162 BIBLE TROUBLE

spirit and deeply moved” (John 11:33). Martha, however, did not come
weeping to Jesus, nor was Jesus moved when he met her (John 11:20–27).
What may have been the basis for the sisters’ claim that Jesus loves
their brother? Did Jesus love Lazarus differently from his sisters? Or did
he “dig” Lazarus like his sisters?
In the prison context, love is not associated with sexual practices. Pris-
oners have sex with one another, but that is not why they love one another.
They have “wives” in each yard, and now and then someone gets raped,
starting riots and further violence, but the prisoners do not see themselves
as gay. The prison culture whirls in homophobia, even though prisoners
(sometimes with guards) perform homosexual acts.7
In prison, love has something to do with the willingness to take the
fall, to “do a walk” (which means going to beat up, even kill, someone on
behalf of another) or to give up one’s life for one’s mates. Love is deadly.
The absence of this kind of love from the story of Lazarus was noticeable to
the inmates. They suspected that there might have been some Ooh Lazarus
loving between Jesus and Lazarus, but they were saddened that there was
no honest O Lazarus, would I had died instead of you (cf. 2 Sam 18:33b)
loving. It is not such a big deal for the prisoners if Jesus had a sexual rela-
tionship with Lazarus (cf. Goss 2006; Smith 1973, 154) and/or with his
sisters, but it is unacceptable that no one offered to “do a walk” for Lazarus.
To “do a walk” is no different from the “love command” that is assumed
to have been one of the governing principles of the Johannine community.
The key to understanding this love command is in John 15:13: “No one
has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (cf. North
2001, 42–43). It is of course easier to state the love command than it is to
do it. Many people loved Lazarus, but none showed greater love for him.

7. We need to rediscover God, as Althaus-Reid puts it, “outside the heterosex-

ual ideology which has been prevalent in the history of Christianity and theology. In
order to do that, it is necessary to facilitate the coming out of the closet of God by a
process of theological queering. By theological queering, we mean the deliberate ques-
tioning of heterosexual experience and thinking which has shaped our understanding
of theology, the role of the theologian and hermeneutics. That process requires from
us not only honesty and courage, but also a critical engagement with Queer Theory,
non-heterosexual and critical Heterosexual Theology. It also requires us to come clean
about our experiences, which in some way or other always seem destined to fall out-
side the normative sexual ideology of theology” (Althaus-Reid 2005, 2; cf. Stone 2001,
112–15).

07.HornsbyStone.indd 162 4/27/11 6:56 PM

 HAVEA: LAZARUS TROUBLES 163

The sisters sent words to Jesus, who became emotional, but he did
not do anything when Lazarus was ill. For my criminal friends, becoming
emotional is not enough. So they doubt if anything that might happen
afterward would be for the sake of Lazarus. Any tears that follow are croc-
odile tears, and any expression of sympathy later will be like someone who
brings flowers to the funeral to make up for not taking the time to come
while the deceased is still alive (in prison).
The prisoners were not convinced that Martha and Mary sent words
to Jesus so that he would come and be a healer. Rather, they suggest that
Martha and Mary called Jesus to be there for Lazarus, for if Jesus was there,
Lazarus would not have died. Lazarus would have lived because he loves
Jesus, and his love would have healed him: Lazarus would not have died
in the presence of his lover. Both sisters, when they greeted Jesus, said the
same thing, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died”
(11:21, 32). So it is not that they thought Jesus could heal their brother.
Rather, they trusted their brother to stay alive if Jesus was with him. Some
of the Jews believed so too (11:37).
The love of Lazarus for Jesus, and the effect of the presence of Jesus
for Lazarus, could have kept him alive, up and around, whereas the love of
Lazarus for his sisters, and for others, relaxes him, permits him to lie back
and die. So this was a story with multiple layers, and multiple degrees, of
love. If we follow the storyline, there is no doubt that Lazarus died for the
glory of Jesus. What love is greater? But where’s love for Lazarus?

Yo’ Jesus, What Took You So Long?

