That We Might Die with Him: Jesus’s Death and Resurrection as a Paradigm for Discipleship in Jn 11.1–12.11

Abstract

Despite growing recognition that the Fourth Gospel’s ecclesiological vision is modeled on aspects of the Gospel’s Christology, the possibility that this extends to Jesus’s death and resurrection has received little attention. Offering a close rereading of John’s notoriously enigmatic story of Lazarus, this study seeks to demonstrate that the notion of Jesus’s death and resurrection as a paradigm for discipleship is embedded in, and sheds interpretative light on, the complexities of this lengthy Johannine story. Through a fresh, multidimensional analysis of Jn 11.1–12.11 and other contextual factors, it is concluded that undergirding this narrative is the disciple’s necessary participation in Jesus’s death and resurrection; that the semiotic import of death within this paradigm encompasses affliction; and that this functional dynamic enabled the Johannine community to locate its affliction within a broader, hope-laden, purposive framework.

In a paper drawing attention to an oft-neglected aspect of New Testament Christology, Larry Hurtado surveyed a number of biblical passages in support of the thesis that ‘the NT refers to Jesus’s death as “paradigmatic” impressively widely’ (2004: 413). Notably absent from Hurtado’s discussion in this regard, however, is any reference to John, and, as this suggests, the presence of this dynamic in the Fourth Gospel has received little attention. This is somewhat surprising, as the past few decades of Johannine scholarship have witnessed a significant shift away from the largely anti-ecclesiological readings of the twentieth century to a recognition not only that John seeks to affect a communal reality through his Gospel but that this ecclesiological vision is grounded precisely in the Gospel’s Christology. Thus, studies have unpacked variously how such axioms as Jesus’s status as λόγος (Minear 1982), his incarnation (Schnelle 1991), his being sent (Ferreira 1998; Kysar 2001), his constituting the new temple (Coloe 2001; 2007; Schneiders 2006), even his divine sonship (Akala 2014; Byers 2017) set in John a precedent for the nature of discipleship—situating ‘believers as the continuing incarnation of the Word’ (Kysar 2001: 375), as the ‘ongoing presence and action of Jesus in the world’ (Schneiders 2006: 355), ‘able to continue the mission the Father entrusted to Jesus’ (Coloe 2001: 217; cf. 1.12–14; 15.12; 17.11, 18, 21–23; 20.21).

Through a multidimensional rereading of John’s story of Lazarus in 11.1–12.11, this study seeks to bridge the above two threads by indicating cumulatively how, as glimpsed elsewhere in the New Testament, John’s Christologically grounded ecclesiology extends to include Jesus’s death and resurrection as a paradigm for discipleship and how that dynamic is not only present in John but is embedded in, and sheds light on, the complexities of this lengthy Johannine story.

The contention that Jesus’s death and resurrection is paradigmatic in Jn 11.1–12.11 implies that the former acquires an identifiable hermeneutical significance in the latter, and so, after relating a brief history of interpretation—indicating the need for an exegetical reevaluation of the episode—the investigation opens with some initial structural considerations pertaining to the significance of Jesus’s death and resurrection in Jn 11.1–12.11. To establish how that significance manifests itself in the trajectory of the story and, in so doing, lay the requisite narrative foundation for our thesis, we then examine the passage from the perspective of its overall narrative dynamics as propelled by the core responses of Jesus, Martha, and Mary to Lazarus’s fate. With these dynamics revealing a pervasive emphasis on the necessity of Lazarus’s death and a direct connection therein to Jesus’s death and resurrection, we then undertake to explain this. Consolidating the threads of the discussion, we establish decisively the paradigmatic nature of Jesus’s death and resurrection by approaching the narrative from the perspective of its ecclesiological application, turning first to the characterization of Lazarus as disciple and then to what we believe to be the pivotal yet widely neglected call of Thomas to disciples in 11.16. Having in this core part of the study arrived firmly at the expressed contention of this paper, we conclude by offering some reflections as to the semiotic import and sociohistorical function such a paradigm might plausibly have had for the author and intended audience.

History of Interpretation

Containing one of the best-known characters in John’s Gospel, the story of Lazarus has inspired myriad visual depictions from the earliest centuries of the common era (Sauser 1981), has been taken up in multiple works of modern literature (L. M. Thompson 1978), and has even been deemed ‘the pinnacle of the New Testament literature’ (Stibbe 1994: 38). Inspiring a host of thinkers to attempt to penetrate its meaning since its inception (cf. Kremer 1985), such extensive appreciation has, alas, not been met by widespread exegetical clarity as to the overall import of the narrative for the implied author—the story for many remaining somewhat of an enigma. ¹

While considerations of the Lazarus story have often focused on 11.1–46, the fact that the characters introduced in 11.1 continue on into 12.1–11, that 11.2 is tied to 12.3, and that 12.11 refers back to 11.45 indicate that the entire narrative movement spans 11.1–12.11. ² In terms of significance, however, this lengthy story has often been rendered largely superfluous given the tendency to isolate Martha’s Christological confession in 11.27 as its chief focus and theological ‘climax’, ³ or Jesus’s Christological affirmation in 11.25 as the author’s only real interest. ⁴ Typical here is Barnabas Lindars (1972: 383), who, failing to find any other significant import to the story, concludes, ‘The one thing that remains to be said is that Jesus is himself the Resurrection and the Life (verse 25). The point has already been made in the allegory of the shepherd (10.17, 27–29). But it is worth repeating in this highly dramatic form. The story is thus expendable from the point of view of the object of the Gospel . . .’ Yet, to reduce the import of such a lengthy story to one or two verses of Christological affirmation hardly does justice to the author’s narrative efforts. In the first instance, it bypasses the actual matter of Lazarus’s resurrection, which is specifically deemed a σημεῖον (11.47) and, indeed, constitutes the final and climactic ‘sign’ of Jesus’s ministry. Furthermore, Jesus makes several enigmatic utterances (11.4, 11–14, 25–26; 12.7), acts in notably peculiar ways (11.4–7, 14–15), and the story concerns numerous interweaving characters: Jesus, Lazarus, Martha, Mary, disciples, Jews, Jewish officials—all of whom are tied directly to the matter of Lazarus’s death and resurrection. Such observations indicate a much more deeply embedded narratological intent than the aforementioned perspectives suggest and, moreover, that this is tied specifically to the fate of Lazarus.

