For years, the story of Lazarus has followed me like a shadow. Not the spooky kind, but a persistent one—showing up in scripture, art, casual conversation, and even my own dreams. Maybe it speaks to something deep in all of us: the longing to be seen, to be unbound, to be called out of whatever tomb we’ve been living in. I didn’t expect Lazarus to find his way into a podcast episode, but here he is, front and center in the new season of Bubble and Squeak.
Bubble and Squeak by Peterson Toscano · Grave Robbers: Father James Martin, Lucas Wilson, and Coming Out Lazarus
In Season 4, Episode 1, I speak with two guests: Jesuit priest and bestselling author Father James Martin, and literary scholar and editor Lucas Wilson. We explore the tangled threads of resurrection, shame, identity, and queer freedom through biblical interpretation, comedy, and survivor testimony. And, in the end, we find that Lazarus isn’t just a story from the Gospel of John. He’s all of us, stumbling out of the tomb, still wrapped in grave clothes, squinting toward the light.
Lazarus and the God Who Calls Us Out
Father James Martin’s new book, Come Forth: The Promise of Jesus’s Greatest Miracle, dives deep into the Lazarus story. Not just the biblical narrative, but how artists, theologians, and everyday pilgrims have interacted with it. He takes us inside the actual tomb in Al-Eizariya (Bethany), shares the physical sensation of descending into the cave, and reflects on what it means to come out of darkness and into new life.
He told me, “All of us come before God unfree in some way… And God has an intense desire to free us, to offer us new life.”
Comedy from the Tomb
In the second part of the episode, I share an excerpt from my solo performance, Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House. It’s a comedic, gut-punching story about my 17 years in conversion therapy. Like Lazarus, I didn’t get out of that tomb alone. I needed friends. I needed love. I needed someone to say, “Take off the grave clothes. Let him go.”
Shame, Sex, and Survival
Lucas Wilson joins me to talk about his new anthology, Shame, Sex, Attraction: Survivors’ Stories of Conversion Therapy. These stories are messy, often unresolved, and radically honest. From forced group therapy at evangelical colleges to aversion techniques and spiritual abuse, the contributors offer no easy endings—but they do offer truth. And that, too, is a kind of resurrection.
Lucas reminds us that conversion therapy is not a relic of the past. It’s ongoing. It’s deadly. And yet, the people who survive it often become the ones who help others unbind themselves.
A Sound Slice from Cuba
The episode ends on the westernmost edge of Cuba, near María la Gorda, in a place of stunning beauty and difficult history. In 1960, Che Guevara established a forced labor camp on the Guanahacabibes Peninsula—a grim prelude to Cuba’s later UMAP camps that targeted gay men, artists, and others considered unfit for the revolution.
Even in paradise, tombs remain. But so do the voices that call us out.
Resources Mentioned:
- Come Forth by Fr. James Martin: http://www.harpercollins.com/products/come-forth-james-martin
- Shame, Sex, Attraction edited by Lucas Wilson: us.jkp.com/products/shamesex-attraction
- Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House (performance video): http://www.youtube.com/p2son
- Instagram: Fr. James Martin – http://www.instagram.com/jamesmartinsj
- Instagram: Lucas Wilson – http://www.instagram.com/lukeslamdunkwilson
- X (Twitter): Lucas Wilson – http://www.twitter.com/wilson_fw
Peterson Toscano's A Musing 
