The Lazarus Problem

 What happens when someone's life becomes evidence that the story we've been telling ourselves isn't true?

In this episode of Beyond Belief, we turn to John 12 and the remarkable aftermath of Lazarus being raised from the dead. Lazarus is alive—but his very existence has become a problem. Crowds come to see him, many begin believing in Jesus, and the religious authorities decide that Lazarus must die.

But this episode isn't simply about the miracle of resurrection. It's about what happens when transformation challenges the assumptions of the people around us.

We explore the uncomfortable reality that change doesn't always make life easier. Sometimes a changed life attracts resistance. Sometimes people are more comfortable with who we used to be. And sometimes our lives can challenge someone else's story without us ever intending to.

The story of Lazarus also raises deeper questions about Christian faith, transformation, hope and resurrection. What does it mean to live differently without having all the answers? Can a changed life become a testimony in itself? And where have we decided that something—or someone—is beyond resurrection?

This episode explores:

• The aftermath of Lazarus being raised from the dead
• Why the chief priests wanted Lazarus killed
• How a changed life can become powerful evidence
• Why transformation can make other people uncomfortable
• The danger of defining people by their past
• Resurrection versus perfection
• Faith, hope, grief, scars and the process of becoming
• What it means to believe that God can bring life where we expect death
• Three questions for personal reflection

At the heart of the episode is one challenging question:

What would I have to change if I really believed that God could bring life where I had already decided there was only death?

Lazarus was once in a tomb. Then Jesus called his name—and he walked out.

Perhaps there are still places in our lives where we need to hear that same invitation:

Come out. Live again. Take the next step.

Beyond Belief explores the difficult questions surrounding faith, doubt, belief, Scripture and the Christian life—without pretending that every question has an easy answer.

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 Music

Fluidscape by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.

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Source: Incompetech — Royalty-Free Music