More promisingly, since Raymond Collins’s work on ‘representative figures’ in John (Collins 1990 [1976]), a growing number have noted that Lazarus seems to serve some sort of ‘representative’ function. ⁵ What exactly Lazarus is representative of, however, has attained little consensus and is by no means clear in the literature, with vague clichés often being paraded, such as his serving ‘simply to be one loved by Jesus’ or ‘to whom life has been given’ (Byrne 1991: 39; Culpepper 1983: 141). Where scholars have sought to be more specific, it has most commonly been supposed that Lazarus represents the resurrection that will occur at the end of time—either as an ‘anticipation of what is to take place at the last day’ ⁶ or reassurance of the ‘destiny awaiting group members who have died’. ⁷ Yet, this runs counter to the very thrust of the narrative, for 11.23–26 explicitly directs attention away from resurrection ἐν τῇ ἐσχάτῃ ἡμέρᾳ.

With such observations warranting a reappraisal of the Lazarus episode’s overall import for the author, we turn to some initial considerations pertaining to the contention of this paper: the importance of Jesus’s death and resurrection in the narrative presentation. ⁸

Initial Observations: Jesus’s Death and Resurrection in Jn 11.1–12.11

That there is an intimate connection between the Lazarus story and the death and resurrection of Jesus is suggested immediately by three structural considerations.

Firstly, there is the way the story creates a bridge between Jesus’s earthly ministry and the narrative of his Passion (Zimmermann 2008: 77). After Jesus’s raising of Lazarus from the dead (11.38b–44), the author immediately inserts a scene in which the high priest responds by declaring it is ‘beneficial’ (συµφέρει; 11.50) for Jesus to die—with which the Jewish officials formalize their plan to put Jesus to death (11.47–53). Through sheer political expediency for Caiaphas, readers are here informed emphatically that, in declaring this death ‘beneficial’, Caiaphas unwittingly utters a transcendent truth as to the divine purpose behind Jesus’s death (11.51–52; cf. 16.7). This comes as little surprise to readers of the Gospel at this point. For not only has Jesus’s death—repeatedly invoked in chapters 1–10 ⁹ —already been alluded to as the divinely mandated means by which he is ‘exalted’ and ‘glorified’, ¹⁰ but just prior to the Lazarus episode it was declared that Jesus lays down his life both for his ‘sheep’ (10.11, 15) and, rather strangely, ‘in order that’ (ἵνα) he might take his life up again (10.17). ¹¹ Yet, the way this is conveyed directly to the reader in 11.51–52 suggests that this ‘beneficial’ nature of Jesus’s death is of relevance to the author’s narratological intent in 11.1–12.11.

More strikingly, the narrative seems to be consciously patterned on the death and resurrection of Jesus. As many have noted en passant, numerous references in the scene of Lazarus’s resurrection echo the Johannine passion narrative. ¹² These include the prominent role of women close to the deceased (11.39; cf. 20.1–18; Keener 2003: 848); the poignant use of κραυγάζειν (11.43; cf. 18.40; 19.6, 12–15; Zimmermann 2008: 77–78, 87); the question ποῦ τεθείκατε αὐτόν (11.34), echoing Mary Magdalene’s question about Jesus: ποῦ ἔθηκας αὐτόν (20.15; O’Day 1987: 92); the description of the gravestone (11.41; cf. 20.1), which is ‘lifted up’ (αἴρειν), not ‘rolled’ (as in the synoptics); and the burial wrappings (11.44; 19.40; 20.5–7): both Jesus and Lazarus having been ‘bound’ (δεθῆναι) in bandages (κειρίαι/ὀθόνια) with a σουδάριον around their head. Oddly, however, commentators have often focused on the detail that, contra Lazarus, Jesus’s bandages are already removed (which serves a literary function that has no place in chapter 11), as suggesting the author intends a contrast between the two along the lines of ‘Lazarus dies again, Jesus does not’ (Keener 2003: 848). However, not only do the aforementioned correspondences vastly overshadow such a minute difference, but numerous additional factors serve to link the entire episode both to details in the passion narrative and to broader themes, terms, and concepts surrounding Jesus’s death and resurrection running throughout the Gospel. These include the repeated ὃν ἤγειρεν ἐκ νεκρῶν (12.1, 9; also 12.17), recalling the ἠγέρθη ἐκ νεκρῶν said of Jesus in 2.22 (Schnelle 2008: 139); the recurrence of such Christologically loaded language as ὑπάγειν (11.8), πορεύεσθαι (11.11), ὥρα (11.9–10), and δόξα (11.4, 40); ¹³ and the otherwise superfluous reference to being ἐγγὺς τῶν Ἱεροσολύμων (11.18; cf. 12.12; 19.17), even down to the specific consequences of Lazarus’s raising: faith (12.11; cf. 17.20) and hostility (11.53; 12.10). Given such observations, the author has evidently fashioned the Lazarus story with the death and resurrection of Jesus in mind (cf. Lindars 1972: 386). This pervasive mirroring of Jesus’s death and resurrection in 11.1–12.11 indicates that the former is of direct significance to the latter.

Finally, there is the infamous ‘gap’ at the opening of the story where, after introducing Lazarus and his sisters (11.1), the audience is referred back to an event yet to occur—Mary’s anointing in 12.1–11: ‘Now it was Mary, the one having anointed the Lord with perfume . . . whose brother Lazarus was afflicted’ (11.2). While this so-called ‘clumsy’ (Barrett 1978: 387) or ‘awkward and ill-formulated’ (Hoskyns 1940: 399) opening statement was once almost ubiquitously deemed an inept later gloss, ¹⁴ given more recent emphasis on the importance of re-readings in grasping the author’s literary intent (cf. Culpepper 1983: 200; Byers 2017: 21 n. 79), such an obvious gap screams rather of a conscious literary technique (cf. Moloney 2003: 510). Given this, the most natural import of 11.2 is that Mary’s subsequent anointing is significant to the narrative. And in 12.1–11, the audience learns that this anointing constitutes Jesus’s anointing for ‘burial’ (ἐνταϕιασμός; 12.7). By pointing in 11.2 to Jesus’s anointing of 12.1–11, then, the author once again anchors the Lazarus story in the death of Jesus (cf. Kappelle 2014: 150). Indeed, with this anointing forming an inclusio, the entirety of 11.1–12.11 is literally ‘framed’ contextually by the theme of Jesus’s death, indicating that, as Brodie (1993: 387) concludes: ‘The basic effect of the introduction . . . is not only to present the fatal sickness of Lazarus but also to set it in its appropriate context—that of the death of Jesus’.

