NOTES for Joh 12:17-18

Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem is perhaps His only clear and public testimony to His messiahship. Now, when only a little remained before the completion of His earthly path, there was no longer any danger that He would be placed at the head of some messianic uprising, though His own disciples were hoping for precisely such an uprising, right to the very end. Meanwhile the evangelist emphasizes that the people greet Jesus as the Messiah above all because rumors had spread widely through the city about the miraculous raising of Lazarus. This was understandable: if even one person had truly risen from the dead, then surely the very day of Judgment and the general resurrection spoken of by the prophets had come. And the one who raised him was obviously the Messiah. This logic was simple and clear, and it fit well within popular messianic ideas.

In reality, however, everything was far from so simple. Popular ideas about the Messiah went no further than the image of the Messiah as a great earthly King. Of course, this King was not imagined as an ordinary human being. He could, for example, perform miracles and even raise the dead. But His Kingdom was imagined as a fully earthly kingdom. And the life of this earthly kingdom was also, in general, fully earthly. Of course, it fully corresponded to the Torah. Of course, it had that measure of the nearness of God's presence without which the coming of the Messiah was unthinkable. And, of course, it did not have that triumph of death characteristic of the present age. But people remained the same. They only became righteous and pious. In the best sense of those words, but still in an earthly way.

Jesus' raising of Lazarus fit entirely within these ideas about the Kingdom. No one thought that such a resurrection was only a foretaste. A preparation for the main thing. Lazarus was not raised into that new life which Jesus brought with Him. He was raised because of that new life. But he did not contain it within himself. His nature remained the same. He returned to the life lived by people of the untransformed world.

But the Savior came to give the human person more. To unite him with the fullness of life, not with a small part of it. This is what those who greeted Him in the streets of Jerusalem could not understand. They thought the main thing had already happened, but it was still ahead. Even Jesus' closest disciples did not yet know this. He alone knew.