The inmates were dismayed that Jesus took his time to respond to the plea
of the sisters.8 What might the reason be for his delay? Jesus gives an expla-
nation: “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so
that the Son of God may be glorified through it” (11:4b). And the narrator
adds, “Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister [who is not
named here] and Lazarus, he stayed two days longer in the place where he
was” (11:6–7). The prisoners were not satisfied with these explanations,9
and they came up with four alternative explanations.

8. Compare Mark 5:21–43, where Jesus proceeds at once when he receives the
plea concerning the death of Jairus’s daughter, even though he was interrupted by the
woman with a hemorrhage in vv. 25–34.
9. So Byrne: “Following upon the remark about Jesus’ love in the preceding sen-

07.HornsbyStone.indd 163 4/27/11 6:56 PM

 164 BIBLE TROUBLE

First, some of the inmates feel that Jesus did not truly love Lazarus
and his sisters (compare Esler and Piper 2006, 75–103). If he really loved
them, he would have dashed off as soon as he heard that the one he loved
was ill. Whether at night or during a storm, a true lover would hurry to
be with his or her beloved. At the far side of the Jordan (John 10:40–42),
“Jesus is a long way from Bethany when Lazarus falls ill” (Esler and Piper
2006, 8), but it was not as if Jesus and his disciples were on an island so
that they had to wait for a boat to take them across. The message from
the sisters came quickly, and Jesus too could have come quickly. His delay
in coming suggests that he did not care, which is unacceptable to the
inmates. This of course also says something about the prisoners them-
selves, for they cannot show up when the ones they love need them. They
were therefore projecting onto Jesus the disappointment of their loved
ones in them.
Second, given that many families and friends are ashamed to visit them
in prison, some of the prisoners suggest that Jesus may have been afraid to
see his beloved dying. To see Lazarus in his ailment would remind Jesus of
his own mortality, which he was not prepared to confront. To see Lazarus
in a vulnerable state would be like looking through the bars at another
inmate being knifed. There is nothing one can do but be silent, for to raise
the alarm might mean that one will soon receive a knifing. To be silent is
to not draw attention to oneself, but one is still expected to “do a walk” on
behalf of one’s friend at another time. So the prisoners expect Jesus to “do
a walk” later for Lazarus.
Third, some of the prisoners suggest that Jesus might have been in a
situation from which he could not walk away, as in the case of gangsters
who trap one another into hanging out together as a group, a mob, result-
ing in each neglecting other more important people and responsibilities.
The one who leaves betrays the gang and that becomes a matter of life and
death. Such is gang culture. If that was the situation that Jesus was in, then
he could not break away easily, which would explain why he did not come
sooner to Lazarus.
Fourth, some of the prisoners thought that Jesus was just being a “reg-
ular guy.” He did not hurry to Bethany because regular guys don’t behave

tence, the delay comes as a severe surprise. It is not the response of a friend” (1991,
50). Source critics avoid this dilemma by imagining two accounts woven together in
John 11, one account declaring that Jesus came immediately after receiving the mes-
sage from the sisters (see esp. Burkett 1994).

07.HornsbyStone.indd 164 4/27/11 6:56 PM

 HAVEA: LAZARUS TROUBLES 165

like that. He might care for Lazarus and his sisters, but it is not a guy-thing
to announce and demonstrate love in public. Women do things like that,
as the sisters did when Lazarus became ill. Real manly men do not do that.
Self-control is what one expects from regular guys, and that is what Jesus
showed here. (So when Jesus wept in 11:35 he was no longer manly.)
The four alternative explanations make Jesus’ delay in coming easier to
understand, but the prisoners would not justify him. They did not accept
the explanations Jesus and the narrator gave, thus raising doubts about the
Johannine agenda. They were suspicious of whatever Jesus said and did
afterward. Was Jesus sincere? What was he covering up? For what was he
compensating?

Come Back, My Dear Lazarus10

When I first entered prison, I was overwhelmed by the power of space.