The ‘beneficial’ death of Jesus, his (divinely mandated) death and resurrection, would thus seem to be of important hermeneutical significance to 11.1–12.11: both Lazarus’s raising from death itself and the entire narrative tied logically to, consciously patterned on, and framed by Jesus’s death and resurrection. To inform such observations by way of the substance of the story itself, we now turn, with a view to establishing the requisite narrative basis for our thesis, to mapping the overall narrative dynamics of the episode.

The Narrative Dynamics of Jn 11.1–12.11

That Lazarus is first to be introduced (11.1), along with the ἦν-followed-by-person with which he is introduced (cf. 3.1; 4.46; 5.5; 12.20), singles out Lazarus as this narrative’s focal character. Yet, with only seven of the sixty-eight verses of 11.1–12.11 narrating the actual raising of Lazarus from the dead, the majority of this narrative deals with how people respond to Lazarus’s fate. Indeed, with Lazarus failing either to speak or act, it progresses ‘entirely in terms of what happens to him and how others respond to him’ (M. M. Thompson 2013: 461). We have already noted that the Jewish officials respond by sentencing Jesus to death and unwittingly affirming the ‘beneficial’ nature of this death within the divine plan (11.45–57). With the rest of the story consisting chiefly of the responses of three figures—Jesus, Martha, and Mary—we now assess their core contributions to the overall narrative dynamics of 11.1–12.11.

Jesus and the (Intentional) Death of Lazarus ὑπέρ τῆς Δόξης τοῦ Θεοῦ (11.1–16)

Having introduced Lazarus as one suffering an unspecified affliction (ἀσθενεῖν; 11.1–2), ¹⁵ the story opens with Jesus receiving from Lazarus’s sisters an ‘indirect request . . . [to] come and heal the sick man’ (11.3) (Bultmann 1971: 397; cf. Schneiders 1987: 51; Klink 2017: 496). Jesus’s ‘love’ for Lazarus is emphasized twice in this opening segment (11.3, 5; also 11.36), yet this only heightens the perplexing nature of Jesus’s response. In what Wendy Sproston North deems ‘one of the strangest moments in the entire Gospel’ (2001: 136), Jesus does nothing about Lazarus’s affliction but remains where he is for two days (11.6), on the grounds that this ἀσθένεια is not πρὸς θάνατον, but ὑπὲρ τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ (11.4). Jesus’s lack of action is then reemphasized in 11.7 by a double time-indicator placing emphasis on the delay (Morris 1971: 480; Kok 2016: 218 n. 31; Klink 2017: 498), in which Jesus, ‘then, after this’ (ἔπειτα μετὰ τοῦτο), makes his way to Lazarus with his disciples (11.7–16). Before they can reach him, Jesus—assuming an omniscient role in the story—informs his disciples (and, via their misunderstanding, the reader) that Lazarus has now ‘fallen asleep’ (κεκοίµηται) and ‘died’ (θανάτου . . . ἀπέθανεν) (11.11–14). Not only does this stand in notable tension with the not-πρὸς-θάνατον utterance of 11.4, but in 11.15 Jesus actually ‘rejoices’ (χαίρω) at Lazarus’s death. The difficulty here lies not only in that this is ‘marked by a certain degree of harshness’ and is ‘difficult to understand’ (Klink 2017: 500) but that this rejoicing, together with Jesus’s intentional delay and omniscience in the story, virtually necessitates that Jesus waited deliberately in 11.6 for Lazarus to die. ¹⁶ Even more, as Jesus’s delay was juxtaposed with his ‘love’ for Lazarus, so, in his rejoicing at Lazarus’s death, it is stressed that Lazarus was Jesus’s ‘friend’ (ϕίλος; 11.11). The reader, then, is confronted with a tension in Jesus’s response to the fate of Lazarus. Jesus’s intentional delay (11.6–7), and rejoicing at Lazarus’ resultant death (11.15), is juxtaposed with the affirmation that this same Lazarus was a beloved friend of Jesus (11.3, 5, 11). Such a dynamic cannot but ascribe some positive, purposive function to Lazarus’s death within the divine plan. And this would seem to be confirmed by further consideration of Jesus’s programmatic interpretation of what is about to happen in the story in 11.4.

Thus, while the initial import of 11.4a, that Lazarus’s ἀσθένεια ‘is not πρὸς θάνατον’, is that he will not die (Lindars 1972: 387), the ensuing developments necessitate that this be reconceptualized as Lazarus’s ἀσθένεια not finding its ultimate end in death. With this, we see that the ἀσθένεια of 11.4 actually incorporates Lazarus’s death, while leaving this unstated in 11.4 allows the ensuing verses to convey their intentionality within the divine plan. ¹⁷ Lazarus’s ἀσθένεια→θάνατος for Jesus, then, does ‘not find its ultimate end in death’ ‘but’—11.4 continues—occurs ‘in order to reveal the glory of God (ὑπὲρ τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ), ¹⁸ in order that the Son of God might be glorified through it (ἵνα δοξασθῇ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ δι’ αὐτῆς)’. As Dennis Sylva (2013: 32) notes, the way that δόξα is placed ultimately in contrast to Lazarus’s death here leads readers naturally to think of Lazarus’s ensuing resurrection as the referent of the latter part of the verse (cf. Schnackenburg 1980: 322), and this is confirmed when in 11.40—the only other reference to δόξα in the story—Jesus speaks again of this revealing of divine δόξα precisely when Lazarus is to rise from the tomb. In the reference to Jesus’s glorification that will occur through Lazarus’s fate in the second, somewhat awkwardly connected, purpose clause, however, scholars have naturally discerned a secondary reference to the fact that Jesus’s raising of Lazarus will become the occasion for his own ‘glorifying’ death (cf. 11.7–8, 16, 47–53). The two-fold purpose clause vis-à-vis Lazarus’s ἀσθένεια→θάνατος in 11.4, then, would appear to refer both to Lazarus’s resurrection and to Jesus’s death as the means by which he is (to be) glorified (Sylva 2013: 32 n. 59), ¹⁹ indicating that, for Jesus in this narrative, death becomes a ‘prerequisite, even a necessity’ (Zimmermann 2008: 99)—without which neither Lazarus’s nor Jesus’s resurrection/glorification would have been possible.

With this opening response of Jesus setting the divine agenda for the interpretation of the story, attention turns to Martha, the narrative’s second primary ‘responder’.

