However, it does preserve the most important verse: I only wish the Lectionary included the entire story. I have promised, and I will do it, says the LORD. I will put my spirit in you that you may live, When I open your graves and have you rise from them, Afterward, God explains the meaning of the vision:Īnd bring you back to the land of Israel.
This is the famous vision of the Dry Bones, after which an entire dead army of skeletons is resurrected before Ezekiel’s eyes. The First Reading is an excellent choice: Ezekiel 37.
The Gospel is building toward the seventh and final sign, the Resurrection of Christ. The Healing of the Man Born Blind (last Sunday’s reading) was pretty impressive, but raising Lazarus is going to top it. The signs seem to escalate as the Gospel progresses.
The Raising of Lazarus is the sixth of the seven “signs” of the Gospel of John: The Water to Wine (John 2), the Healing of the Official’s Son (John 4), the Healing of the Paralytic at Bethesda (John 5), the Feeding of the 5,000 (John 6), The Healing of the Man Born Blind (John 9), the Raising of Lazarus (John 11), and the Death and Resurrection of Jesus (John 19-20). This is quite evident in this weekend’s Gospel reading, in which we get a very lengthy description of all the events surrounding the resurrection of Lazarus from the dead. Although John tells us of only a few miracles, he describes them in much greater depth than the other gospel writers do. Unlike the other Gospels, John recounts only a limited number of miracles of Jesus, which he designates as “signs,” a rare term in the other Gospels.
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