NOTES for Joh 11:45-57

Jesus performs an unprecedented miracle: He raises Lazarus, who had been dead for four days. But people perceive this event in very different ways: for some, it became a sign of God’s blessing upon Him, while for others it was a dangerous manifestation of extremism. The Pharisees fear that this strange preacher from Judea will attract the people through His miracles and incite an uprising that the Romans will suppress. That would spell the end of political freedom and religious life. Their earthly logic is entirely understandable. Common sense suggests doing exactly what they did: sacrificing one person in the interests of the majority.

At times the Lord asks us to do something that does not fit accepted conventions. His plan may seem insane to us and contrary to our ideas about how the world is ordered. We find it difficult to accept that His will may entail the disruption of familiar peace and order, the loss of what was achieved through hard labor, even death, and death on a cross. Yet this downfall of Jesus, which the Pharisees considered final, became salvation for the whole universe. For divine arithmetic differs from earthly arithmetic.