Martha’s Imperception: Lazarus’s Rising and the Ἀνάστασις of Jesus (11.17–27, 39–40)

Reinforcing Jesus’s intentional delay, on coming out to meet Jesus en route to her (by now dead) brother (11.20; cf. 11.17), Martha’s opening words take the form of the indirect rebuke (Klink 2017: 503): ‘Lord if you would have been here, my brother would not have died’ (11.21). Contra Jesus’s perspective on Lazarus’s death, then, for Martha Jesus should have come sooner, in order that Lazarus would ‘not die’ (οὐκ . . . ἀπέθανεν; 11.21). In response, Jesus informs Martha that her dead brother shall consequently rise (11.23), to which Martha responds that she ‘knows’ he will, ‘at the resurrection on the last day’ (11.24). While such an end-time perspective is not necessarily out of place in John, not only have scholars detected a note of dissatisfaction in Martha’s response here (Morris 1971: 396; Klink 2017: 504) but, in accordance with several affirmations in the Gospel thus far, ²⁰ in 11.25–26 Jesus actually orients her away from this model of end-time resurrection (Coloe 2007: 86), indicating that Martha continues to be at odds with Jesus’s perspective. The form Jesus’s rejoinder takes, however, is striking. While in 11.4, the fates of Lazarus and Jesus were paired conceptually in terms of the necessity of their deaths, the correct understanding of Lazarus’s ‘rising’ (ἀναστήσεται; 11.23) is now predicated on the already given fact of Jesus’s own present embodiment of ἀνάστασις: ‘I am the resurrection and the life’ (11.25). In other words, reversing the causal chain that was intimated in 11.4, Jesus’s (death and) resurrection is now tied causally to the fate of Lazarus. Thus, following this foundational appeal to himself as ‘the resurrection’, Jesus proceeds, with obvious reference to Lazarus, to speak of the ‘life’ that shall follow the ‘death’ of the one believing ‘in him’ (εἰς ἐμὲ; 11.25b)—while, echoing the θάνατος-not-πρός-θάνατος dynamic of 11.4, juxtaposing this paradoxically with an affirmation that he will, in another sense, never truly die (11.26a).

Following this striking presentation, Jesus asks Martha: ‘Do you believe this?’ (11.26b). While many have taken Martha’s ensuing ‘confession’ positively as the narrative’s ‘climax’, in her response of 11.27 we, in fact, find no reference whatsoever to the πιστεύω utterances apropos life, death, and resurrection that form the actual content of Jesus’s question (πιστεύεις τοῦτο; 11.26b). Instead, we find a stock reply in terms which, while sounding Johannine (cf. 20.31), ‘do not respond to the question Jesus asked her’ (Moloney 2003: 514): an unengaged response marked by a ‘wooden, formulaic quality’, suggesting lack of conviction (Attridge 2010: 168), and by Martha’s use of the perfect πεπίστευκα, signaling that her response in no way entertains Jesus’s revelatory words but is based solely on prior knowledge (cf. Moloney 2003: 513–14). In 11.27, then, Martha continues to evidence an inadequate faith, failing to assimilate Jesus’s perspective on Lazarus’s death. ²¹ Confirming this, she then refers to Jesus with an epithet tied to lack of insight in this Gospel (διδάσκαλος, 11.28). And, in her subsequent and final exchange with Jesus, she actually obstructs his raising of Lazarus with the poignant objection: ‘Lord, already he stinks (ὄζειν), for he has been dead four days’, in turn being rebuked by Jesus for lack of faith vis-à-vis the δόξα τοῦ θεοῦ (11.39–40)—which, as Keener (2003: 849) recognizes, cannot but allude to the ‘divine purpose for which Lazarus had died’ (11.4).

Martha’s characterization in the story, then, is chiefly negative: an example of how not to think. Contra Jesus’s positive, purposive perspective on Lazarus’s death, Martha quite literally shrinks from the stench of it (11.39). Her repeated imperceptivity, however, has served not only to reinforce the positive, purposive nature of Lazarus’s death but to significantly deepen the link intimated in 11.4 between Lazarus’s fate and the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Mary’s Perception: Lazarus’s Death and the Ἐνταφιασμός of Jesus (11.28–38; 12.1–11)

With the commencing of Mary’s initial encounter with Jesus in 11.28, things appear equally unpromising. Meeting Jesus, she falls weeping (11.32–33a) and, highlighting once more Jesus’s intentional delay, utters the same implicit rebuke as Martha: ‘Lord if you would have been here, my brother would not have died’ (11.32). Following this, Jesus twice becomes ‘filled with anger’ (ἐνεβριμήσατο; 11.33, 38). And, reinforcing beyond doubt the necessity of Lazarus’s death, both instances of Jesus’s anger follow causally (οὖν) protestations to the effect that Lazarus need not have died: Mary’s echoing of Martha’s rebuke to the effect that Jesus should have come sooner so that Lazarus would ‘not die’ (οὐκ . . . ἀπέθανεν; 11.32–33), and ‘some of the Jews’ accompanying Mary (11.18–19, 31, 33) retorting, in light of Jesus’s healing of the blind man in 9.1–7: ‘was he not able . . . also to make it that this man not die’ (μὴ ἀποθάνῃ; 11.37–38). ²² In her initial encounter with Jesus, then, Mary too fails to grasp Jesus’s positive, purposive perspective on Lazarus’s death with which, as Moloney (2003: 518) puts it, Jesus becomes angered by an apparent ‘universal lack of faith’. ²³ And with Martha’s rebuke for lack of faith continuing this bleak presentation (11.39–40), by the time readers reach the scene of Lazarus’s resurrection (11.38b–44), they are accordingly left wondering: ‘Can everyone be wrong?’ ²⁴

