THE LAZARUS STORY

So, I'm watching this show called Jesus: His Life. What it's doing on the History Channel I don't know. Then again, they show Ancient Aliens on there so maybe it's appropriate. Anyway, there's a scene when Jesus is preaching in Jerusalem and some church scholars are offended by his words. He tells them that not only is he the son of God, but that he and God are one in the same. So, the scholars and non-believers start to pick up stones in which to stone him with for his blaspheme. If he was a god, he might have done something like turn the stones into burning lava impossible to hold. Or, said something like, "Drop the stones or I'm giving you rickets." Something. But no, his reaction was more like, "Yikes! I gotta get out of here!" And he flees. If you are the son of god why would you feel the need to flee from anyone. You would have nothing to fear from any human being. Have some dignity for crying out loud.
But here he is hiding out like a thief in the night. He gets word that his friend Lazarus is sick and he should go back and heal him. They have these "scholars" on this show saying things like, "Jesus has a tough decision to make here." Come again? Jesus can see the future. Jesus knows all things. There are no decisions. All he has to do is follow the tracks that have been laid down before him. He eventually makes it back to Lazarus, but oh no! Lazarus is dead! Jesus is so distraught when he sees the grief-stricken sister of Lazarus that he wept. Huh? If he knows he's going to be bringing Lazarus back to life what in the world is he crying about? He would be like, "Cheer up, sweetie! He'll be up and about in no time!"
Seems like he'd be pretty happy to be able to put an end her suffering and bring her great joy. But no, he wept. Then they show up at the tomb of Lazarus and he has some folks move the big boulder blocking the tomb. Really? You can bring back a corpse but you have to get men to throw their backs out moving the rock by themselves? Okay. So, they move the rock and out comes Lazarus. "What are you doing? I'm not dead. I just went inside for a quiet place to nap and got blocked in." No, of course he didn't say that. Not according to the story anyway. He was shocked and groggy and pretty out of it. (Death does that to a person) He gave his sister a great big hug and everything was peachy.

But the authors of this story failed to realize that this tale puts a hole in the "Jesus lived without sin" myth. As any theological scholar will tell you, originally there were 11 commandments. Because of what happened to Lazarus, they voted to eliminate the 11th one: Thou shalt not create zombies.

Happy holidays everybody!