The supper at Bethany
1 Six days before the Pass over, Jesus came to Bethany where he had raised Lazarus, the dead man, to life.
2 Now they gave a dinner for him, and while Martha waited on them, Lazarus sat at the table with Jesus.
3 Then Mary took a pound of costly perfume made from genuine nard and anointed the feet of Jesus, wiping them with her hair. And the whole house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
4 Judas, son of Simon Isca riot – the disciple who was to betray Jesus – remarked,
5 “This per fume could have been sold for three hundred dinarii and turned over to the poor.”
6 Judas, indeed, had no concern for the poor; he was a thief and as he held the common purse, he used to help himself to the funds.
7 But Jesus spoke up, “Leave her alone. Was she not keeping it for the day of my burial?
8 (The poor you always have with you, but you will not always have me.)”
9 Many Jews heard that Jesus was there and they came, not only be cause of Jesus, but also to see Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead.
10 So the chief priests thought about killing Lazarus as well,
11 for many of the Jews were drifting away because of him and believing in Jesus.
The Messiah enters Jerusalem
12 The next day many people who had come for the festival heard that Jesus was to enter Je ru salem.
13 So they took branch es of palm trees and went out to meet him. And they cried out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the King of Israel!”
14 Jesus found a donkey and sat upon it, as Scripture says:
15 Do not fear, city of Zion, see your king is coming sitting on the colt of a donkey.
16 The disciples were not aware of this at first, but after Jesus was glorified, they realized that this had been written about him and that this was what had happened to him.
17 The people who came with him bore witness and told how he had called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead.
18 It was because of this miraculous sign which Jesus had given that so many people welcomed him.
19 In the meantime the Pharisees said to one ano ther, “We are getting nowhere; the whole world has gone after him.”
Unless the grain dies
20 There were some Greeks who had come up to Jerusalem to worship during the feast.
21 They ap proached Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”
22 Philip went to Andrew and the two of them told Jesus.
23 Then Jesus said, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
24 Truly, I say to you, unless the grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.
25 Those who love their life de stroy it, and those who despise their life in this world keep it for everlasting life.
26 Whoever wants to serve me, let him follow me and wherever I am, there shall my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.
27 Now my soul is in distress. Shall I say: ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But, I have come to this hour to face all this.
28 Father, glorify your Name!” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it and I will glorify it again.”
29 People standing there heard something and said it was thunder; but others said, “An angel was speaking to him.”
30 Then Jesus declared, “This voice did not come for my sake but for yours;
31 now sen tence is being pass ed on this world; now the prince of this world is to be cast down. 3
32 And when I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all to myself.”
33 With these words Jesus referred to the kind of death he was to die.
34 The crowd answered him, “We have been told by the Law that the Mes siah stands forever. How can you say that the Son of Man shall be lifted up? What kind of Son of Man is this?”
35 Jesus said to them, “The light will be with you a little longer. Walk while you have the light, lest the darkness overtake you. If you walk in the darkness you do not know where you are going.
36 While you have the light, believe in the light and become children of light.”
After Jesus had said this, he withdrew and kept himself hidden.
The unbelief of the Jews
37 Even though Jesus had done so many miraculous signs among them, they didn’t believe in him.
38 Indeed the words spoken by the prophet Isaiah had to be fulfilled: Lord, who has believed what we proclaimed? To whom have the ways of God the Savior been made known?
39 They could not believe. Isaiah had said elsewhere:
40 He let their eyes become blind and their hearts hard, so that they could neither see nor understand, nor be converted – otherwise I would have healed them.
41 Isaiah said this when he saw His Glory, and his words refer to Him.
42 Many of them, however, be lieved in Jesus, even among the rulers, but they did not acknowledge him because of the Pharisees, lest they be put out of the Jewish com munity.
43 They preferred to be ap proved by people rather than by God.
44 Yet Jesus had said, and even cried out, “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me.
45 And whoever sees me, sees him who sent me.
46 I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.
47 If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I am not the one to condemn him; for I have come, not to condemn the world, but to save the world.
48 The one who rejects me, and does not receive my word, already has a judge: the very word I have spoken will condemn him on the last day.
49 For I have not spoken on my own authority; the Father who sent me has instructed me in what to say and how to speak.
50 I know that his commandment is eternal life, and that is why the message I give, I give as the Father instructed me.”
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Comments , Chapter 12
• 12.1 Matthew and Mark also relate the incident at a supper when Mary showed her passionate love for Jesus. She loved him with all her strength, and her love, far from blinding her, made her sense and respect the mysterious personality of Jesus.
Not all the apostles understood her gesture, because they still had much to learn about loving Christ.
Like Judas we often speak of giving to the poor. Yet the Lord’s command is not to give but to love. To love the poor is to reveal to them their call from God, and to help them grow as persons by overcoming their weaknesses and divisions and by fulfilling the mission God entrusted to them. The poor will live the Gos pel and witness to it in the world. If we are not among them, we need conversion and true pov erty to discover with them the Kingdom. How can we really love the poor unless we have passionate love for Jesus? When we do not, we prefer to speak only of giving to the poor.