Artist: Kevin MacLeod / Incompetech

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:14

There are some stories in the Bible that become so familiar that we stop noticing how strange they really are. The story of Lazarus is one of them. We remember the tomb. We remember Jesus standing outside and calling Lazarus by name. We remember the grave clothes falling off. And we remember the celebration that followed. But John's gospel doesn't end the story there. In fact, one of the most unsettling details comes afterwards. Lazarus is alive. And that turns out to be a problem. Not for Lazarus, at least not initially, for the people who are watching, for the religious leaders, and perhaps, if we're honest, for us as well. Because a miracle is one thing when we can admire it from a distance. It is something else when it changes the way we have to understand the world. Welcome to Beyond Belief. Today, we're going to spend some time in John chapter 12, looking at three short verses about a man who had already died, had been raised by Jesus, and had somehow become a threat simply by being alive. And underneath that rather extraordinary story is a question worth sitting with. Meanwhile, a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came, not only because of him, but also to see Lazarus, who had been raised from the dead. And then John says, So the chief priest made plans to kill Lazarus as well. For on account of him, many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and believing in him. There it is. Just a few verses. And yet there is an extraordinary amount going on. The crowd wants to see Jesus, but they also want to see Lazarus, the man who had been dead, the man who was now sitting at a table. And the religious authorities don't simply regard Lazarus as an interesting curiosity. They decide that he needs to die. Again. There's something almost absurd about that. Lazarus has already been through death. And now, apparently, being alive has made him dangerous. John doesn't give us a long explanation of what Lazarus was saying. He doesn't record a great speech from him. We aren't told that Lazarus became a preacher. We don't get a detailed account of his testimony. John simply tells us that people were coming to see him and that his presence was contributing to people believing in Jesus. That's enough. Lazarus doesn't seem to have to do very much. He simply has to be there. And that is what makes the story so interesting. Think about what Lazarus represented. The authorities could argue with Jesus. They could question his teaching. They could challenge his interpretation of scripture. They could accuse him of breaking religious expectations. They could attempt to discredit him. But Lazarus presented a rather different problem. He was difficult to explain away. There he was, alive, after having been dead, and people knew it. This is important because John's gospel has been building towards this moment. The raising of Lazarus isn't presented as an isolated miracle, it becomes part of the growing conflict surrounding Jesus. The miracle draws people toward Jesus, and that response makes the authorities increasingly determined to stop him. So Lazarus becomes something more than an individual who experienced a miracle. He becomes a living reminder of what Jesus has done. And perhaps that's why the story feels uncomfortable. Because we tend to imagine that once a miracle happens, everything gets better. The problem is solved. The darkness lifts. Everyone understands. Everyone celebrates. But that's not always how life works. Sometimes something genuinely good happens and it creates new complications. Sometimes a change in one person's life exposes the unwillingness of others to change. Sometimes hope is welcomed by the people who need it and resisted by the people who have built their lives around the assumption that things cannot change. And that brings the story rather closer to home. Most of us know what it is like to become accustomed to a particular version of someone. Perhaps it's a family member. Perhaps it's a friend. Perhaps it's even ourselves. We develop an understanding of how that person behaves, what they are capable of, what they are not capable of, what we can expect of them. And then, occasionally, something changes. Someone gets sober. Someone walks away from an unhealthy relationship. Someone discovers faith after years of rejecting it. Someone finally gets help. Someone who has been bitter begins to forgive. Someone who has been afraid begins to live with courage. And suddenly the people around them have to adjust. Because the change in another person can force us to reconsider our own assumptions. If they can change, perhaps I was wrong about them. And perhaps I have to ask what else might be possible. And that's uncomfortable. It's much easier to say, that's not who they really are. They'll go back to their old ways. It won't last. There must be another explanation. Sometimes those things are true. People do relapse, people do make promises that they don't keep. People do have moments of enthusiasm and eventually fade. So maturity requires us not to romanticize every change as a permanent transformation. But John's story is making a much stronger claim. Lazarus was really dead, and now he is really alive. There are no convenient explanations for that. The question wasn't whether Lazarus had changed. The question was what his existence meant. We tend to focus on the dramatic moment in John 11. Jesus arrives, Lazarus has been in the tomb for four days. Martha meets Jesus. Mary comes. Jesus weeps. And then Jesus stands before the tomb and calls Lazarus out. It's one of those great scenes in the New Testament. But John 12 gives us something else. The aftermath. And the aftermath is important. Because resurrection doesn't mean that all opposition disappears. In fact, sometimes resurrection makes the opposition more visible. The religious leaders don't look at Lazarus and say, This is wonderful. Let's reconsider everything. They look at the situation and see a threat. John says that many people were turning towards Jesus because of what had happened to Lazarus. And that was precisely the problem. The authorities were not simply dealing with an unusual man, they were dealing with a story they could no longer control. Lazarus had become part of the evidence. Now, this is where I want to slow down a moment. Because when we tell the story, it's very easy to add details that John never gives us. We can imagine Lazarus sitting outside his home. We