Lent 5, Morning after thoughts

Good morning:
I've got my mug of hot black coffee here, & in fact, I'm on my 2nd cup now.....so ready to dig in to some "morning after" thoughts on yesterday's reading.

Although, I think I'm going to cheat just a little bit. You see, one of the main things bouncing around in my head about that text from yesterday was--strictly speaking--not really part of the text, cuz the bulletin inserts we used chopped the reading off before the end of the chapter. Here's the missing verses in the TNIV translation, starting with vs 45:

[After Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead]
45 Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him. 46 But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. 47 Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. "What are we accomplishing?" they asked. "Here is this man performing many signs. 48 If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation." 49 Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, "You know nothing at all! 50 You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish." 51 He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, 52 and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one. 53 So from that day on they plotted to take his life.

There are several interesting things about this passage. First of all, not that many years down the road, in 70AD the Romans did *indeed* come and take away their Temple. Herod's magnificent structure was more or less leveled, leaving only what is today known as the "Wailing Wall." And in 135 AD the second great Jewish rebellion (commonly called the Bar Kochba Revolt) ended in defeat, with the old city of Jerusalem being completely leveled, and Jews being banned from the new settlement--a pagan center dubbed Aelia Capitolina by Emperor Hadrian. In other words, the ironic part of Jn 11:48 is that not everyone put their faith in Jesus, not everyone began following him, and yet the thing(s) they feared most happened ANYWAY.

The second thing that stands out to me about this passage is that one of the most wonderful events of human history--the raising of a man LONG DEAD--is greated with the overwhelming urge to KILL the holy man who performed the miracle. This seems ludicrous on the one hand, yet on the other it's understandable. Isn't that just like human nature? If Jesus had "played nice" with the religious authorities of Jerusalem, this probably wouldn't have been the case. But he was such a THREAT to them that they couldn't tolerate him--and this last act, raising Lazarus from the dead, was the straw that broke the camel's back for them. Preservation of THEIR status quo--what they deluded themselves into thinking was for the "good of the people"....was more important to them than this man's life. But in the irony of ironies, the Father used their attitudes to accomplish something even greater--and on behalf of ALL PEOPLE OF ALL TIME.

Cheers!

TM