Dying to be King

The story of the raising of Lazarus comes to its climax. Amazingly, the climax of the story is not the raising itself, but its aftermath, as we hear about the violent reaction of the Jewish Sanhedrin, the chief ruling body in first-century Judaism. Whereas previously there were murderous plots against Jesus by hostile groups (7:1; 10:31), now it becomes the decided policy of the Sanhedrin to kill him (53).

We plunge straight into the terrible world of power politics, where human life is cheap and expediency reigns. The Sanhedrin was an uneasy congregation of competing groups who here come together against a common enemy–Jesus. The sheer power of the raising of Lazarus turns Jesus into a threat, they think–because they can’t help interpreting him in their own political terms. Anyone who can raise the dead is bound to be a rival to their own power, and will certainly provoke the Romans into reaction. Verse 48 is full of irony, because (as the early readers of John’s Gospel knew all too well) the successors of this Sanhedrin themselves provoked the Romans into doing exactly what they feared, in AD 70 when Jerusalem was destroyed.

But John shows God’s purpose being gloriously fulfilled, precisely through the cynical hostility of Jesus’ enemies. Through his death “for the Jewish nation” (51), not only will “the nation” be saved, but the centuries-long exile of God’s people will finally be brought to an end (52; John may also have in mind the “gathering in” of Gentiles into God’s people, alongside Jews; see 10:16). This is death and resurrection on an international scale. What has happened to Lazarus will be true for Israel, too: but only because Jesus himself submits to be the victim of this terrible plot.

In what other ways are you aware of God turning the power of this world on its head? Does he always work that way? Why or why not?