The silence of Lazarus

This morning I found myself struck by the silence of Lazarus. In John 11, he is named, loved, mourned, raised… and then silent. Others speak around him. Martha confesses faith. Mary weeps. The crowd debates. But Lazarus himself, the one whose life has been most interrupted, is given no voice at all.

It feels very familiar.

Those of us who are disabled or who have long term health conditions are often spoken about:

in policy discussions, in church prayers, in pastoral concern. We see it in the debates around disability assistance or the ongoing debate around assisted dying.

But we are not often listened to, instead our lives become illustrations of suffering to be alleviated, of courage to be admired, of inclusion to be achieved. But we are rarely treated as sources of knowledge, places where God might already be speaking.

Lazarus risks becoming exactly that kind of figure.

He is: the object of Jesus’ love, the recipient of miraculous power, the catalyst for belief.

But not, it seems, a participant in the interpretation of what has happened to him.

If we are not careful it is easy for us to replicate that pattern.

We tell stories about people:

“Look what God has done”

“Look how their life has changed”

“Look what this teaches us”

But often fail to ask:

What would you say?

How do you understand this?

Where is God in your experience, not as we interpret it, but as you know it?

There is, of course, a theological reason for Lazarus’ silence in John’s narrative. The focus is on Jesus. The sign points beyond itself. Lazarus is not meant to become the centre.

But that comes with risks, it is one thing to say:

the story is about Christ,

It is another to imply: therefore, some voices do not matter. The incarnation should make us suspicious of any theology that consistently speaks over embodied experience.

After all, in Christ, God does not remain an abstract explanation. God takes on a body, a voice, a particular life.

I wonder what Lazarus would have said.

Not in the sense of speculative curiosity, but as a way of noticing what is missing.

Would he have spoken of confusion?

Of gratitude?

Of disruption?

Of being returned to a life that would still end in death?

Or perhaps he would have said very little. Perhaps his silence is not emptiness, but something we have not learned how to hear.

Disabled people are not just recipients of care, but bearers of revelation.

Not because suffering is good.

Not because limitation is romantic.

But because God meets people where they actually are, not where others imagine them to be.

And that means our voices matter.

Not as add-ons.

Not as case studies.

But as part of the Church’s ongoing discernment of truth.

So perhaps the question is not simply:

Why doesn’t Lazarus speak?

But:

Who is not being heard in our telling of the story?

Who is present, but not centred?

Who is visible, but not listened to?

Who is included, but not trusted as a voice of theological insight?

It is easy to build a church that raises Lazarus.

It is much harder to build one that listens to him.

And yet, if we take seriously the God who calls people by name, who meets them in their particularity, who dignifies embodied life by entering into it, then silence is not a neutral absence. It is something we are called to notice.

And, where we can, to change.

Perhaps the most faithful response to this passage is not to fill in Lazarus’ words for him.

But to make space for those who, in our own communities, are still waiting to be heard.