![]() ![]() ![]() The Lazarus tale demonstrates that God’s grace goes far beyond our expectations, and that it can restore even beyond our scope. The lyrics of the spiritual are important here: “He may not come when you want him, but he’s right on time.” So whatever errors we commit, whatever difficulties we face, we cannot assume that we are beyond divine assistance. Lazarus was dead and his sisters had faith that Jesus could heal him, but that was the limit of their faith. Jesus calling Lazarus forth demonstrates the faith that God can act even when it is too late. Jesus actually cries when he meets with the sisters, affirming their grief and his at the loss of Lazarus and affirming their reprimand that this would not have happened if he got there sooner. Martha and Mary accept that they will be together with their brother at the end of their lives, but Jesus reminds him that he IS the Resurrection. This story to me is really about faith, a faith that can correct any sort of error. Jesus knew Lazarus was dying and Martha and Mary had faith that Jesus could save him while he was still alive. Henry Ossawa Tanner, Resurrection of Lazarus, 1896, Public Domain. Jesus actually cries for Lazarus showing a measure of grief that is not present elsewhere in the Gospels. He then orders the stone to be rolled away and calls his friend from his tomb. The Tanner painting depicts the moment when Lazarus is quickening as the command of his friend. He is addressed by Mary and Martha, who tell him clearly, and with a slight amount of reprimand, that had he come earlier their brother would not have died. Jesus knew that his beloved Lazarus was dying and arrived at Bethany too late to save him. He does this purposefully. Many people focus on Jesus’s act of raising Lazarus from the dead (he had been entombed for four days) as a pre-figuring of his own resurrection. It is that, no question. But there are other elements of the story that I think are often overlooked. It bears an investigation of the story of Lazarus to get a sense of what I am talking about here. The tale is found in the Gospel of John. ![]() This faith sustains painting as a practice, but recently there has been a kind of representation of the body, the “undead” body in painting that I think has a lot to do with the history of painting, but an attempt to re-inscribe the art in general and body specifically as a site of political agency. I want to avoid the obvious discussion of painting being dead. It’s not. Rather, painting has been killed several times and has been brought back to life by a certain kind of belief, or faith in it. ![]()
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