The introduction of Mary before Martha—contra the story’s sequential development—in 11.1, and the proleptic reference to her anointing in 11.2, however, indicate the importance of Mary in this story. And by the time readers reach Mary’s final encounter with Jesus at the narrative’s close, a shift in perspective appears to have occurred. Having narrated Lazarus’s raising (11.38b–44)—and the scene in which Caiaphas declares the ‘beneficial’ nature of Jesus’s death (11.45–57)—the resurrected Lazarus is now reclining at supper with Jesus (12.1–2). Both sisters are present, yet in stark contrast to Martha’s shrinking from the unpleasant smell of Lazarus’s death (11.39), here, Mary not only embraces death by anointing Jesus for ‘burial’ (ἐνταϕιασμός; 12.7) but in so doing, the author emphasizes, associates death with the sweet aroma of perfume made of πιστικός (‘pure’, also ‘faithful’) nard: ‘and the house was filled with the smell (ὀσμή) of perfume’ (12.3). Given this vivid olfactory contrast to Jesus’s final exchange with Martha, it seems hard to avoid the conclusion that Mary, unlike her sister, is portrayed as one having moved toward the positive perspective on death, sought by Jesus throughout the narrative. In accordance with this, while Jesus had reproached Martha for lack of faith (11.39–40), he now defends Mary’s action against the reproach of Judas (12.4–8)—indicating that, at last, one of the story’s characters has ‘got it right’ (Moloney 2003: 525). ²⁵ According to this ‘right’ perspective, we have seen, death becomes a necessity, a prerequisite both for the resultant resurrection of Lazarus and the glorification of Jesus. Though evidently tied to Lazarus’s death and resurrection, ²⁶ that Mary’s climactic understanding of this should take the form of an affirmation of Jesus’s death in a way that, as with his ‘resurrection’ in 11.25, treats this not as an impending event but a ‘fixed fact’ (Kim 2017: 159) serves to confirm and complete the dynamic conveyed via Martha’s imperception. Informing our initial observations pertaining to the hermeneutical significance of Jesus’s death and resurrection in the story, a correct understanding of Lazarus’s necessary death and resurrection is predicated on the already given fact of Jesus’s own death (12.1–8) and resurrection (11.23–25).

The question now arises as to why the author should so disrupt the Gospel’s linear progression. Why is Lazarus’s dying and rising so deeply embedded in and dependent on that of Jesus? To answer this and, in doing so, arrive at the fundamental contention of this study, we now consider the story from the perspective of its underlying ecclesiological application.

Ecclesiology in Jn 11.1–12.11: Dying with Jesus as a Mark of Discipleship

In his work on narrative ecclesiology in John, Andrew Byers (2017: 20) noted how both ‘the use of the first person plural in [the author’s] narration and his occasional direct addresses to the audience indicate an acute consciousness of a communal reality . . . he intends to affect and shape’. The author’s initial remark to the audience in 11.2 casts the Lazarus story in just such a narrative-ecclesiological light: ‘The evangelist’s use of “Lord” in a confessional/insider sense in Jn. 11.2 vividly reveals that in telling the story of Lazarus and his two sisters the evangelist is also speaking about the experience of his audience contemporary with him’ (Esler and Piper 2006: 80). Further confirming this, not only is it to be observed that Jesus’s rejoicing at Lazarus’s death in 11.15 is linked directly to the ‘faith’ of his disciples ²⁷ but that the ‘universalizing language’ deployed in 11.23–26 rhetorically invites a broader application of the ‘sign’ of Lazarus’s death and resurrection to the Gospel’s believing audience (Attridge 2010: 169). To draw out the contours of such an ecclesiological application, we now focus on two corollary aspects of the narrative: Lazarus’s characterization as a disciple and the rhetorical effect of Thomas’s declaration to his ‘fellow disciples’ in 11.16.

Lazarus—the Representative Disciple

As detailed by R. Alan Culpepper, Johannine characters are routinely depicted in such a manner that they may easily become ‘types’ (1983: 145). In accordance with this, as earlier noted, a growing number of commentators have identified Lazarus as a ‘representative’ figure. ²⁸ While there has been little clarity or consensus as to the precise import of his representative status, many scholars have noted that, though not explicitly labeled ‘disciple’, Lazarus is characterized as a disciple. Thus, in his rejoinder to Martha’s faulty perspective on Lazarus’s death (11.23–24), Jesus proceeds to speak of the life that shall follow the death of ‘the one believing’ in him (11.25b). Again, where Lazarus is characterized as a ‘friend’ whom Jesus ‘loves’ (11.3, 5, 11, 36), these will both become key identity-descriptors for disciples following the Lazarus story. ²⁹

Over and above this, several further features appear to characterize Lazarus as the ideal or exemplary disciple. There are the conspicuously repeated and emphatic references to Lazarus as ἀδελϕός (11.2, 19, 21, 23, 32), which, as noted by Koester (2003: 67–68), serve rhetorically to instill in the reader a sense that Lazarus is representative of ‘any Christian’ (cf. 20.17; 21.23). Secondly, the full significance of Jesus’s ‘love’ for Lazarus lies not only in its characterizing Lazarus as a disciple but, as Esler and Piper (2006: 77) observe, in that this is the very first individual that Jesus is declared to love in the Gospel: Lazarus thus, quite literally in this Gospel, serving as the prototype of the one loved by Jesus. Thirdly, Jesus willingly laying down his life for Lazarus (11.7–8, 11, 15–16, 47–53; cf. 10.11, 15), his calling Lazarus by name from the tomb with a great ϕωνή, and Lazarus’s response (11.43–44; cf. 10.3–4, 16, 27) cast Lazarus as Jesus’s ideal ‘sheep’ depicted in chapter 10. ³⁰ Finally, the linguistic and thematic parallelism between the scene of Lazarus’s raising and the utterances about believers in 5.24–25—where he who attains eternal life is one who ‘has passed from death to life’, and ‘the dead’ hearing the ϕωνή of the Son live—vividly portrays Lazarus as the ‘paradigmatic disciple’ (Frey 2000: 425). ³¹

A striking number of indicators, then, serve to characterize Lazarus, not only as a disciple but as the ‘paradigmatic’ disciple: ‘in some way’, as Brodie puts it, a ‘representative of all those whom Jesus loves’ (Brodie 1993: 387; also Brown 1966: 431). And, significantly, both Lazarus’s identification with the ideal πρόβατον led out by Jesus’s ϕωνή in chapter 10, and the believer passing through death to life in 5.24–25, tie this exemplary status directly to his dying and rising—something readily confirmed by the fact that this is all that Lazarus really ‘does’ in the narrative. ³² Although many have supposed that Lazarus represents the end-time resurrection, besides this narrative explicitly directing attention away from resurrection ‘on the last day’ (11.23–26), both its hermeneutical framework and dynamics assessed previously suggest a much more complex import than this position acknowledges. In 11.1–12.11, Lazarus is one who, patterned and predicated on Jesus’s own death and resurrection, necessarily undergoes death as a prerequisite to resurrection life. Lazarus’s status as representative disciple, then, suggests that he represents the believer’s own participation in such a dynamic as a disciple. This being the case, we turn now to Thomas’s hitherto neglected remark in 11.16, where, at the close of Jesus’s programmatic response to Lazarus’s fate, reference is made to disciples dying μετ’ αὐτοῦ.

