“Scott adds a context around the existing scriptures that helped me to think about what it would be like to be Lazarus… the danger, the fear, the uncertainty about being given a second chance.”
Julie Van Meter, author of A Beautiful Gift
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This is the story of Lazarus of Bethany, told through tale and tribulation.
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“This book takes us through the events after Lazarus’ rising from the grave and his feelings of being lost, disoriented perhaps. This brings a very human aspect to the miracle.”
- CMTStibbe, author of Chasing Pharaohs
Breakwater Harbor Books presents by Scott. J. Toney
Books by Scott J. Toney
Dusk Crescence
The Ark of Humanity
Eden Legacy
Lazarus, Man
Lazarus, Man
Scott J. Toney
Copyright Scott J. Toney 2012
Breakwater Harbor Books, Inc.
Scott J. Toney and Cara Goldthorpe, Co-Founders
www.breakwaterharborbooks.weebly.com
Cover by David Lockhart
Author e-mail –
[email protected] Cover Artist e-mail –
[email protected] First Paperback Printing, March 2012
Dedications
This book is dedicated to God; for all that he has taught me and all that he has given me in my life. When things seem darkest God is always here, leading the way. I thank him for my wife, my daughter, our family, friends and home. I thank him for giving hope when I see none and for loving humanity enough to give us salvation.
It is also dedicated to the unborn baby that my wife and I lost while Lazarus, Man was being written. We lost our little one at twelve weeks of pregnancy and we miss our baby dearly. Someday we’ll be with our child in heaven. God leads us through pain. This story is for you, baby. In it is my love for you.
Acknowledgments
My wife has been an amazing supporter and editor of this book and her love and dedication are infinitely important to me. Lazarus, Man would not be as well written without her. Because of her it is a better book and I am a better man.
I also give a great thanks to Ivan Amberlake, author of The Beholder, for all of his editing advice. In the early stages of Lazarus, Man he supported the book and urged me onward. Having a fellow author and friend like Ivan is invaluable.
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Darkness.
Nothing.
There was a void in the world around him, without light or sound.
A heaviness weighed on Lazarus’ soul as he grasped for being. He sensed in the darkness there had been light only moments before but he could not grasp what that light was.
Suddenly he felt a pulse in his chest. Something heavy held his body firm. Memories flooded through his mind of heat, cattle… family. Where are my sisters? What has happened to me?
The world was somehow wrong.
He tried to move but found he could not, could not raise the heaviness above him. He smelt earth.
Then, with a thrust, he pushed his bound arms out of the cave soil he was buried in and braced them on the earth, using his weakened strength to pull upward. Earth caved in about him as he rose from his grave, his arms and legs bound with bandages. There was a cloth over his face he could not remove. He saw a faint light before him through the cloth.
“Lazarus, come out,” a voice beckoned.
He walked slowly in his bandages toward the light and could feel a warm breeze move about him. The sun radiated in the cloth over his eyes.
“Unbind him, and let him go,” the voice returned.
He felt coarse hands on his arms as bandages were unwrapped from him. Coolness came over his skin where they had been. Lazarus breathed heavily, unsure of what was happening. He had a vague memory of being sick before this. He was barely aware of who he was.
The cloth over his face was pulled away and he squinted as sunlight blinded him. A bearded man with long wavy hair stood in the light. Jesus, he thought in disbelief as the man approached, placing his palm on Lazarus’ forehead.
“You are healed, brother,” Jesus told him as Lazarus’ sisters rushed to his side. “You are still needed in this world.” There was a crowd gathered beyond the cave’s entrance.
“Brother…” Martha cried and kissed his cheek. Her soft hands grasped one of his. Tears streamed down her face. “What a blessing…”
Mary had embraced him and was kneeling before Jesus now. “Thank you, Jesus. How could we doubt you are the son of God?”
“Rise, sister,” Jesus told her. “There is no need to kneel for me. God’s grace is given freely. It is him who we should praise.”
“And through you he has raised our brother from his tomb. We are forever in your debt.”
Jesus took her hand and helped her to rise. “All I ask is your belief and your mouths to spread God’s word in the coming days. Our people will soon face days when believing is much harder than it is now. But come, let us rejoice in what God has done.”
He turned to Lazarus, embracing him. Lazarus felt the warmth of the man and felt his sense of confusion change to a feeling of peace. When Jesus pulled his arms away Lazarus walked out into the sun, through the awestruck crowd toward his home.
A sheep baaed as he passed. He opened the front door to his home and headed to his room, lying down on his straw bed, closing his eyes and giving in to darkness and rest.
1
Six days before Passover Lazarus sat at a large table made of coarse wood in his eating room. Candle flames flickered before him as wax dripped down the candlesticks. His sisters had invited Jesus to dine with them and had prepared a meal of lamb, wine and bread for their guest. The full aroma of cooked lamb wafted over him.
