NOTES for Joh 12:1-18

Why does an enthusiastic crowd meet Jesus on the streets of Jerusalem? The Evangelist answers this question quite plainly: because the news that He had raised Lazarus had already spread through the city, since Bethany is very close to Jerusalem. And, of course, many people then thought that the long-awaited Messiah had finally come: it was His coming that would mark the beginning of that universal resurrection before the Last Judgment, in which most believing Jews of that time believed and for which they waited. It would seem that this faith and these expectations fully matched the main goal of the Savior's earthly ministry, whose fulfillment was already very near. Victory over death was close; it seemed that nothing now prevented Him from declaring it openly.

And yet there was something that substantially distinguished the people's expectations from the new reality coming into the world. The report of Lazarus's resurrection, or more precisely the reaction of the Jerusalem crowd to it, marked this difference as clearly as nothing else could. The people truly were waiting for and wanted a universal resurrection. But they saw this resurrection as a return to the understandable and familiar life of the untransfigured world, which, if only it were freed from illnesses and the threat of an unavoidable end, seemed to them an ideal. Of course, a solution to all social problems was also expected: in the messianic Kingdom there would be not only no sick people, but no poor people either; everyone would be fed and, if not rich, at least well-off. And many of those who greeted Jesus thought that now, when "the process had begun," He would finally proclaim Himself openly as the Messiah and take up what had long been expected of Him: drive the Romans and other Gentiles out of Judea, stand at the head of the newly created state, solve all social problems, issue just laws based on the Torah, and solve every problem miraculously, just as He had acted until now, healing, raising the dead, and feeding the crowds.

And perhaps only Jesus Himself knew that nothing of the sort would happen. The resurrection would begin only at the moment of His death on the cross, when the tombs would be opened and the first righteous people would come out of them, raised not to their former life but to a new life, to the life of that Kingdom which He brought into the world.