Thomas: Journeying to the Place of Death μετ’ Αὐτοῦ (11.16)

That Thomas is mentioned here in a section ‘only loosely linked to the storyline of the miracle itself’ suggests that his remark in 11.16 has interpretative significance (Esler and Piper 2006: 86). Hence, as Herman Waetjen (2005: 275) affirms, Thomas here serves as some ‘purposeful figure to fulfil the rhetorical objective of the implied author in his role as narrator’. In terms of referent, there is broad consensus that Thomas’s μετ’ αὐτοῦ statement refers to Jesus: he speaks of his ‘fellow disciples’ (συμμαθηται) dying with Jesus. ³³ While the discussion thus far may incline us toward a positive evaluation of this remark, such an immediate conclusion is inhibited by the extent to which it has been taken negatively and dismissed in modern scholarship.

Negative readings of 11.16 have taken two forms. The first is that this utterance is but a cry of despair at the disciples’ seemingly inevitable fate. ³⁴ While Zahn (1908: 474) considered it ‘self-evident’ that the disciples will be following Jesus to Judea, however, 11.8 and 11.12 have clearly conveyed their hesitancy to embark on this deadly journey at all. As Sylva (2013: 12) correctly observes, then, Thomas’s statement is no mere bow to the inevitable; it is a call to the disciples: ‘Let us also go (ἄγωμεν), that we might die with him’ (11.16).

The second negative reading of 11.16 has been that, in light of Thomas’s negative characterization in 20.24–29, and the ‘death’ orientated nature of 11.16, Thomas’s call here reflects a position at odds with Jesus: is but an example of ‘anti-faith’ (Michaels 2010: 625). ³⁵ Yet, not only is the negative portrayal of ‘doubting Thomas’ in chapter 20 increasingly being challenged (cf. 20.28; Smith 1999: 211; Hartstine 2006), but certainly here no inherent negativity surrounds Thomas whatsoever. More pertinently, such dichotomizing of the perspectives of Jesus and Thomas does not hold up in light of the narrative dynamics we have unearthed in 11.1–12.11. Jesus bringing about (and rejoicing at) Lazarus’s death is repeatedly emphasized (11.6–7, 11–14, 15, 21, 32, 37). And his ‘not-πρὸς-θάνατον’ utterance of 11.4 in no way precludes death but actually incorporates it as a necessary prerequisite. Furthermore, the entire episode culminates precisely with Jesus’s defense of Mary’s correctly perceived emphasis on the necessity of death (12.3–8)—without any explicit references to the life-giving nature of this death. In terms of content, then, Thomas’s emphasis on death seems to be of one accord with that of Jesus in the narrative. Even more, it precisely fits the rhetorical emphases in the section concerning Jesus and the disciples, of which Thomas’s exhortation serves as the culminating word (εἶπεν οὖν Θωμᾶς . . . ; 11.16). Thus, Thomas’s call to ‘go’ (ἄγωμεν) mirrors the very repeated summoning of Jesus for his disciples to ‘go’ (ἄγωμεν; 11.7, 15). The theme of ‘going’ that permeates this section ³⁶ is repeatedly tied to Jesus’s death throughout the Gospel. ³⁷ And, with Jesus further calling his disciples to ‘go’ not only to the dead Lazarus (11.15) but specifically to the life-threatening region of ‘Judea’ (11.7–8), ³⁸ as Barrett recognizes: in 11.7–16 ‘all the stress lies on the journey to the place of danger and death’ (1978: 391).

As a fitting climax to the section concerning Jesus and his disciples, then, the most natural and immediate rhetorical effect of Thomas’s call to his ‘fellow disciples’ to die with Jesus is surely that readers are prompted to the following premise: dying with Jesus as a ‘mark of discipleship’ (Waetjen 2005: 275). Moloney’s objection, that this would overlook the ‘ongoing misunderstanding of the disciples’ (1998: 337), itself overlooks the very nature of the Johannine theme of misunderstanding, which, as Judith Lieu (1998: 76) notes, works ‘not through total misunderstanding but through partial misunderstanding or through a level of truth that the speaker does not intend (as in Jn 11:49–52; 7:41–42)’. Thus, albeit making little of this, Keener detects a sense here that, while Thomas’s call is ironic in that the disciples are said later to leave Jesus in his hour of death (16.32), he ‘inadvertently correctly applies’ this statement to Jesus’s journeying to ‘the realm of death and his disciples following him there’ (2003: 835 n. 1; cf. 842). In like manner, Barrett detects that, as with the disciples as a whole in 11.12, Thomas is here made to speak an ‘unconscious truth’: the journey to Judea ‘is for the purpose of death, and later dying with Christ will become the characteristic mark of discipleship’ (1978: 394). In fact, a hitherto overlooked factor lending direct textual support to such an ecclesiological import is to be found in the peculiar grammatical construction of 11.16 itself, whereby, following immediately Jesus’s summons to the disciples to ‘go’ (11.15), Thomas calls his fellow disciples to ‘also’ (καὶ) go. As Michaels (2010: 623) notes, this reads as if Thomas ‘were somehow speaking to a different group [beyond] Jesus and those he has just addressed. But no other group is present’. While Michaels simply notes this peculiarity without offering any solution, the most natural inference is that Michaels’s observation unwittingly reveals precisely that, at this point in the story, the author transcends the narrative level and addresses the συμμαθηταί of his audience. ³⁹ In other words, Thomas’s call for συμμαθηταί to ‘also’ die with Jesus constitutes, almost transparently, a broader summons to every reader of the Gospel. ⁴⁰

In the climactic exhortation of 11.16, therefore, we see that the entire narrative is set precisely in the context of a call to disciples collectively to die with Jesus as a defining ‘mark of discipleship’. And, with this, the threads of our analysis fall effortlessly and cohesively into place. As the representative disciple who necessarily undergoes death as a prerequisite to resurrection life, in a narrative presentation framed by and patterned and predicated on the already given fact of Jesus’s own death and resurrection, the dying and rising Lazarus represents the disciple’s necessary participation in Jesus’s death and resurrection. Ergo, behind the author’s notoriously enigmatic narrative presentation in Jn. 11.1–12.11 ultimately stands a specific ecclesiological vision: Jesus’s death and resurrection is a paradigm for discipleship.