Prison space is not neutral, including the parts that are empty or desig-
nated as sterile. Prison space gasps under the tentacles of power and is
controlling even over visitors; prison space feels like a pool of whirling
power. When in prison, therefore, one has to confront the intersection of
space and power.
Attention to space and power is high also on the agenda of postco-
lonial theorists (cf. Punt 2006), especially with regard to the occupation
and fleecing of land spaces and the dispossession of the native people of
occupied lands (so Robert Warrior and Norman Gottwald). Postcolonial
theory attends closely to the exercise of power, calling for the dismantling
of abusive powers and authorities as well as restitution for those.
Powers and authorities are of course necessary for orderly and mean-
ingful life. But there are times when a limited number of people (fail to)
exercise their powers and authorities for their own gain and interests.
Powers and authorities are abused also when they are idolized or disinter-
ested while underprivileged people are being abused.
In the story of Lazarus, Jesus is clearly the character with power and
authority. John 11 is actually a story about Jesus in which Lazarus is a
pawn “for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through”
his illness (11:4), his death, and resurrection. Jesus speaks with authority

10. This is an allusion to the strife between Saul and David, and Saul’s attempt to
coax David back to his camp (cf. 1 Sam 26:21): Jesus is to Lazarus as Saul was to David.

07.HornsbyStone.indd 165 4/27/11 6:56 PM

 166 BIBLE TROUBLE

about going back to Judea, where Jews earlier tried to stone him (11:7–8),
in order to awaken Lazarus from sleep (11:11). Jesus sounds self-centered:
“Then Jesus told them, plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad
I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him” (11:14–15).
When Jesus and his disciples departed, his intention was clear: to raise
Lazarus from the dead. Was this for the interests of Lazarus, Martha, and
Mary also, or only for the interests of Jesus and God?
Martha believed that Lazarus would be resurrected on the last day
(11:24), and she did not ask Jesus to raise him right away. Mary, however,
did not say anything when she came to Jesus. She only wept, and her weep-
ing greatly disturbed him (11:33, 38). If Jesus was not confident with his
ability to raise Lazarus from the dead, Martha’s urgings (so West 2003)
and Mary’s weeping pushed him forward. But those were not enough. He
also needed to “do a prayer,” which was suspect in the eyes of my prisoner
friends: “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always
hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that
they may believe that you sent me” (11:42). While the prisoners believe in
the power of prayer, they are only prayerful when they prepare for court
hearings and for sentencing. Prisoners pray when their lives are in the bal-
ance, and they assumed the same was true for Jesus. The prisoners were
therefore very disappointed because they expected Jesus to “do a walk” but
he instead “did a prayer.”11
Jesus offered a prayer that gave him power over death.12 Then, like a
ruthless master who would not let a poor slave die, Jesus called Lazarus
back as if the hassles of life were preferable over the peace of death. The
master called back a dead person to prove that he is “the real deal.” Since
the prisoners expected Jesus to “do a walk” for Lazarus, they were annoyed
that Lazarus was called back to “do a walk” for Jesus instead. The power

11. “Nowhere else in the gospel tradition does Jesus pray to the Father before
working a miracle. What we have here, however, is not strictly a prayer, but a thanks-
giving, an act of communion with the Father which the bystanders are allowed to
‘overhear’” (Byrne 1991, 78).
12. There are other interpretations of the prayer, ranging from suggesting that
it was a show-off prayer to claiming that the prayer demonstrates the unity between
Jesus and God. The prayer “is a confident acknowledgment that on this occasion, as
always, Jesus has the ear of God” (North 2001, 102). What is often overlooked is how
the prayer follows upon Martha’s confidence in Jesus (so West 2003). Martha puts
Jesus on the spot, making him ask something from God, and Mary’s weeping excels
him into action.

