Sunday, April 10, 2011: John 11:1-45

As a John scholar, I have always been fascinated with the scribal confusion about Jesus' "I AM" statement: "I am the resurrection and the life." Some of the ancient manuscripts for the Gospel of John omit "and the life," with the assumption that this is a redundancy and that no self-respecting Jesus would repeat himself. This is Martha's misunderstanding, isn't it? When Jesus says to her, "Your brother will rise again," she hears only the promise of a future resurrection: "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." But Jesus then seems to correct this misunderstanding. "I am the resurrection and the life," he insists. We might ask Jesus, as did the scribes who corrected him, what's the difference?

The chapter itself is structured with this misunderstanding in mind. The raising of Lazarus is the last of Jesus' signs in John's Gospel, with the actual raising of Lazarus narrated in only two verses. There is a repeated pattern in the fourth Gospel: a sign, which is followed by dialogue among the bystanders and then a discourse by Jesus that interprets the sign (see 5:1–47; 9:1–10:21). Note that in this Gospel, Jesus does not perform miracles but instead does "signs." Signs point to things. The miracle itself is not the point, as wonderful as it is—the point is what is revealed about Jesus and who Jesus is.

In the raising of Lazarus, the pattern is reversed. The dialogue and Jesus' discourse occur before the sign is performed. Why in this case does the interpretation of the sign come first? Why does Jesus comment on the sign before raising Laza­rus from the dead? Is it because Jesus knows that his action will be misinterpreted, even by those who are closest to him, even by those who actually believe? Could it be that the sign's meaning is more important than the miracle itself, even more important than raising someone from the dead?