can imagine him touching the walls, tasting food, feeling the sunlight on his face. We can imagine his sisters watching him carefully. We can imagine people coming to ask him what death was like. All of those things make for compelling storytelling. But John doesn't tell us those things. So let's not pretend that he does. What John gives us is actually more powerful in its simplicity. Lazarus was alive. People knew he had been raised from the dead. People came to see him. And because of him, many people were believing in Jesus. That was enough to make the authorities want him dead. Sometimes we don't need to embellish a story to make it powerful. The facts are already extraordinary. Still, there's one question I find myself returning to. What must it have been like for Lazarus? Not the moment of resurrection, the days afterwards. Because whatever else we say about Lazarus, one thing is certain. His life could never simply return to what it had been. He had died. Jesus had called him back. And now everyone knew. There must have been a strange tension to that. On the one hand, an extraordinary gift. On the other, a life that had suddenly become very public. People wanted to see him. People wanted to know about him. And some people wanted him gone. That's a very different kind of miracle story from the ones we often tell. There is no suggestion that Lazarus asked for any of this. He didn't choose to become a symbol. He didn't volunteer to become evidence. He simply became the man who had been dead and was now alive. And perhaps that is worth remembering. Sometimes we don't get to choose the significance other people attached to our lives. We can only decide how faithfully we will live them. There is something else here I think deserves attention. Lazarus wasn't evidence because he had a perfect explanation. He wasn't evidence because he had all the answers. He wasn't evidence because he had become an impressive religious personality. He was evidence because his life had changed. That's a very different kind of testimony. And perhaps it's one that many of us underestimate. We sometimes think our testimony has to be dramatic. We need the right words, the right story, the right before and after picture, the right explanation for everything that happened. But perhaps a mature faith can be quieter than that. Perhaps sometimes the testimony is simply, I used to live one way, now I live differently. I don't have every answer, but something has changed. That doesn't mean every change in our lives is miraculous. It doesn't mean we should claim God's intervention every time something good happens. And it certainly does not mean that people who are struggling simply need to have more faith. Life is more complicated than that. But it does mean that transformation matters. And when transformation is genuine, people notice. This may be one of the reasons change can be so uncomfortable. Because your life can challenge somebody else's story without you ever intending it to. If you spend years believing that a person will never change and then they do, their change confronts you. If you've believed that forgiveness is impossible and then someone forgives you, their forgiveness confronts you. If you've believed that faith is only for naive people, and then you meet someone whose faith has made them more thoughtful, more compassionate, and more grounded, that can challenge your assumptions. If you've believed that a person is permanently defined by their worst mistake, and then you watch them rebuild their life, that can be uncomfortable too. Not because they're attacking you, but because their life raises questions. Lazarus wasn't walking around Bethany giving speeches against the chief priests. He didn't need to. His existence raised the question: what if Jesus really did what people say he did? And once that question is alive, it's very difficult to put it back in the tomb. There's another application here that I think is worth considering. We can become very comfortable defining people by their past: the addict, the failure, the difficult person, the person who walked away, the person who made the mistake, the person who disappointed us. And sometimes those labels are understandable. They may describe something that really happened, but they can become permanent graves. We stop allowing people to become anything other than the worst thing we know about them. And that isn't always justice. Sometimes it's simply a refusal to believe that people can change. Christian faith has always made a rather outrageous claim about human beings, that the past does not have to be the final word. Not because consequences don't matter. They do. Not because forgiveness means pretending nothing happened. It doesn't. Not because transformation is effortless, it isn't. But because resurrection is at the center of the Christian story. The God revealing Jesus is not limited to restoring people to the way they were. Something that once mattered to me, but now feels permanently buried. We need to be careful here. Christian hope isn't a promise that every circumstance will turn out exactly as we want. The resurrection of Lazarus does not mean that everyone Jesus loved will live forever. Lazarus eventually died again. And that's important. The miracle wasn't immortality, it was a sign. John himself is interested in what the miracle reveals about Jesus. So Christian hope isn't simply everything will work out. It is something deeper. It is the conviction that death, failure, sin, grief, and loss do not have the ultimate authority. That God can bring life where we cannot see a way forward. And sometimes that life looks like restoration. Sometimes it looks like courage. Sometimes it looks like forgiveness. Sometimes it looks like the ability to begin again. And sometimes it is simply the strength to keep going. I also find it interesting that Scripture doesn't tell us much about Lazarus after this. We don't get a record of his great ministry. We don't get a list of his accomplishments. We don't know what he did for the rest of his life. And perhaps that's deliberate. Because Lazarus wasn't important because he became extraordinary. He was important because Jesus had done something extraordinary in his life. That's a useful distinction. We can become so concerned with performing our transformation that we forget to live it. We want people to see how much we've changed. We want to explain our journey. We want to prove that we're different. But perhaps sometimes the most convincing evidence is simply