While this dynamic may be seen to undermine the Gospel’s linear progression, such is in fact well at home with the overall ‘post-Easter hermeneutical perspective’ of this Gospel–namely, its self-consciously presupposing the death and resurrection of Jesus throughout. ⁴¹ Also to be observed is that this paradigmatic nature of Jesus’s death and resurrection in 11.1–12.11 appears actually to resurface following the Lazarus episode. ⁴² Thus, for example, in 12.23–26 the author has Jesus, upon referencing his own death as his hour of ‘glorification’ (δοξάζεσθαι; 12.23; cf. 12.33; Weidemann 2004: 120), present (a) a metaphor whereby a seed must ‘die’ (ἀποθνήσκειν) in order to bear fruit (12.24) and (b) a maxim that one must renounce (μισεῖν) their life in this world to experience ‘eternal life’ (12.25), which is concluded by (c) a direct exhortation that would-be disciples must ‘follow’ (ἀκολουθείτω; 12.26) ⁴³ —a dynamic indicating that to ‘follow’ Jesus means undertaking the ‘glorifying’ journey of ‘death’ through to ‘life’ undergone by him. ⁴⁴ Again, in 15.12–14, the themes of love and friendship established in the Lazarus story are developed in terms of a call for believers to imitate Jesus in his death.

Having now arrived firmly at the contention of this paper, the question naturally arises as to what the pragmatic import of such a paradigm might have been for the author. Is he literally calling all believers to ‘die’ in order to experience life as authentic followers of Jesus? To conclude this study, we offer some reflections as to this pragmatic import.

Reflecting on the Paradigm: Death, Symbolism, and the Gospel’s Sitz im Leben

In his Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel, Craig Koester (2003: 34–39) concluded that readers would have readily perceived that this Gospel author shapes his stories to convey symbolic significance. Such is hardly controversial, and accords precisely with the oft-cited early description of this Gospel as the so-called ‘spiritual gospel’ (Clement of Alexandria; apud Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.14.7). As Attridge affirms, in this Gospel more is going on in any given story ‘than the surface themes indicate’ (2010: 167 n. 24). Curiously, however, modern interpreters have tended not to move beyond the surface themes of the Lazarus story—generally presuming that it addresses straightforwardly, in one way or other, the issue of literal death. Indeed, discerning the call for disciples to die with Jesus in 11.16, Dodd considered this a blanket exhortation to martyrdom (1953: 367). While themselves espousing that the Lazarus story revolves squarely around the literal death of believers, Esler and Piper (2006: 127) note that among other early Christian groups there ‘seems to have been an interest in death as metaphorical’. Furthermore, Keener notes indications in contemporary Jewish and Graeco-Roman sources that both death and resurrection (even, as 11.17, 31, 38; 12.17, when the grave is mentioned) could symbolically encompass various forms of hardship and deliverance. ⁴⁵

That there is some form of symbolism at play in the ‘death’ paradigm of Jn 11.1–12.11 is suggested immediately by the way in which, as Hurtado (2004: 417) detects elsewhere in the New Testament, ⁴⁶ it is ultimately held out as the ‘criterion for being a disciple of Jesus’. It seems prima facie unlikely that the Gospel writer desires the mass martyrdom of all believers. Certainly disciples are deemed, after the manner of Jesus (3.31; 8.23; 18.36), not to be ‘of the world’ in this Gospel (ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου; 15.19; 17.14, 16; cf. 1.12–13). Yet the author specifically has Jesus state his desire for disciples to remain ‘in the world’ (ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ; 17.11, 15), thus negating the idea that the writer desires the disciple qua disciple to seek out literal death—through which one ‘leaves’ (ἀϕιέναι) the world (16.28). Reinforcing this is the fact that both death and resurrection life acquire explicitly broader, symbolic import elsewhere in the Gospel. Thus, eternal, resurrection ‘life’ in John is repeatedly and emphatically not a future reality experienced only on the other side of the grave but a ‘realised’ domain ‘constantly refracted onto the life of the believer . . . in the present’ (Attridge 2010: 176). ⁴⁷ And, as we have noted, in the ‘death’ utterances of 5.24–25, the author has Jesus speak of the believer as one who ‘has passed from θάνατος to life’ and of οἱ νεκροὶ hearing the Son’s voice and living in the present (ἔρχεται ὥρα καὶ νῦν ἐστιν)—the experience of death here being a past-continuous reality for the believer. Given the verbal and thematic parallels between 5.24–25 and the raising of Lazarus, there are good reasons for suspecting that, in the narrative of 11.1–12.11, too, the death domain—alongside resurrection life, which acquires a manifestly ‘realised’ import in 11.23–25—harbors broader, symbolic connotations for the author.

In accordance with the previous observations, not only have many already gestured toward the polyvalent nature of ‘death’ generally in John ⁴⁸ but in the discipleship paradigm shortly following the Lazarus story in 12.23–26, Culpepper (2008: 264) has plausibly identified ‘death’ here as a metaphor for undergoing privation. Thus, note the correlation of the need to ‘die’ (ἀποθνήσκειν) so as to bear fruit (12.24) with that of, literally rendered, ‘hating’ (μισῶν) one’s life in this world to experience eternal life (12.25). And, in conjunction with the points noted thus far, four further considerations suggest that such is, in fact, precisely the semiotic import also of the ‘death’ paradigm embedded within the narrative of 11.1–12.11.

Firstly, there is a telling parallel to Jesus’s programmatic interpretation of 11.4 in the story of the blind beggar in 9.3—a story explicitly invoked apropos the necessity of Lazarus’s ‘death’ (11.37). As Lazarus is characterized as a believer, so the recipient of Jesus’s healing in chapter 9 is characterized as one who believes in and worships Jesus (9.27–28, 38). A connection in the author’s thought between the two pronouncements of 9.3 and 11.4 is readily revealed by their structural and thematic parallelism: ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς·οὔτε οὗτος ἥμαρτεν οὔτε οἱ γονεῖς αὐτοῦ, ἀλλ’ ἵνα ϕανερωθῇ τὰ ἔργα τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ (9.3); ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν·αὕτη ἡ ἀσθένεια οὐκ ἔστιν πρὸς θάνατον ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ, ἵνα δοξασθῇ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ δι’ αὐτῆς (11.4). In both passages, Jesus opens the ensuing ‘sign’ by reconfiguring an adversity and declaring it to be a necessary affliction in order to (ἵνα) experience the effective power and presence of God. Where in 11.4 it is Lazarus’s ἀσθένεια→θάνατος, in 9.3 it is a beggar’s suffering blindness indicates that, ultimately for the author, the divine realm manifests itself, not by way of literal death per se but via various forms of affliction.

