For whatever reason, though, he got delayed. The worried sisters had sent word for him to come. He comes in response to Lazarus’ illness. We see it also when Jesus shows up at the home of Mary and Martha. We see this in a courtroom as witnesses give conflicting testimonies we see it as doctors arrive at different diagnoses for the same patient we see it in the divergent paths of politicians in Washington as they try to fix our nation’s problems. Often they have very different responses to it. So from that day on they planned to put him to death.Ī crowd of people witnesses the same event. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.’ But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, ‘You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.’ He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God.
So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, ‘What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done. Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’ I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth.
And Jesus looked upwards and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ So they took away the stone.
It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Still, Lazarus provides a stunning confirmation of Jesus’ promise, also made in John 11, to Martha: (“ I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” This confirms the promise not only for Lazarus, who had to face his own mortality a second time, but of course for us.Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was because of what would transpire during holy week that Lazarus was bodily raised from the dead, though in his case it was only a return to mortal life. But by reporting that the raising of Lazarus occurred the day before Jesus’ Passion, John also provides an important connection between the raising of Lazarus and Jesus’ own Passion, death, and resurrection. This was a catalyst for Jesus’ Passion, since it stirred up his enemies all the more, as most certainly his cleansing of the temple immediately after the triumphal entry also would have done (this sequence of events is also provided only by St. It serves to provide a possible explanation of why such large crowds were present on Palm Sunday, the next day. In any event, it was John who saw fit to include this important piece of history, and likely the time frame of it as well. Perhaps the synoptic evangelists chose not to include Lazarus or this event because at the time they wrote he was still alive, in which case the report could have caused unnecessary trouble for him. John ( the eleventh chapter), though it is possible that Matthew’s enigmatic reference of what happened when Jesus died (“ the graves were opened and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many”), itself at least anachronistic in one respect, namely that in referring to those being raised going into the holy city after the resurrection, he might have had Lazarus in mind. The only Gospel that records the raising of Lazarus is St. Historically it seems clear, or at least likely, that the day before Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem was the day on which he raised Lazarus from the dead.
0 kommentar(er)
