on the raising of the dead

 

If we accept, even hypothetically, that God can raise the dead, a question arises about timing. Why is Lazarus raised on the fourth day, and Jesus on the third day, after their respective deaths?

In the epic poem that opens the book of Genesis (and, therefore, the library we know as the Bible) the fourth day is the day on which God calls the sun, moon, and stars, conferring on them a vocation to mark night from day, and season from season. (To ask how there could be days before there was sun or moon is to miss the point: this is not creation, but vocation. A day is a day, and a night is a night, even when the sun, moon, and stars are totally obscured by cloud cover.) In his account of the good news of Jesus, or Gospel, John makes much of the symbolism of deeds done during the day and deeds done at night; between the things Jesus does to bring freedom to others, and the things his enemies plot to take him prisoner. In this, Lazarus is the moon to Jesus’ sun, marking the arrival of Jesus’ ‘Passion,’ of the time (night) where he is ‘done to’ (paschō) rather than ‘doing’ (poiō).

The third day is the day on which God draws land—the soil from which God will draw out the human being—from the flood of sea, which, in the poetic imagination of the Bible represents chaos and death. This is also the day on which God calls forth the first vegetation—the first fruits of the fruit-bearing plants. Jesus’ resurrection is presented as the return of human beings from death, not as a never-to-be-repeated event but as the first fruit of something that will, at some future point, become universal.

So not only raising from the dead, but also the specific timing of these events, is significant; makes a statement concerning the story in which we find ourselves.