Prelude to the Passion 2: Readings for The Raising of Lazarus and the Supper at Bethany

Carl Bloch, "The Raising of Lazarus"

Just as the passion predictions in Mark precede and anticipate Jesus’s final week, in John, the story of the death and miraculous raising of Lazarus, together with a celebratory dinner afterward in which Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus, provides both the proximate cause of the Jerusalem leadership’s resolve to have Jesus killed even as it provides anticipations of Jesus’s coming death and resurrection. Christian tradition produced customs and observances that helped believers prepare for the Passion in a similar way. One of the better known of these observances is Lent, a liturgical period common throughout much of traditional Christendom that is a time of fasting and spiritual preparation based on Jesus’s own forty-day preparation in the wilderness. Perhaps less well known is the custom of “Lazarus Saturday,” common in Eastern Orthodoxy. With or without borrowing from any of these traditions, reading and reflecting upon Mark 8:22‒10:52 and John 11:1‒12:11 can help Latter-day Saints prepare themselves and their families for a more meaningful experience during Holy Week.

• For a discussion of these episodes, see my original post Prelude: The Raising of Lazarus
•  Lazarus Saturday: read John 11:1‒12:11; discuss the raising of Lazarus and why Mary anointed Jesus; sing “My Redeemer Lives” (Hymns, no. 135); make Lazarakia
• See also the suggestions of Emily Belle Freeman, Celebrating a Christ-Centered Easter, 11‒19
• Inspiring art includes Carl Bloch, Healing the Blind Man and The Raising of Lazarus; vignettes from James Tissot’s The Life of Christ such as The First Shall Be Last, Jesus and the Little Child, Get Thee Behind Me, Satan, The Two Blind Men at Jericho, The Resurrection of Lazarus; Harry Anderson, Christ and the Children; Michael Coleman, Road to Jerusalem; and J. Kirk Richards, Sight Restored. 

 

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Text: John 11:1–12:11

The Bethany episodes, consisting of the story of the death and miraculous raising of Lazarus followed by a feast that Martha and Mary held for Jesus and their brother afterward, occupy a pivotal position in the Gospel of John, overlapping with and serving as a bridge between “The Book of Signs,” which narrates the miraculous signs and the doctrinal discourses of Jesus’s ministry (John 2:1‒11:57), and “The Book of Glory,” which chronicles Jesus’s final days and resurrection (12:1‒20:31). Just as these “bridge episodes” prepare the reader for the coming passion narrative, they can help us in our preparation for Holy Week. The problematic Johannine expression “the Jews” (Greek, hoi Ioudaioi) appears several times in this selection. As we discuss further in our exegesis below, we have placed it in quotations to signal to readers that John seems to be using it to refer to a specific group and not to all Jewish people. 

Sickness, Death, and Raising of Lazarus (11:1‒46)

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¹There was a certain man, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha, who was sick. ²Now Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair whose brother was sick. ³So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, see, the one whom you love is sick!” ⁴Yet when Jesus heard this, he said, “This sickness is not to the point of death; rather it is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it,” ⁵for Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. ⁶Therefore, when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he still stayed in the place where he was for two days. ⁷After this he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” ⁸His disciples said to him, “Master, recently the ‘the Jews’ were seeking to stone you, and they still are! Are going back there again?” ⁹Jesus answered,

 

“Are there not twelve hours in the day?

Whoever walks around in the daytime does not stumble,

because he sees the light of the world.

¹⁰                   But whoever walks around in the nighttime stumbles,

because there is no light in him.”

 ¹¹He said these things, and after this he told them, “Our friend Lazarus is sleeping, but I am going to wake him up.” ¹²His disciples said to him, “Lord, if he is sleeping, he will recover.” ¹³Now Jesus had spoken about Lazarus’s death, but they thought that he was speaking about getting rest through sleep. ¹⁴So Jesus spoke openly to them, “Lazarus has died. ¹⁵Yet I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, that you may believe. Now let us go to him.” ¹⁶Then Thomas, who is called “the Twin,” said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him!”