07.HornsbyStone.indd 166 4/27/11 6:56 PM

 HAVEA: LAZARUS TROUBLES 167

of the master grows in this story, and Lazarus receives the chance to die a
second time.13

Dead Man Stripped

The tomb was opened, the stone rolled away, the prayer offered, then Jesus
cries with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
In the two depictions of this moment by Rembrandt,14 Jesus stands
with authority on the stone as if he has conquered the power and space
of death, with one of his arms raised. Jesus, the only one who is upright
(pun intended) in the depictions, is the central figure in both works.
Rembrandt presents the front of Jesus to the viewer in the earlier work
and his right side in the later one, turning Jesus away from the viewer as
if he is no longer the centering figure in Rembrandt’s understanding of
this story.
In Rembrandt’s 1630–1631 oil painting The Raising of Lazarus, the
lighting draws the viewer to the figure to the right of Jesus, whose arms
rise as if in surprise: “Whoa, cool!” Whereas Jesus raises one arm, this
character, who looks like a woman, raises both arms. If this character is
Martha,15 Rembrandt here highlights her place in the raising of Lazarus
(so West 2003). It is toward this character that Lazarus faces, while his
right arm reaches in the direction of Jesus, under the stone on which the
uncovered feet of Jesus stand. Though the raised right hand of Jesus sug-

13. This echoes the anxiety of prisoners who spend days preparing for their sen-
tencing, dress up, and come to court, to learn that the judge has delayed delivering the
judgment. They have to go through the same pain later. Similar is the frustration of
prisoners who receive tougher sentences after their retrial.
14. Both works by Rembrandt which I will discuss in this section are available
online at Olga’s Gallery (www.abcgallery.com). These works were produced two
decades after Caravaggio’s Raising of Lazarus (1608–1609; see Oates 2006 for a discus-
sion of Caravaggio’s work).
See Bal 1991 for suggestions on ways to “read” the works of “Rembrandt” (even
though Bal did not discuss Rembrandt’s works on Lazarus); Wilsey 2006 for the influ-
ence of the Protestant Reformation on Rembrandt (and Bach); and O’Kane 2005 on
how artists are interpreters. See also Esler and Piper 2006, 131–45, for early Christian
art depictions of a wand-bearing Jesus raising Lazarus, some intertexting this story
with the Jonah story.
15. It could also be Mary, or another woman. Note that at the bottom left hand
corner is another figure who appears to be a woman (her back is to the viewer).

07.HornsbyStone.indd 167 4/27/11 6:56 PM

 168 BIBLE TROUBLE

gests the announcement of a blessing, his face suggests a slight expression

of surprise: “Wow, did that really happen?” Could it be that the raised right
hand of Jesus is a “stop it” gesture?
The reaction of other people in this painting, none of whom looks at
the upright Jesus, affirms the Johannine agenda: the miracles and teach-
ings of Jesus were in order that people may believe that Jesus is the son of
God. The figures in the painting are more interested in the miracle than in
the person of Jesus. However, could the disinterest in the presence of Jesus
be an attempt to problematize the Johannine agenda?
In the 1632 etching The Raising of Lazarus, Rembrandt raises Jesus’ left
arm, turns him away from the viewer, and directs the face of Lazarus away
from where Jesus stands. Jesus gathers in his robe and holds his right fist
to his hip. It is through his posture that one may infer his emotions, since
his face is not visible. In South Pacific island contexts, one may read Jesus’
posture in two possible ways: first, Jesus is tired, frustrated, and annoyed,
or second, Jesus is gaily showing off his abilities.
Concerning this work also, the viewer looks to the expressions of
those who observe the event for reactions, a focal shift that underscores
the importance of the response to the miracle of Jesus. Rembrandt pro-
vides the viewer with the effect of the power of Jesus on others, one of
whom draws back with both arms raised, and in front of him, another
one raises both arms and leans forward. In this later work, Rembrandt
makes the impact of the raising of Lazarus more complex than in the ear-
lier work.16 In the 1630–1631 painting, the figure with raised arms may be
a woman who leans forward as if to receive and embrace Lazarus. But in
the 1632 etching, the figures with raised arms are male, and they express
different reactions, one leaning forward as if in obeisance to Jesus through
the raised head of Lazarus and the other drawing back as if in disbelief,
amazement, or fear. In the 1632 etching also is one woman figure at the
bottom right hand corner, leaning in the same direction as Lazarus.
I did not show these images to the prisoners, but I imagine that they
would say that Rembrandt endorses the Johannine agenda. In both works,
Rembrandt gives the impression that this story is not about Jesus or
Lazarus but the effects of the work of Jesus on others. Rembrandt moves

16. Rembrandt’s works provide far more than a snapshot of a biblical event. Rem-
brandt utilizes chiaroscuro, facial expressions, and figure arrangement to convey com-
plex theological concepts to those who view them.