Six days before the Passover. Mark and Matthew give the impression that this supper happened two days before the Passover, not six (Mt 26:2; Mk 14:1). The evangelists also disagree regarding the date of the Passover. While John declares that Jesus died on the eve of the Passover (Jn 19:14), the other three say that the Last Supper took place on the same day that the Jews celebrated the Passover. According to a very ancient tradition that various Oriental church es still maintain, Jesus could have celebrated the Last Supper, not on Thursday, but on Tuesday. His trial would then have lasted two days: Wednesday and Thurs day. (That seems much more probable than having all the sessions of the double trial of Jesus in the one morning of Friday). He would die on Friday, as all the texts affirm.
A possible explanation for these disagreements might be the follow ing: The Passover is celebrated in accordance with the new moon which is not a fixed date, nor is it determined ac cord ing to the same criteria by everyone. Hence, in ertain years some religious groups celebra ted it three days before others. Jesus could have celebrated the Passover on the eve of Wed nesday, while the majority of the people celebrated on the eve of Saturday.
Three hundred dinarii would be nearly a year’s salary for a laborer.
• 20. Several foreigners (called Greeks be cause of their language) were converted to the faith of the Jews. Though they did not observe the Jewish laws, they were accepted in the Tem ple of Jerusalem where a courtyard, (separate from that of the Jews) was reserved for them. The question from those Greeks offers Jesus the opportunity to announce that his king dom will be extended through the whole earth, when he will have been raised on the cross.
Unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies (v. 24). Jesus will die and the universal Church will be born. Jesus allows his lifeless body to be laid in the earth; on rising from the tomb, his same body, now glorified, will also em brace the believers united to him. The life that is now his will be communicated to all the chil dren of God.
Unless the grain dies. This is the law for all life that will be fruitful (Mk 8:34). The first believers were already saying: “The blood of the martyrs is a seed.”
• 27. This page of John’s Gospel records both Jesus’ transfiguration (Mk 9:2) and agony in Gethsemane (Mk 14:32).
Then a voice came (v. 28). While Jesus was in the midst of the noisy crowd a noise erupted: a message from heaven or simply a noise? This event, insignificant perhaps for the historian, was like the fleeting presence of reality breaking through the illusory scene in which most people are caught up. The fact that the people mis understood his message, and that later they would deliver him up to their rulers, has become of minor importance to Jesus. He looks beyond all that. Jesus knows that he cannot save the nation from historical failure, but he understands that his death will change the course of world events: he will conquer where the destiny of humankind is to be played out.
From the beginnings of our history, the ruler of this world, the Spirit of Evil, has obscured in humankind the capacity to recognize God. God has directed the whole of creation towards a progressive growth in maturity until the birth of the New Creature. Because of sin this birth comes about in a world characterized by suffering, indif ference and slavery.
The only way to salvation is to return to obedience, not “to God,” but to the Father. And Christ had to open the way through his sacrifice: I have come to this hour to face all this (v. 27).
We easily forget that the purpose of our life is to glorify God. We do not glorify God principally by constructing temples or by singing: “Glory to God!” but by making ourselves pleasing and living sacrifices to God. A bishop and martyr of the primitive Church, St. Irenaeus, wrote: “God is glorified when people are fully alive: but for a person to be fully alive is to see God.”
A sacrifice is a surrender of something for the sake of something or someone else. Our sacrifice is to allow God to be our life, to make us like him and to pre pare us to reflect his own Glory. This indeed requires sacrifice because God makes us pass through a death to attain this life. Through obedience to God’s will, we are freed of our selfishness and the limits of our present condition, and we are prepared for another and everlasting state. God is glorified when his children attain glory, that is to say, attain his own perfection and are transformed through fire and the Holy Spirit.
• 37. AN IRREPARABLE CHOICE
Jesus’ life of preaching is coming to an end. John later finds it difficult to understand how God’s chosen people could remain so blind re gard ing their Messiah. John tries to search out the meaning of this refusal by using two texts from the prophets:
The first is a long poem dedicated to the Servant of Yahweh, a voluntary victim for the sake of his people (Is 53:1). It shows us that peo ple do not willingly accept a humiliated Savior.
The second text shows how the rejection of Christ could have been foreseen. Indeed, the ancient prophets were also ignored while they were living, thus fulfilling a mysterious plan of God.
John stresses the sin of the majority who were not committed to Christ, although within themselves they secretly respected him. Some how the Jewish peo ple suspected that Jesus came from God, but to believe in what he claimed and asked was another matter.
For us, too, to believe in the Gospel is to take a stand; we cannot pass by the Church Jesus founded even though it may not be totally transparent. His word comes to us amidst numerous preoccupations, and most often we feel inclined to respond: “I’ll see later!” When we neglect his word, we often think it not grave. Actually it is God and his truth that we reject and we may not have another occasion to receive it. All eternity is decided today.
There is absolutely nothing in the Bible to support the belief that we will have other lives in order to repair our errors of today. If so many people of our time have grasped this belief in a succession of lives, it is above all because it encourages them to delay making real decisions; the devil takes charge of spreading this belief.