Saint Nicholas Church
Salem, MA
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
“O Lord, wishing to see the tomb of Lazarus—for thou wast soon to dwell by thine own choice within a tomb—thou hast asked: ‘Where have ye laid him?’ And, learning that which was already known to thee, thou didst cry to him whom thou didst love: ‘Lazarus, come forth.’”
This hymn, by the Emperor Leo the Wise, was sung at Vespers yesterday. It is the first hymn of Lazarus Saturday, and it establishes a theme that runs throughout the services in honor of the raising of Lazarus: that is, Christ, who is yet one person, nevertheless possesses two natures, two activities, and two wills. Our Lord is truly and fully divine and truly and fully human, though both his natures exist in a single hypostasis, a single concretely existing being: Jesus Christ, the God-man.
We find this theme in many hymns for the feast, whether they were written by Leo or Saint Andrew of Crete or Saint Cosmas of Maiuma or Saint Theophanes the Branded: as man, Jesus asks questions; as God, he knows all. As man, Jesus weeps; as God, he has power over life and death.
This is the dogma of the Church, formulated at the Fourth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils and expressed in important doctrinal works such as the Tome of Saint Leo, Pope of Rome. But, as with all of our holy doctrines, the claim that Christ is fully God and fully man is not merely a matter of theological abstraction, or something requires our mere intellectual consent.
Rather, this insight into Jesus’ two natures helps us to approach and draw near to him in prayer, contemplation, and activity, both during Holy Week and throughout our lives.
On the one hand, all throughout Great Lent, we have heard readings from Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews that emphasize Our Lord’s role as mediator: because he became truly man and truly suffered in the flesh, he can sympathize with us in all our troubles.
This week, when we see Jesus weeping over the death of a friend, or weeping in the garden of Gethsemane, or crying out in pain on the Cross, we know that, as man, he truly suffered for our salvation. And, as such, he understands our suffering.
Whatever our sufferings may be, we can, through faith and repentance, unite those sufferings to his Passion, and in his Passion find both strength and solace.
This is why, throughout the Great Fast, especially on Wednesdays and Fridays, we find many hymns praising and venerating the nails, the lance, and the other instruments of Christ’s Passion. More than this, these same hymns often also express adoration for Christ’s wounds, wounds which—as we will hear on Thomas Sunday—remain imprinted on his risen and deified Body unto all ages. The Lord’s suffering was real, and it was all for the sake of our salvation.
Thus, Our Lord is no distant figure or abstract power—he is very much a human being like us, one who knew terrible suffering and deprivation and who identifies with each of us in our own suffering.
And yet, when we approach Our Lord, we are not merely approaching a fellow human being who knew great pain and so understands our pain. Jesus is the Man of Sorrows, but he is not only the Man of Sorrows. He is also truly and eternally God from the ages who became man in time.
As such, he is not only wounded for our sake: he is full of power to heal our wounds. He weeps on our behalf, yes, but he also possesses the power to turn our weeping into joy, if we will but let him. As man, he is able to mediate for his fellow men; as God, he is able to deify mankind.
This all brings us back to the story of Lazarus. This story from the Gospel of John contains the shortest sentence in all of the Bible: “Jesus wept.” In the face of the death of his friend, Jesus is simply, starkly, really overcome by human grief. But, as God, he is full of the divine desire to set things right, to repair the breach that death has made in the world, and, as God, he is the very source of the unquenchable power of life. And so he cries out: “Lazarus, come forth!”
At the time, Mary and Martha and the disciples did not fully grasp what had happened. But we hear of these things with full understanding. We do not go through Holy Week in a state of pretend, as if we do not know the end of the story and the truth of the matter. Rather, as we see Christ draw near to his Passion, we know that he goes there as fully God and fully man. He truly embraces human suffering and accepts death, and yet we know that he is God, eternal and invincible. When he raises Lazarus, Christ is not dead crucified and slain, and yet, according to the hymns of Lazarus Saturday, we already see in this event both evidence and prefiguration of Christ’s Resurrection.
Throughout this coming week, with every step the Lord takes towards Golgotha, we understand that he is both the one who wept and the one who raised the man who was four days’ dead. We unite ourselves to his Passion in sympathy, kissing his wounded Body and venerating his winding sheet; we also call upon him as Almighty God, even as he lies in the tomb. We see his lowliness and we perceive his majesty.
And this is the pattern all the days of our life: we approach Christ through his humanity, and we encounter his divinity. We come to him as the Crucified, and we know him as the Lord of ages. We follow in his human footsteps, making our own way of the Cross, and we hope to taste of his divine gifts in the habitations of eternal life.
To Jesus Christ, true God and true man, who truly suffered death for our salvation while eternally possessing the power of life, who wept over his friend and who raised his creature from the dead, be all glory and adoration, together with his Father and his All-holy Spirit, unto ages of ages. Amen.