07.HornsbyStone.indd 168 4/27/11 6:56 PM

 HAVEA: LAZARUS TROUBLES 169

the focus away from Jesus and Lazarus to the reaction of the people. In this
regard, Rembrandt is trapped by the drive of the Johannine agenda.
But something telling hides in the frame of the 1632 etching. The
rounded frame of the etching accentuates the elongated figure of Jesus.
The upward tapering of the frame draws the viewer to Jesus’ raised hand,
which seems to pull up the fluid body of Lazarus. Or, was Jesus reaching
up to throw down the pots, tools, weapons, and other hangings from the
ceiling, upon Lazarus? These hangings are within the reach of Jesus’ raised
left arm in the 1632 etching but beyond the reach of the right arm in the
1630–1631 painting. In this reading, the two characters with raised arms
in the etching are reacting to what they thought Jesus was trying to do, that
is, they saw him reaching for something with which to knock Lazarus back
down. Why did Rembrandt raise Jesus’ left arm? Was Jesus left-handed?
Did Jesus plan to do something leftist to Lazarus? If the raised right hand
in the painting suggests a blessing, what does the raised left hand in the
etching suggest? Did Rembrandt think that the raising of Lazarus was
problematic?

Wazzup wit’ Jesus?

What upset the prisoners the most was that after Jesus raised Lazarus from
the dead, he passed the responsibility for attending to Lazarus to other
people. Jesus did not embrace Lazarus but called on other people to “Unbind
him, and let him go” (11:44). Maybe Jesus was giving the responsibility to
care for Lazarus to the community (so Perkins 2000), but this troubled the
prisoners. They wanted Jesus to at least touch Lazarus, whom he loved.
Lazarus was untouchable in the eyes of Jesus, as well as for the narra-
tor, in whose account nothing was done to the body of Lazarus. Lazarus
had been dead for four days, so his body needed at least a good scrub
and preferably some ointment and clothing (cf. Sanders 2007). But no one
seemed to care about his body.
The neglect of Lazarus’ body stands in the shadows of other biblical
stories that attend to the body. The stories best known to the prisoners are
the garden story, where God made garments to clothe Adam and Eve (Gen
3:21), and Michal criticizing David for parading in his nakedness (2 Sam
6:16–23).17 How might God and Michal react to the neglect of the body of

17. See also the attention to the body in the stories of Uriah, whom David

07.HornsbyStone.indd 169 4/27/11 6:56 PM

 170 BIBLE TROUBLE

Lazarus? The story of Lazarus also brings to mind the stories of the wife
of Potiphar, who stripped Joseph of his garment (Gen 39:7–18), and the
Beloved Disciple, who ran off naked from the garden of Gethsemane (Mark
14:51–52; cf. R. Jensen 1995, 22). In this connection, Lazarus is a reminder
of Joseph and a figure of the Beloved Disciple (cf. Goss 2006, 560).
It troubled the prisoners that Jesus loved Lazarus but did not do what
they expect of a lover. Jesus should have embraced his beloved. The pris-
oners consequently raised two questions: Wazzup wit’ Jesus? Why didn’t
he give Lazarus a scrub? These questions are especially critical in light of
the fact that Jesus gets bodily services in other Gospel stories: he is fed,
washed, and his feet were anointed at least once. Jesus could have given or
requested a scrub for Lazarus and, as in the parable of the Prodigal Son,
asked for fresh clothes to be put on his beloved, the one who was dead but
has now been raised (Luke 15:11–32). Jesus later washed the feet of his
disciples, but not those of Lazarus.
If we follow the storyline, Lazarus was raised, unbound, and then let
go, naked. That is not acceptable to my criminal friends, who look forward
to their release from prison; and they expect their families and friends to
greet, clothe, and celebrate them.
Jesus called Lazarus to come out and then left him hanging. This did
not satisfy the prisoners, who understand the resurrection of Lazarus as a
“coming out” kind of event (so Perkins 2000). Lazarus did come out. But
Jesus did not come out fully. Resurrection should not be a wham-bang-
get-out-of-here experience. Rather, as Heyward puts it, like coming out,
resurrection is a lifetime process that has to do with spirituality. “Coming
out [like resurrection] is a matter of making connections with one another,
spiritually as well as sexually. It is an ongoing process of revelation and
manifestation, of incarnation and epiphany” (Heyward 1995, 112).