Secondly, we may recall the way that Lazarus is, first and foremost in this narrative, characterized as one suffering an unspecified ἀσθένεια (ἀσθενεῖν: 11.1, 2, 3, 6; ἀσθένεια: 11.4). Used regularly in the New Testament for generic infirmities, afflictions, and tribulations, as Brodie (1993: 387) observes, this is an intentionally ambiguous and catch-all designator that ‘evokes much of human fragility’ (cf. also 4.46; 5.3, 5, 7; 6.2). The ensuing theme of death notwithstanding, this reasonably leads Brodie to locate the central ‘topic’ of the Lazarus story ultimately in ‘the relationship of God’s love to human suffering and weakness’ (1993: 387).

Thirdly, while in 11.1–12.11 and other passages (12.23–26; 15.12–14) Jesus’s death is portrayed as something that disciples must participate in, elsewhere in John such imitatio passio Christi surfaces in terms of their necessarily experiencing—in conjunction with Jesus’s ‘glory’ (17:22)—finite adversities experienced by Jesus: such as being ‘hated’ (μισεῖν; 15.18–19; 17.14; cf. 3.19–20; 7.7; 15.23–25) ⁴⁹ and ‘persecuted’ (διώκειν; 15.20; cf. 5.16). ⁵⁰ In this regard, 16.20–22 contains a most telling variant of the death → resurrection paradigm. Said to be filled with ‘weeping’ (κλαίειν), ‘lamenting’ (θρηνεῖν), ‘pain’ (λύπη), ‘distress’ (λυπεῖσθαι), and ‘affliction’ (θλῖψις; also 16.33), the disciple’s journey is here likened to that of a birthing woman’s necessary passage through ‘affliction’ (θλῖψις) and ‘pain’ (λύπη) to the ‘joy’ (χαρά) of bringing forth life into the world. Such observations strongly indicate that, while literal death need not of course be excluded (cf. 16.2b; 21.19), ultimately in John it is ‘affliction’ (cf. 11.4) of various kinds that is considered an inevitable and necessarily embraced struggle in the realization of eternal life. And this finds a firm symbolic grounding in 11.1–12.11 and elsewhere in the axiom of believers participating in the very ultimate fate and means of ‘glorification’ undergone by Jesus: that is, of being a ‘follower’ of ‘the way’ to the Father (14.6) as ipso facto a journey through ‘death’ to ‘resurrection life’ and divine ‘glory’.

Finally, it may be noted that this broader semiotic import of the call to ‘die’ (and ‘rise’) with Jesus in 11.1–12.11 is supported by the reception of the narrative in the early church. As the very opening exhortation of his treatment of the Lazarus episode, for example, Chrysostom encapsulates the essence of the story by declaring: ‘Many men, when they see any of those pleasing to God suffering anything terrible, as, for instance, having fallen into sickness, or poverty, and any other the like, are offended, not knowing that to those especially dear to God it belongs to endure these things’ (Hom. Jo. 62.1). ⁵¹ Again, apropos the many early visual depictions of Lazarus’s death and resurrection, the earliest of these occur when, ‘[b]anished by persecution to the catacombs, Roman Christians fanned their hopes by painting scenes of Lazarus’ resurrection’ (Edwards 2004: 114).

There are thus numerous factors pointing cumulatively to the broader symbolic character of ‘death’ within the core paradigm uncovered in 11.1–12.11, and to this ‘death’, strikingly proffered as constitutive of discipleship, encompassing various forms of affliction—afflictions whose meaning and direction are contained within the potent ‘symbol’ of the divinely mandated, paradoxically glorifying death of Jesus.

Taking our cue from the previous discussion, we may close by indicating, finally, that a sociohistorical function to the death → resurrection paradigm undergirding the Lazarus story can be found in the Fourth Gospel’s Sitz im Leben. Together with this Gospel’s notable preoccupation throughout with (would-be) followers of Jesus encountering hardship and persecution, ⁵² it is to be noted that myriad sociolinguistic studies on various components of the Fourth Gospel have converged in locating ‘suffering and persecution as one of the critical life settings’ of this Gospel (Kim 2017: 44). ⁵³ Given this underlying social reality behind the composition of the Gospel, it is a short step to recognize that, in the final analysis, by depicting Jesus’s death → resurrection as a paradigm for discipleship in toto within the final and climactic ‘sign’ of Jesus’s ministry in 11.1–12.11, this serves a pragmatic function for the author and his intended audience in enabling them to locate their suffering and persecution within a hope-laden, purposive framework. Relocated to the symbolic framework of Jesus’s ‘death’ as a paradigm constitutive of discipleship (11.16), their ἀσθένεια (11.4)—their seemingly loathsome existence (12.25), exclusion (ἐκβάλλεσθαι: 9.34–35; cf. 6.37; ἀποσυνάγωγος: 9.22; 12.42; 16.2), persecution (διώκεσθαι: 15.20), pain (λύπη, λυπεῖσθαι: 16.6, 20–22), sorrow (κλαίειν, θρηνεῖν: 16.20), affliction (θλῖψις: 16.21, 33)—the result of misfortune or even sin according to worldly convention (cf. 9.2) become, just as in Lazarus’s case, part of a broader divine prerequisite for beloved friends of Jesus. They become part of something paradoxically positive and of what it means to be authentic follows of ‘the way’ to the Father (14.6), to be ‘children of God’ after the manner of the Son (1.12–14)—namely, a necessary and inevitable journey through ‘death’ to ‘resurrection life’ and divine ‘glory’.

Conclusion

Through a detailed revisiting of Jn 11.1–12.11, this study has undertaken to unpack incisively and informatively how, as glimpsed elsewhere in the New Testament, John’s Christologically grounded ecclesiology extends to include Jesus’s death and resurrection as a paradigm for discipleship and how that dynamic is not only present in John but is embedded in the complexities of this lengthy Johannine story. Having indicated the need for an exegetical reevaluation of Jn. 11.1–12.11, upon a cumulative rereading of the passage from a structural, narrative, and ecclesiological perspective, it has shown how a light is cast on the complex contours of the whole by discerning therein a specific vision of discipleship as a necessary participation in Jesus’s death and resurrection. By further reflecting on this paradigm from a semiotic and sociohistorical standpoint, it has additionally paved a way forward in terms of something all too often lacking in New Testament discussions of participation generally: namely, the concrete, pragmatic function such a ‘participatory’ vision of discipleship actually had for the author and his intended audience. In doing so, the present study hopes to have shed new light on the notoriously difficult passage that is Jn 11.1–12.11; to have opened this Gospel to the wider phenomenon of discipleship as ‘the way of the cross’ (cf. Mk 8.34; Mt. 10.38; 16.24; Lk. 9.23; 14.27; Gos. Thom. 55); and to have gestured toward how such a curious phenomenon functioned within earliest Christianity.