Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha… When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” 

— John 11:1, 4

Bear with me, we’re going to get a little nerdy about the Gospel of John for a minute. The Gospel of John has traditionally been divided into two sections, generally referred to as the Book of Signs (chapters 1-12) and the Book of Glory (chapters 13-21).  The Book of Signs earns its label because much of the action in the first half of the gospel surrounds Jesus’ signs (or miracles), beginning with Jesus turning water into wine in Cana and ending with the resurrection of Lazarus.  His miracles are all done publicly, and most of his teaching is delivered to crowds of people.  These chapters also cover the longest period of time, about 2 or 3 years.  The Book of Glory, on the other hand, covers one week.  Additionally, beginning with chapter 13, John’s gospel becomes much more intimate and focuses on the private interactions between Jesus and the disciples (other than his trial and crucifixion in chapters 18 & 19).  There is a pronounced increase and focus on the glorification of Jesus Christ and the glory of God the Father in the second half of the Gospel, which is why it’s called the Book of Glory.

This increased emphasis on glorifying God the Father actually starts to become more prominent in chapter 11, with the raising of Lazarus from the dead.  As mentioned, this is the last major sign that Jesus performs in the gospel.  As quoted above, the chapter opens with Jesus saying that all that is happening to Lazarus is for God’s glory and the glorification of the Son.  Then, right in the middle of chapter 12, Jesus says, “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.  Father, glorify your name!” (John 12:27-28)  A few verses later, John says, “When he had finished speaking, Jesus left and hid himself from them.” (John 12:36)  In this way, chapters 11-12 serve as something of a bridge between the Book of Signs and the Book of Glory.  

We’re in the middle of the longest season of the church calendar, the season called “Ordinary Time,” which runs from the Sunday after Pentecost until the Sunday before Advent, which is called Christ the King Sunday.  Philip Reindeers writes,

Ordinary Time offers us the space to find our place in God’s story. We’ve celebrated and taken in the momentous life of Jesus; now we need a long stretch of days to absorb and assimilate it. In Ordinary Time, we fully take in the gospel, allowing it to take shape in our daily living, making connections between Jesus’ story and our lives.

“Ordinary” doesn’t mean boring or second-rate but simply “every­day.” The Christian faith is not an otherworldly faith; it’s about this creation, your life, these days. Ordinary Time gives us the space to consider all the implications of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ for our day by day, week-in, week-out lives.

On Sunday mornings, we spent the first half of Ordinary Time looking at the Book of Signs, John 1-10.  Each week, we saw how Jesus takes ordinary people, things and moments and does extraordinary things in and through them.  For the rest of the season of Ordinary Time, we’ll journey through the Book of Glory, John 11-19.  We’ll start with the death and resurrection of Lazarus and then, appropriately enough, on Christ the King Sunday, we’ll wrap up this series with the death of the King of the Jews.  John intentionally draws a lot of parallels between Lazarus and Jesus, parallels that make the differences stand out all the more loudly.  In between, we’ll see how John helps us see God’s glory in each chapter.

The Westminster Catechisms open with, “What is the chief end of man?  Man’s chief end is to glorify God and fully to enjoy Him forever.”  It’s easy to talk about glorifying God in the abstract, after all, what believer doesn’t want to glorify God?  It gets harder when we start getting into the weeds.  Consider that Jesus explicitly states that He allowed Lazarus to die so that He would be glorified through it.  That’s also easy to say when we know the end of the story, but outside of Scripture, we don’t usually get to know how the story ends.   Which means we’ll be wrestling with difficult questions, like: how can we say or it be true that some of the worst tragedies and moments in our lives or our world are “for the glory of God”?  I don’t promise that we’ll find satisfactory answers to questions like that, but I can promise we’ll find the beginning of an answer in verses like John 12:16: “At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that these things had been done to him.”

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. 

— Romans 8:28-30

Blessings,

Rev. David Garrison