Get Po’Lazarus a Bikini!

This chapter follows in the tracks of the Secret Gospel of Mark (see Smith
1973), which puts a linen cloth over the naked body of Lazarus. Since the
prisoners I consulted are Pacific Islanders, an appropriate garment with
which to clothe po’Lazarus would be a bikini.

instructed to wash his feet after returning from the battlefield (2 Sam 11:6–13), and
Esther, who underwent twelve months of cosmetic treatment under the directions of
a eunuch (Esth 2:12).

07.HornsbyStone.indd 170 4/27/11 6:56 PM

 HAVEA: LAZARUS TROUBLES 171

The bikini swimwear received its name from an island in the North
Pacific Ocean, Bikini, where the United States tested atomic weapons
in the 1940s and ’50s. The bikini swimwear was released in the 1940s in
Paris and it was named after Bikini Atoll on the reasoning that the burst
of excitement the swimwear would cause would be like the nuclear device.
There could be a second reason, which is that the design of the bikini, with
a bottom and a top, suggests that it covers explosives at the bottom with
the double top imaging the mushroom from the explosion.
I add a third, pidgin-like phonetic play: note how “bikini” sounds like
“beginning.” The bikini outfit needed for Lazarus therefore embodies the
need for a new beginning for Lazarus. In other words, the bikini/beginning
for Lazarus, and for people like Lazarus, involves a call for “the empire” to
account for the “bikini atolls” that have been stripped and blown up in the
interests of its government. In Oceania, the empire has at least two faces.
At Bikini, in the Micronesian group to the north, the empire is the United
States of America. But to the southeast, the empire is France, who tested
its weapons in Mururoa.
Jesus ordered that Lazarus be stripped and released, naked; empires
strip islands then leave them naked. Those empire nations, like Jesus in the
biblical account, should no longer be allowed to test their explosions. For
Lazarus to continue troubling, empire nations should be called to account
for their explosions.
The prisoners’ insistence that Lazarus be given a scrub and clothing,
rather than being let go naked as in the biblical account, is affirmation that
resurrection is a relational movement (Heyward 1995, 20; cf. Goss 2006,
548). This relational movement is mutual and not static. “It is a dynamic
process generated by a shared assumption that all parties in a relationship
can, and should be empowered through the relational process” (Heyward
1995, 87; cf. Goss 2006, 555).
The raising of Lazarus benefitted the mission of God, for many Jews
believed Jesus because of Lazarus (John 11:45). Because of this, Lazarus
was a marked man. The chief priest planned to put him to death again
(John 12:10–11). The troubles of Lazarus increased after his resurrection,
thanks to Jesus. For the troubles of Lazarus, my prisoner friends were also
trouble.

Works Consulted

Althaus-Reid, Marcella. 2005. The Queer God. London: Routledge.

