June 21 -- Feast of the Knights of Saint Lazarus

PubMedHealth, which is posted by the National Institute of Health, says that cases of drug-resistant Mycobacterium leprae are on the rise worldwide.  If the name's unfamiliar, they're the nasty little bugs that cause Hansen's Disease.  Still no bells?  It has traditionally been called leprosy.

"Lazarus" - Umlauf, Austin Texas

You might be thinking that the link here is that leprosy, like Lazarus, is making a comeback.  Good thinking, except that's the wrong Lazarus.  The guy whom Jesus raised from the dead in John 11:1-45 is different from the guy he talked about in Luke 16:19-31.  For one thing, the Lazarus in John's Gospel was a flesh-and-blood contemporary of Jesus while the Lazarus in Luke's Gospel was a character in a parable.  But it is the fictional character who is celebrated as a saint today. To finally make the connection to my first paragraph, the fictional Lazarus suffered from Hansen's Disease.

The dogs are in Luke's text

The quick summary of Luke 16:19-31 goes like this. A rich man lived large in his mansion while a victim of Hansen's disease named Lazarus starved to death outside his gates.  After they both died, the rich guy suffered torments in Hell while Lazarus was whisked to Abraham's side in Heaven.  The rich guy begged Abraham to send Lazarus with a little water for comfort.  Abraham replied that there was an uncrossable gulf between Heaven and Hell, and that Lazarus had neglected his duty on earth and was just paying for his sins.  So the rich guy then asked Abraham to send Lazarus to warn all his rich relatives.  Abraham pointed out that they've already been warned by Moses and the prophets.  Lazarus countered that they'd listen if someone came back from the dead, but Abraham concluded that if they chose to ignore Moses, they'd find a way to ignore someone back from the dead.

CAVEAT:  Sometimes I go long.  This is one of those posts.  You may want to quit here, edified in the knowledge that 1) there are two different Lazaruses (Lazari?) in the Gospels and that one, the leper who went to Heaven, is today's saint, even though he was fictional.  

Version One

The passage is problematic in a few ways. First, other parts of the Bible assert that souls are sleeping until the final judgment.  So what's with this immediate Heaven/Hell?  Is it like Tartarus and the Elysian Fields in the Greco-Roman Hades?  Why would Jesus use that construct when talking to Pharisees?

Second, the rich guy talks to Abraham, not God, and Abraham responds.  Is this a model of Communion of the Saints?  A website offering Protestant exegesis didn't like that idea at all, since they figure one should only pray to God, and even if a soul like Abraham could hear prayers, he should not acknowledge receipt with a response.

Third, if Lazarus the Leper is a fictional character, how can he be a saint?

Version Two - note the dogs

The first problem is beyond me today.  The Heaven/Hell thing is so ensconced in our imagination that it is hard to put aside, even though folks who have read and studied the Bible far better than I tell me that's not what Jesus described.  I invite anyone who wants to discuss Christian afterlife to enlighten the rest of us with a post below.  Please.

As for the second and third problems, I'd like to hazard this homespun classification system for saints.  Let's put them into two broad categories (allowing for overlapping classification, of course).  The first set consists of real souls whose virtue is so indisputable that they must be eternally with God.  In Asia, they'd be buddha, enlightened.  For my purposes, I will call them Bona Fide.  Elijah, of course, comes to mind.  Abraham is another, if I understand the parable at all.  Saint Francis of Assisi.

Version Three

The other category of saints is Exemplary.  Now obviously, many of the first group will also be in the second, at least for the most part.  But let's take King David.  Surely God approved of him.  He must be with God.  But the whole incident with Uriah and Bathsheba was not exemplary behavior.  God's approval (grace) is beyond human comprehension, but the rules for conduct are not.  Moses and the prophets were clear; Peter and Paul seem to have felt comfortable lifting a lot of those restrictions for a lot of us.  But the basic commandments -- Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself -- those are pretty clear.

The Arms of the Knights of St. Lazarus

Since Lazarus is a pretty passive figure in Luke's Gospel, he must be Bona Fide.  We don't really see Exemplary behavior.  However, the opposite of exemplary behavior is demonstrated by the rich guy, and that should be cautionary to us.

You'll note that in my canon, this isn't the feast of Saint Lazarus, but rather of his knights.  They're not saints in any of the official canons, at least not as a group.  But unlike their namesake, they were real people, crusaders who contracted Hansen's disease and became hospitallers who cared for fellow lepers outside the walls of Jerusalem.  The Order spread over time, included non-lepers, and has been responsible for much of the sort of kindness that Jesus talked about with that second commandment about neighbors.  That's the stuff that gets someone into the Exemplary category of saints.