Lazarus had been searching for purpose in the days since Jesus had resurrected him from the dead. He had even returned to his grave, feeling the soil he had been buried in and feeling a cold connection to the place. He was distant, lost.
“They will be here soon,” Martha spoke as she entered the room with several loafs of bread on a plank of wood. “They are approaching on camels. You should greet their arrival.”
Lazarus looked to the tops of his hands, following his veins with his sight, looking at their slight pulse beneath his skin. Why was I chosen? This lost feeling will not leave me.
“Why do you act like this?” Martha questioned him. “You should be thankful. What a miracle he has given you.”
He sat silently. “No,” he replied. “I am not sure of that, a blessing and a curse.” He looked up to meet her eyes and then turned to look into the flame of one of the candles. “I will await him here.” The candle flame licked and curled.
As Martha left the room he heard the commotion of men dismounting their camels and greeting his sisters and their servants. Soon the men entered the eating room and gathered around his table. There was barely room for them all and Jesus came to his side, placing his hand on Lazarus’ shoulder. He sat down beside Lazarus.
“How are you, my brother?” Jesus asked. “You do not seem well, and yet you have life when you did not before. Do you not realize God’s gift that you have received?”
Lazarus looked to the handsome man’s face. His presence made him feel at peace. “To be dead, to pass on from life and then return is strange. Why did you choose to make me return?”
Jesus placed his hand on Lazarus’ own. It was warm. “So that others would see and believe, for them to know I am the son of God. And not just for them, you will do great things, Lazarus.”
“Thank you,” Lazarus said as Mary and Martha entered the room with pitchers of wine. They filled the goblets around the table as servants b
rought the lamb.
“Have faith,” Jesus assured him.
Before the feast they joined hands. They thanked the Lord for what they would eat, for the lamb’s sacrifice and for the love and dedication the Lord had for them. They thanked him for friendships, family and faith.
Lazarus ate little and did not speak for the remainder of the meal. Instead he was deep in thought about why Jesus said he had been raised from his tomb. “So that others would see and believe…” He lived so that others would believe. The gift of life wasn’t specifically meant for him. Somehow this helped him make sense of his new existence. And yet he says I will do great things?
When they had finished eating and resigned to conversation Mary rose from the table and returned with a pitcher of sweet smelling perfume. She came to Jesus’ side. “Can I bathe your feet?” she asked. “You have done so much for us. It would please me to do this for you.”
Jesus turned from the table and looked to her. “I would be honored, Mary.”
She moved a wooden stool to his side as he removed his sandals and rested his bare feet on it. Mary anointed his feet and wiped them with her hair, filling the house with the fragrance of the ointment.
“Thank you,” Jesus spoke to her. “Your heart warms me.”
“It is my pleasure to share what I have with you,” she said as she took the pitcher of ointment and went to leave the room.
Lazarus was shocked to watch Judas, one of Jesus’ disciples, stand from the table after a long drink of wine and look with anger at her. “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”
Jesus sat calmly. “Let her alone, let her keep it for the day of my burial. The poor you will always have with you, but you do not always have me.”
As Lazarus thought about Jesus’ words, he heard a mass of voices beyond his home’s walls. Dusk was setting upon them, candle and sconce light illuminating the room.
“Who has gathered outside?” John, another of Jesus’ disciples, asked.
Lazarus felt Jesus set his warm hand on his back. “Let us see. Will you walk with me, Lazarus of Bethany?” The disciples rose from the table as well as Martha.
Lazarus rose with Jesus’ hand still on his back. “Yes,” he said and followed Jesus and his disciples out of his eating room, through the hallway and out the front door where sconces of flame lit the outer doorway. A crowd had gathered. They silenced when they saw Jesus.
One man stepped forward and the light illuminated him more than the rest. “Is it true you have raised the man, Lazarus, from his tomb? We have traveled far to witness your miracle.”
Lazarus stepped forward and could feel the desert’s warm breeze flow over him. “I am Lazarus who Jesus raised from the tomb. These are my lands.”
There were gasps of breath and awe as the crowd kneeled before Jesus.
“Hail the son of the Lord,” the man who had spoken said. “No-one less could raise a man from the dead.”
Lazarus walked amongst them and extended his hands so they could feel what the Lord had done.
2
The dark of night was consuming him as Lazarus awoke to voices outside his home. It had been four days since the dinner with Jesus and he had heard his servants speaking in hushed voices, saying the Pharisees had marked him to be killed. He reached for his lamp and prepared to start a flame, then thought better of it and sat still.
“Where is Lazarus of Bethany, the man Jesus claims to have raised from his tomb?” a deep voice resonated through the wall.
“He is in the fields with the sheep, protecting them from wolves.” Martha’s voice held fear.
“Do not lie to us, woman, we know this man is within your home.” He heard the clanging of armor and thud of boots as someone dismounted. “You will be crucified with Lazarus if you keep him from us.”