07.HornsbyStone.indd 171 4/27/11 6:56 PM

 172 BIBLE TROUBLE

Althaus-Reid, Marcella, and Lisa Isherwood. 2007. Thinking Theology

and Queer Theory. Feminist Theology 15:302–14.
Bal, Mieke. 1991. Reading “Rembrandt”: Beyond the Word-Image Opposi-
tion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burkett, Delbert. 1994. Two Accounts of Lazarus’ Resurrection in John 11.
NovT 36:209–32.
Byrne, Brendan. 1991. Lazarus: A Contemporary Reading of John 11:1–46.
Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press.
Dube, Musa W. 2006. Looking Back and Forward: Postcolonialism, Glo-
balization, God and Gender. Scriptura 92:178–93.
Esler, Philip F., and Ronald Piper. 2006. Lazarus, Mary and Martha: Social-
Scientific Approaches to the Gospel of John. Minneapolis: Fortress.
Goss, Robert E. 2006. John. Pages 548–65 in The Queer Bible Commentary.
Edited by Deryn Guest et al. London: SCM.
Heyward, Carter. 1995. Staying Power: Reflections on Gender, Justice, and
Compassion. Cleveland: Pilgrim.
Jeffery, Peter. 2007. The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled: Imagined Rituals
of Sex, Death, and Madness in Biblical Forgery. New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press.
Jensen, Alexander S. 2007. Critical Theory, Feminism and Postcolonial-
ism. Pages 192–206 in Theological Hermeneutics. London: SCM.
Jensen, Robin M. 1995. The Raising of Lazarus. BRev 11.2:20–28, 45.
Kang, Namsoon. 2004. Who/What Is Asian? A Postcolonial Theologi-
cal Reading of Orientalism and Neo-Orientalism. Pages 100–117 in
Keller, Nausner, and Rivera 2004.
Keller, C., M. Nausner, and M. Rivera. 2004. Postcolonial Theologies: Divin-
ity and Empire. St. Louis: Chalice.
Liew, Tat-siong Benny. 2005. Margins and (Cutting-)Edges: On the (Il)
Legitimacy and Intersections of Race, Ethnicity, and (Post)Colonial-
ism. Pages 114–65 in Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: Interdisciplinary
Intersections. Edited by S. D. Moore and F. Segovia. London: Contin-
uum.
Moore, Stephen D. 2001. God’s Beauty Parlor and Other Queer Spaces in
and around the Bible. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
North, Wendy E. Sproston. 2001. The Lazarus Story within the Johannine
Tradition. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
O’Kane, Martin. 2005. The Artist as Reader of the Bible: Visual Exegesis
and the Adoration of the Magi. BibInt 13:337–73.

07.HornsbyStone.indd 172 4/27/11 6:56 PM

 HAVEA: LAZARUS TROUBLES 173

Oates, Amy. 2006. The Raising of Lazarus: Caravaggio and John 11. Int
61:386–401.
Perkins, Benjamin. 2000. Coming Out, Lazarus’s and Ours: Queer Reflec-
tions of a Psychospiritual, Political Journey. Pages 196–205 in Take
Back the Word: A Queer Reading of the Bible. Edited by R. E. Goss and
M. West. Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim.
Punt, Jeremy. 2006. Why Not Postcolonial Biblical Criticism in (South)
Africa: Stating the Obvious or Looking for the Impossible? Scriptura
91:63–82.
Sanders, Beth. 2007. Heaven Scent. ChrCent 124 (5):19.
Smith, Morton. 1973. Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Steinberg, Leo. 1983. The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in
Modern Oblivion. New York: Pantheon.
Stone, Ken. 2001. Homosexuality and the Bible or Queer Reading? A
Response to Martti Nissinen. Theology and Sexuality 14:107–18.
Sugirtharajah, R. S. 2003. Postcolonial Reconfigurations. St. Louis: Chalice.
Taylor, Mark Lewis. 2004. Spirit and Liberation: Achieving Postcolonial
Theology in the United States. Pages 39–55 in Keller, Nausner, and
Rivera 2004.
West, Mona. 2003. The Raising of Lazarus: A Lesbian Coming Out Story.
Pages 143–58 in vol. 1 of A Feminist Companion to John. Edited by
A.-J. Levine and M. Blickenstaff. FCNTECW 4. Cleveland, Ohio: Pil-
grim.
Wilsey, John D. 2006. The Impact of the Reformation on the Fine Arts.
Faith and Mission 23 (2):31–54.

07.HornsbyStone.indd 173 4/27/11 6:56 PM

07.HornsbyStone.indd 174 4/27/11 6:56 PM