 ¹⁷When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. ¹⁸Now Bethany was close to Jerusalem, about two miles away, ¹⁹and many of the “the Jews” had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. ²⁰When Martha heard that Jesus had come, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed sitting at home. ²¹Then Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died! ²²Yet even now I know that whatever you ask God, God will grant it to you.” ²³Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” ²⁴Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” ²⁵Jesus said to her,

“I am the resurrection and the life.

Whoever believes in me,

even if he dies,

he will live.

²⁶                   And whoever lives and believes in me

will not die forever. 

Do you believe this?” ²⁷She said to him, “Yes indeed, Lord, I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who is coming into the world.”

²⁸After she had said this, she went back and secretly called her sister Mary, saying, “The teacher has arrived and is calling you.” ²⁹Now when Mary had heard this, she quickly got up and went to him. ³⁰Now Jesus had not yet come into the village but was still in the place where Martha had met him. ³¹Therefore when the “the Jews” who were in the house with Mary and had been consoling her saw her quickly get up and go out, they followed her, thinking that she was going to the tomb to mourn there.

³²So after Mary came to where Jesus was, when she saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died!” ³³Now when Jesus saw her mourning deeply and the “the Jews” who had come with her also mourning, he was greatly distressed in his spirit and troubled, ³⁴and he asked, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” ³⁵Jesus wept. ³⁶Therefore “the Jews” said, “Look how much he loved him!” ³⁷But some of them said, “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man bring it about that this man would not have died?”

³⁸Then Jesus, again deeply upset within himself, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was set upon it. ³⁹Jesus said, “Remove the stone.” Martha, the sister of the one who had died, said, “Lord, he already smells, for it is the fourth day.” ⁴⁰Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” ⁴¹So they removed the stone, and Jesus raised his eyes and said,

“Father, I give thanks to you,

because you have heard me.

⁴²                   And I know that you always hear me,

but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing around,

that they may believe that you sent me.” 

⁴³After he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴He who had been dead came forth, bound hand and foot with strips of graveclothes and his face wrapped in a face cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him and let him go.”

⁴⁵Therefore, many of the “the Jews” who had come to Mary and had seen what he had done believed in him. ⁴⁶Yet some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.

Conspiracy of the Jewish Leaders and the “Prophecy” of Caiaphas (11:47‒53)

⁴⁷Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called the Sanhedrin into session and said, “What are we doing? This man is performing many miraculous signs! ⁴⁸If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and remove both our place and our nation. ⁴⁹But one of their number, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You do not know anything! ⁵⁰You do not understand that it is advantageous for you that one man die for the people and the whole nation not be destroyed.” ⁵¹This he did not say of himself, but because he was high priest, he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, ⁵²and not for the nation only but also to gather together all the scattered children of God. ⁵³And so, from that day they planned to put him to death.

Withdrawal of Jesus to Ephraim (11:54‒57)

⁵⁴Therefore, Jesus no longer walked around openly among the “the Jews,” but he went from there to a region near the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim, and he stayed there with his disciples.

⁵⁵Now it was almost the Jewish Passover, and many went up to Jerusalem from the countryside for the Passover, that they might purify themselves. ⁵⁶Then they were looking for Jesus and kept saying to each other as they stood in the temple, “What do you think? He won’t come to the festival, will he?” ⁵⁷But the chief priests and Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where he was, they should report it, that they might arrest him.

 

The Supper at Bethany, Mary anoints Jesus (12:1‒11)

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¹Six days before Passover, Jesus came to Bethany where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. ²Then they made a feast for him there. Martha served, but Lazarus was among those who reclined with him at the table.

³Then Mary, having brought a pound of very expensive, pure nard ointment, anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped them with her hair, and the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment. ⁴Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, who was about to betray him, said, ⁵“Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” ⁶He did not say this because the poor mattered to him but because he was a thief and, being the one who held the moneybag, used to pilfer from what was put in it. ⁷And so Jesus said, “Leave her alone so she may keep it for the day of my burial, ⁸for you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

⁹A great crowd of “the Jews” came to know that he was there, and they came not only on account of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. ¹⁰But the chief priests deliberated how they might put Lazarus to death also, ¹¹because on account of him many of “the Jews” were changing sides and beginning to believe in Jesus.