Lazarus grasped for his shoes in the darkness, slipping them on his feet. He shook with fear.
“He is not here,” Mary’s voice was firm.
There was a thud and a scream as Lazarus leapt forward, stumbling to the end of his bed and shoving his hand into a hole in the straw mattress. There was a leather bag filled with denary in his hand as he withdrew it. Please forgive me. I will return, he thought to his sisters as loud thudding noises made their way toward his room.
“Wait! You can’t go in there!” he heard Mary call out.
He went to the window in the back of his room, braced his hands on its cool stone windowsill and hoisted himself from the darkness of his room into the starlit night. The moon was full above.
“Where is he?” the deep voice called from his home.
Lazarus did not look back, did not go toward his stables for fear of men posted there. Instead he ran into the starlit night across the desert’s cool sands. There was a grove of trees in the distance where he could hide and decide where next to turn.
Starlight silhouetted the sand around him as he ran and Lazarus felt as if he were being illuminated by God himself and given to the Pharisees. His calves burned and his head pulsed as his robe flowed against him. There was a full moon overhead.
Sand kicked up behind him as he ran and a night bird flew through the starlight in the distance.
His body became heavy. His heart raced. His chest heaved in pain. I cannot stop. They will follow my tracks through the desert, he thought and looked back to see men on horseback heading his way in the moonlight. They were far back but he knew they would eventually reach him. Why bring me back from the dead, Lord, and then take back what you have given? he prayed.
Lazarus’ foot hit on a stone buried in the sands and he pummeled down, sand bursting up around him. He grasped for the bag of denary he had lost in the fall, clasping its rope tightly and pulling the bag back to him as he pressed his arms down to stand.
Suddenly he heard the howl of wind charging across the earth and lay flat again against the desert. A great wall of sand rose in the moonlight, rushing toward him then stinging at his exposed skin as it whipped over where he was. Thank you, Lord, he thought, knowing his footprints would be covered up by the wind and hopeful his pursuers would not be able to locate him.
I must go to the tree grove. Lazarus tied his bag to his waist and went to a crawling position. He wrapped a cloth tight over his face, leaving only his eyes exposed, and breathed a thick breath through the cloth as he began crawling through the storm.
As he crawled through the stinging sand he prayed, certain it was the Lord who had saved him, and after an hour of slow movement and howling wind the silhouettes of trees blew in the moonlit haze. With a look back, Lazarus could see nothing but gusting sand and darkness. Soon he was amongst the blowing trees and let himself curl up beneath one of them. He closed his eyes and let his body rest.
חַי
Warm sunlight blinded him as Lazarus awoke in the tree grove, seeing a round aura of sunlight mirroring the sun’s form above. He drew his hand into his long sleeve. His exposed skin had begun to burn as he slept. I survived the night. He smiled to himself, knowing that surviving until morning was a feat in itself. What place do I go from here? I cannot return home. Who knows what awaits me there?
He looked to the open expanse of sand behind him. It stretched far in the distance until a city rose up from the blurred horizon. Jericho was there and beyond the city was the Jordan River. He had friends there who would protect him, but braving the distance without horse or mule could prove too much. To his other side, past the desert, was a sparse expanse of trees and beyond them was Bethlehem, Jesus’ birthplace.
Jesus. It is rumored the Pharisees pursue him as well. It struck Lazarus what he should do. I need to go to him, to warn him of their intents. Before Jesus and his disciples parted ways with Lazarus, Jesus had mentioned heading through Jerusalem toward the center of Judea. Jerusalem was the closest city and its city line was near on the horizon.
Lazarus wrapped the cloth tight over his face once more and stood. His legs felt weak and his stomach grumbled with hun
ger. The meal of hen and bread he had eaten the night before would have to do him until he reached Jerusalem. A bird cawed overhead.
One foot in front of the other, Lazarus traversed the desert. He wasn’t alert in the sun of the day but instead focused on the blurred city in the distance. Sweat dripped down his brow and back. His waist ached where the bag of denary remained tied to him.
Closing his eyes he moved onward, and as hours passed he began to hear the faint sound of carts being pulled and men and women’s voices. It was mid-day and the sun’s heat stuck to him.
Lazarus opened his eyes and allowed energy to drain from him as he looked on the outer homes of Jerusalem and a boy with a cart in the dirt streets before him. I am here. He breathed a deep breath and walked onto the dirt road.
“Sir!” the boy called out to him. “Would you care for a fig or a loaf of bread?”
Lazarus walked toward the youth. “How much? Do you have water as well?”
The boy lifted a fig from the bowl before him and held it up. “One denary will buy one fig and this loaf of bread.” He motioned to a loaf of bread on the cart before him. “And I have a flask of water I will share with you as a gift to a man who has braved the desert.”