C. S. Lewis' "Stephen to Lazarus"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2024

⏱️ 5 minutes

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Summary

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954, when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement.

Lewis wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. C. S. Lewis’s most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Mere Christianity, Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classics in The Chronicles of Narnia. To date, the Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies and been transformed into three major motion pictures.

-bio via Harper Collins

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
0:04.3	I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, May 1st, 2024.
0:09.7	Today's poem is by C.S. Lewis, and it's called Stephen to Lazarus.
0:18.2	I'll read the poem, offer a few comments, and then read it one more time.
0:25.4	Stephen to Lazarus.
0:29.2	But was I the first martyr who gave up no more than life, while you, already free among
0:35.5	the dead, your rags stripped off, your fetters shed,
0:39.6	surrendered what all other men irrevocably keep,
0:43.0	and when your battered ship at anchor lay, seemingly safe in the dark bay, no ripple stirs,
0:49.9	obediently put out a second time to sea, well knowing that your death, in vain died once, must all be died again.
1:06.8	Seas Lewis is not remembered as a great poet, and to be frank, it's because he was not a great poet.
1:16.5	But he has a few great poetic turns, and he has a remarkable psychological sensibility, which is what makes much of his fiction so great.
1:33.5	There are inevitably some theological qualms that one could raise about this poem.
1:41.3	Again, true of pretty much everything that Lewis wrote.
1:46.4	However, there is a beauty in this imagined dialogue between St. Stephen and and Lazarus,
1:59.1	who is raised from the dead by Jesus, shortly before the events of Jesus'
2:09.1	crucifixion and resurrection.
2:12.0	In Eastern Christianity, this week is Holy Week, the week leading up to the Feast of the Resurrection, Easter or Paska.
2:23.3	And that week traditionally begins with Palm Sunday, but on the eve of Palm Sunday, the resurrection of Lazarus is always remembered.
2:36.9	And Lewis here raises the question of what it was Lazarus had to give up in order to answer the call of Jesus to come out of the grave.
2:52.8	St. Stephen, whose feast day is usually celebrated after Christmas, is remembered as the first
2:59.6	martyr in the early church. But Lewis suggests that there is a kind of martyrdom that Lazarus suffers as well, that in his loyalty to his master, even from the grave where he has entered into a kind of peace and rest of death, having already endured the agony of dying one time.
	...

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