Bible Study: The of John Chapter 11

The Scene: All of the characters were going about their normal 1st century Jewish lives:

• Mary, , & Lazarus o Lazarus was sick – not abnormal for that day and age – a part of everyday life. o His sisters were concerned – anxious, afraid, sad, angry (“If you had been here…”) o They reached out for help – sent for

• Jesus and his disciples o Were hanging out after teaching the crowds and dealing with the religious leaders o Head off to - dealing with the normal persecution they had been facing o Then face ire of the Jewish authorities.

• The Jews and the authorities o Experiencing the kind of anxiety about revolutionaries and Roman rule that they had been experiencing since the Romans came to town o They were busy doing the work of living out their lives under the radar, so to speak.

• The Romans: o Poised to put down any hint of uprising by the Jews.

Then, into the middle of this ordinariness, comes Resurrection – new life. • Arises out of a profound relationship of love between Jesus and Lazarus and his sisters.

Reflection (adapted from, John: 26 studies for individuals and groups, N.T. Wright):

1. VV.1-16 is about the ways in which Jesus surprises people and overturns their expectations. How does Jesus do this in these verses?

D. Benson 1 October 1st, 2014 2. In what ways has Jesus surprised you and overturned your expectations of what it means to follow him?

Instead of looking at the past and dreaming bout what might have been (but now can’t be), Jesus invited Martha to look to the future. “Your brother will rise again.” She knows, as well as Jesus does, that this is standard Jewish teaching. They shared the vision of Isaiah 65 and 66: a vision of the new heavens and the new earth. God’s whole new world, a world like ours only with its beauty and power enhanced and is pain, ugliness, and grief abolished. Within that new world, they believed, all God’s people from ancient times to the present would be given new bodies, to share and relish the life of new creation. Martha believes this, but her rather flat response (v.24) shows that it isn’t at the moment very comforting. But she isn’t prepared for Jesus’ response. The future has burst into the present. The new creation, and with it the resurrection, has come forward from the end of time into the middle of time. “ the resurrection and the life,” he says. “Resurrection” isn’t just a doctrine. It isn’t just a future fact. It’s a person, and here he is standing in front of Martha, teasing her to make the huge jump of trust and hope.

3. The Word, through whom the worlds were made, weeps like a baby at the grave of his friend. Only when we stop and ponder this will we understand the full mystery of John’s gospel. a. How does this challenge the way people – including many Christians – understand God?

4. Resurrection arrives in the midst of a fairly normal kind of day. a. When has resurrection shown up in your life? b. Have there been times when you were too focused on the past (and what can no longer be) that you have missed the in breaking of Resurrection?

D. Benson 2 October 1st, 2014 5. John 11:38-57. We cannot but connect these two: the fate of Lazarus and the fate of Jesus. We cannot but suppose that Jesus, in praying for Lazarus and then in raising him to life, was aware that he was walking toward his own death, and praying his way into the Father’s will as to what would happen thereafter.

What are some of the similarities/differences you notice between the raising of Lazarus and Jesus’ own resurrection?

Note on John 11:48 The mention of the Romans in this passage (which happens to be the first and only time in all four where the world Romans is mentioned) explains a lot. By evoking the whole Roman world that stands behind the gospels, it helps us understand why people had the anxieties they did – both ordinary Jews and their leaders. The Romans had taken over most of the Middle East about a century before. There weren’t many Roman soldiers about in ordinary towns and villages, but there were whole legions stationed a few miles north, in Syria, and the governor of Judea could call on them for help at any time. That had happened in living memory, and thousands of young rebel Jews had been crucified when the army marched in. The Jewish leaders clearly thought that is what would happen if Jesus went any further. Healing blind people was one thing; but raising the dead, and doing so publically where a lot of people could scurry back to and tell their friends about it – this was too much. Obviously, they thoughts he was gathering support for some kind of prophetic or even messianic action, perhaps a march on Jerusalem itself. Once that happened, if the Romans got wind of it, they would call up the troops. And that would be the end of any national hope they still might have.

6. What is the biggest fear among the chief priests and the when they hear what Jesus had done?

The Jews had reason to be jumpy. There were plenty of other revolutionary movements going around, and they all knew what would happen if the Romans

D. Benson 3 October 1st, 2014 called in their troops. But, although the Pharisees and Jews in general longed to see Roman rule come to an end, they preferred the semi-freedom that Rome granted them to the devastation that would follow if a major revolution sprang up.

How does unknowingly summarize in his comment in v. 50 both a cynical political perspective and Jesus’ own vocation to protect the sheep?

7. Jesus’ movement is different from all the revolutionary movements that came before or after. How is Jesus’ movement still different from any of the other options we ourselves might choose to live for in our own day?

D. Benson 4 October 1st, 2014