The Gospels, part 12: The Gospel of John (3)

Lazarus, life, and liturgy

As we noted two posts back, the center of the chiasmus in John’s Gospel – which reveals the predominant theme of the book – occurs in Chapter 11 with the raising of Lazarus (specifically, with verses 38 – 44). To understand the significance of this last of Jesus’ seven “signs” in John [1], we should keep in mind the exchange between Jesus and Martha a few verses before the event is described. When Jesus assures her, “Your brother will rise up” (vs. 23), Martha quite naturally understands him as referring to the end (eschaton) of the age: “I know that he will rise up in the resurrection on the last day” (vs. 24). To this, Jesus responds with the fifth of seven “I am” statements [2]: “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever has faith [or, trusts] in me, even if he should die, shall live, and whoever lives and has faith in me most certainly does not die, unto the Age; do you have faith in this?” (vss. 25-26) Here, in this brief exchange, what we have in capsule form is the conviction that the fulfillment – the end of the age – is already present or “realized” in Jesus. The words Jesus speaks here can be viewed as a corrective to a strictly future-focused eschatology; the “end of history” isn’t far off, it’s right here, now.