consistency. Be kinder. Be more honest. Being present. Keeping your word. Choosing forgiveness. Getting back up after failure. Living differently over time. There is something deeply credible about a changed life that doesn't need to announce itself constantly. John gives us two very different reactions to Lazarus. The crowd comes to see him. The chief priests want him dead. And those two responses raise an interesting question. What do we do when the evidence challenges us? We can become curious. We can ask questions. We can reconsider, or we can become defensive. We can try to remove the evidence. We can try to discredit the person. We can decide that the easiest way to solve an uncomfortable question is to silence the person asking it. The chief priests chose the latter. And that's one of the sobering elements in this passage. They had seen enough to know that something extraordinary had happened. But instead of allowing the evidence to lead them towards Jesus, they treated the evidence as a problem. And that is a warning worth taking seriously. Because religious people are not immune to defending what is familiar. Sometimes we can become so committed to protecting our understanding of God that we become resistant to what God may actually be doing. So, what does this all mean to us? I think it means we should be careful with the language of resurrection. We shouldn't use it as a slogan. We shouldn't tell someone in deep grief that their suffering is simply an opportunity for a comeback. We shouldn't turn someone's pain into a motivational story. And we shouldn't assume that because someone looks fine on the outside, everything has been restored in the inside. A mature understanding of resurrection leaves room for grief. It leaves room for questions. It leaves room for scars. Lazarus came out of the tomb still wearing grave clothes. That's a detail John gives us in the previous chapter. Even resurrection did not mean there was no evidence of what Lazarus had been through. And perhaps that's an image worth remembering. You can be alive and still have scars. You can have hope and still have questions. You can have faith and still be in the process of healing. You can be changed without being finished. That's not failure. That's being human. Perhaps that is where Lazarus becomes particularly relevant to ordinary life. He doesn't appear to have been called to make a grand speech. He simply had to live, eat, work, talk, love his sisters, sit with people, walk through the village. Be the person who had come through death and was now living again. And sometimes that is what faithfulness looks like. Not a dramatic moment, not a viral testimony, not a perfectly constructed explanation. Just continuing to live differently, continuing to show up, continuing to believe that the past doesn't have to own the future. There is something deeply Christian about that kind of persistence. So let's return to the question we started with. What happens when someone's life becomes evidence that the story we've been telling ourselves isn't true? Sometimes we change, sometimes we resist, sometimes we celebrate, sometimes we become afraid. The chief priests were afraid because Lazarus represented a possibility they didn't want to accept. If Jesus could raise Lazarus from the dead, Then their understanding of what was possible had to change. And perhaps that is the uncomfortable question this passage leaves us with. Not simply, do I believe in miracles? But what would I have to change if I really believed that God could bring life where I had already decided there was only death? That is a harder question, and perhaps a more useful one. So here's what I'm taking away from the story of Lazarus. First, a changed life can be powerful evidence. Lazarus didn't need to have all the answers. His life itself had become part of the story. Second, transformation doesn't necessarily make life easier. Sometimes it creates new questions. Sometimes it attracts resistance. Sometimes other people are more comfortable with the person you used to be. And thirdly, resurrection is not the same thing as perfection. Lazarus was alive. He was not invincible. He had not become Superman. He was simply alive because Jesus had called him out of the tomb. And perhaps that's where we can find some encouragement. You don't have to have everything worked out to live as someone who has been given a new life. You don't have to be finished. You don't have to be impressive. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to have the perfect testimony. You simply have to be willing to live honestly in the life you've been given. So before we finish, I'd like you to sit with three questions this week. Where in your life have you stopped believing that change is possible? Where might you still be defining yourself or someone else by the past? And finally, if you really believe that God brings life where we expect death, what would you begin to hope for again? Don't rush those questions. You don't need an answer immediately. Sometimes the first step isn't certainty. Sometimes it's simply becoming willing to ask. Lazarus doesn't get the final word in John's story. Jesus does. And that's important. Because the point of Lazarus was never simply that one man came back to life. The point was what his life revealed about Jesus. A man who had been dead was now alive. And his life forced people to decide what they believed about the one who had called him from the grave. Perhaps our lives can do something similar. Not because we're extraordinary, not because we have all the answers, but because sometimes the most convincing evidence of hope is a person who has every reason to give up and chooses somehow to keep living. So wherever you are today, don't be afraid of the fact that you are still becoming. Don't mistake unfinished for dead. Don't assume that because something has been buried, it has necessarily been forgotten by God. And don't be ashamed of the scars that remain. They are part of your story too. Lazarus was once in a tomb. Then Jesus called his name and he walked out. Perhaps there are still places in our lives where we need to hear that same invitation. Come out, live again, take the next step. Not because everything has been fixed, but because death does not have the final word. Thank you for spending this time with me. Until next time, take care of yourself. Stay curious, and keep asking the difficult questions. Because sometimes the questions we would rather avoid are the ones that lead us somewhere new. God bless.