Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Today’s lessons contain the account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead in John 11:1-16.

Read it here.

This story is so important that in the Eastern Church’s entrance into Holy Week is prefaced with Lazarus Saturday, a day that falls between the end of 40 days of fasting and Jesus’ great entrance to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. In the Episcopal lectionary, we also read this and related Gospel lessons on the last Sunday in Lent—before Palm Sunday.

To accompany this reading, here’s an explosive setting of a medieval poem about this story, Come Out, Lazar by living English conductor and composer, Paul Spicer. This aggressive music describes the very words, ‘Come out’ as a battle cry, as a ‘wonder soun’ and a ‘wonder song’ that makes the devil shake with fear, and that has ‘broken the prison strong.’

The more I listen to this, the better this setting gets. It’s surging, almost operatic, in its excitement. Here is a thrilling rendition:

Come Out, Lazar, Paul Spicer

Yours in Christ,

—Justin

Come out, Lazar!
Come out, Lazaro, what so befall.
Then might not the fiend of hell
Longer make that soule to dwell.
So dreadful was that ilke cry
To that feloun, our enemy.
The kinges trumpet blew a blast;
Come out! it said, be not aghast.
With that voice the fiend gan quake,
As doth the leaf when windes wake.
‘Come out’ is now a wonder soun,
It hath o’ercome that foul feloun
And all his careful company.
For dread thereof they gunne cry:
Yet is come out a wonder song,
For it has broken the prison strong.
Fetters, chains and bondes mo
That wroughten wretched soules woe.

Come out! That kinges voice so free
It maketh the devil and death to flee.
Say me now thou serpent sly
Is not? Come out! an asper cry?
‘Come out’ is a word of battle,
For it gan helle soon t’assail.
Why stoppest thou not, fiend, thine ear?
That this word enter not there?
He that said that word of might,
Shop him felly to the fight.
For with that word he won the field
Withouten spear, withouten shield,
And brought them out of prison strong,
That were enholden there with wrong.
Tell now, tyrant, where is thy might?
‘Come out’ hath felled it all with fight.

14th Century Middle English