Main news for 25 April 2025

The high priest's words that it is better for one man to die than for the whole people to perish are interpreted by the evangelist as a kind of prophecy that slipped from the lips of a person who meant something quite different. Indeed, Isaiah's prophecies know the image of the Messiah suffering because of the people's sins. Isaiah, however, does not speak of the Messiah's death. Here John interprets the high priest's statement in the spirit of a new, specifically Christian revelation and experience.

But his interpretation can hardly be considered only his own guess. Indeed, before his eyes was the story of Lazarus's resurrection. And the people's reaction to it. The high priest's words are only an assessment of the situation connected with this popular reaction. From the religious and political point of view everything is clear here.

The high priest and the whole temple elite wanted problems with any messianic movements least of all. Previously Jesus' activity had not attracted their attention because it was still comparatively not very noticeable, although the leaders of the Pharisaic movement had noticed it long before. But now, after an unprecedented miracle that drew equally unprecedented attention from a huge number of people by local standards, the matter was taking on an openly and vividly religious-political character.

Jesus was becoming noticeable enough that He could now be feared as the potential leader of a mass messianic movement. And such a movement threatened serious reprisals from Roman power. The high priest was no messianist and treated prophecy rather skeptically, but he was an experienced enough politician to understand the danger of political messianism.

Yet this was only the external side of the situation. There was another side, a spiritual one. During the whole time of the Savior's earthly ministry the Kingdom had never appeared to the world in such fullness and power as at the moment of Lazarus's resurrection. This event was truly absolutely unique in a world that did not yet know either the Resurrection or Pentecost. And the fallen world reacted. It rose up against the Kingdom entering it. It rose up in the person of earthly power, both secular and religious. But religious power began it. For religion is closer to spiritual life than anything else in the world.

But precisely it can also become spiritual life's chief enemy. The more human there is in religion, the more strongly it opposes spiritual life as such. And it is perhaps impossible to imagine a more obvious triumph of the human in religion than religious power, regardless of place, time, or religion. Therefore the temple elite inevitably had to be the first to challenge Christ and the Kingdom; otherwise it would have ceased to be itself. And then, of course, came the decision: let one man die for the people. That is what happened. True, in another sense. And not for one people, but for all humanity. For all and for each.

Joh 11:49-50

NOTES

Today's reading gives us another testimony to the triumph of the Kingdom that Jesus brought into the world. In every age and among all peoples without exception, death's triumph over life has been perceived as something unjust and contrary to what ought to be. Attempts to regard death like a Stoic or a natural philosopher, viewing it with philosophical calm and accepting it as something regular and inevitable, and therefore normal, have generally failed. At the moment of coming face to face with death, it still inspires only horror and revulsion. Other feelings connected with the causes and circumstances of a death are often mixed with these, of course, but those feelings have nothing to do with death itself: their source is precisely those causes and circumstances, not the fact of dying.

The Bible explains this attitude toward death: death entered the world as a consequence of the Fall. It is part of the world's evil, which must inevitably disappear once the world, transformed by God's power, becomes part of the Kingdom. By weeping when He sees those who mourn (vv. 32-36), Jesus confirms that death is not an imagined tragedy of human life but a real one.

This, of course, is not the end: resurrection, Judgment, and the Kingdom lie ahead. In Gospel times every believing Jew knew about the resurrection (vv. 23-24), yet death still remained a state contrary to human nature; it contradicted God's design for human beings and their destiny. The Kingdom therefore proves incompatible with death.

It is no accident that Jesus says He Himself is the resurrection (vv. 25-26): He bears the fullness of the Kingdom within Himself, and death retreats before the Kingdom. Of course, a return to one's former life, not yet transformed by God's power, in the former world, which has not yet become part of the Kingdom, can hardly be considered the end of the journey. This is not yet the resurrection that believing Jews awaited. But death and the Kingdom are incompatible, and so even someone not yet fully transformed finds in the Kingdom the fullness of life available to him.

No one can contain more life than he is able to contain, but in touching the fullness of God's life, each person receives the measure of life available to him. Lazarus had not yet reached complete transformation, but he was entirely capable of living the life that every healthy person lives in our still not fully transformed world. He receives the fullness possible for him as he comes out into God's light from the tomb in which he was buried (vv. 38-44). Then everyone could see plainly that the Kingdom had truly entered the world and, with it, so had the resurrection that until then was thought to lie only in the future.

One might think that so vivid a demonstration would have melted and converted every heart, but apparently nothing of the kind happened. Some truly came to believe (vv. 45-46), while others became even more firmly opposed to Christ and the Kingdom. But the evidence was too plain, and those who rejected the Kingdom were left with no choice, in the logic of their persistent rejection, but to conclude that they had to rid themselves of the One who brought the Kingdom into the world (vv. 47-53). Thus rejection of the Kingdom leads the Savior of the world, sent by God, to the cross.

Jesus performs an unprecedented miracle: the raising of Lazarus. This event, however, is perceived by people very differently: for some it becomes a sign of God's blessing, and for others...

When one reads the Gospel, it becomes completely clear that the Synagogue and the Temple leadership treated Jesus in entirely different ways. For representatives of the Pharisaic brotherhood, which in those days was the core of the Synagogue, Jesus was, on the one hand, a Teacher, a Prophet, and perhaps even the Messiah; on the other hand, depending on how His activity was assessed by representatives of particular Pharisaic circles, He was a deceiver, an impostor, and a false prophet. But one way or another, the issue was an assessment of Him and His activity in essence, in a spiritual and religious context. Such an assessment could evoke respectful reverence or hatred toward Him, but His words and deeds left no one in the Synagogue indifferent.

The Temple's reaction was different. There, a miracle was considered not from the standpoint of its authenticity or falseness, but from the standpoint of whether it was appropriate or inappropriate, expedient or inexpedient; and both appropriateness and expediency were considered exclusively in political terms. The Pharisees said: He performs miracles that can be explained only by the fact that He is from God, but He does not meet our criteria for a man of God. How are we to explain this? The high priest frames the question differently: He performs miracles that are inappropriate because this may lead to an uprising, a revolt, whose consequence will be a punitive expedition by the Romans that will put an end to the very existence of Jerusalem and the Temple.

The Pharisees respond to the situation as consistently and thoroughly religious people. They ask themselves: how should we relate to Him and to what He is doing? Is He right, or not? The high priest's reaction, despite the religious duties laid on him, is the reaction of a secular politician, who asks himself and others: is what He is doing useful for us? Is this Man dangerous to us? And if He is dangerous, how can we stop Him? In one case, before us is a question about the meaning of what is happening, even if the answers are not always adequate. In the second, there is a purely pragmatic approach to the matter.

This is why, no doubt, Jesus still found supporters and followers among the Pharisees, but not among the representatives of the Temple leadership. The question of meaning, even when answered incorrectly, always opens a spiritual perspective for the one who asks it, although of course this still does not guarantee that the questioner will manage to make the right spiritual choice. Pragmatism, however, opens no perspectives except those that do not go beyond the bounds of the untransformed world. These perspectives have no relation to spiritual life. None at all.

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