John 11
1A certain man was sick: Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2It was Mary who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was sick. 3So the sisters sent word to him: “Lord, look, the one you love is sick.” 4When Jesus heard it, he said, “This sickness is not for death, but for God's glory, so that God's Son may be glorified through it.” 5Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed two more days in the place where he was.
7After this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” 8The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you, and you are going there again?” 9Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If someone walks during the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. 10But if he walks at night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” 11After saying these things, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going to wake him.” 12The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” 13Jesus had spoken about his death, but they thought he was speaking about ordinary sleep. 14Then Jesus told them openly, “Lazarus has died. 15And for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” 16Then Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us go too, so that we may die with him.”
17When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18Bethany was near Jerusalem, about fifteen stadia away. 19Many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. 20When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him, while Mary remained seated in the house. 21Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22Even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” 23Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.” 24Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise in the resurrection on the last day.” 25Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live. 26And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 27She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have believed that you are the Messiah, God's Son, the one coming into the world.”
28After saying this, she went and called her sister Mary privately: “The Teacher is here and is calling you.” 29When Mary heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. 30Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31The Jews who were in the house with Mary, consoling her, saw her get up quickly and leave. They followed her, thinking she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her weeping, he was indignant in spirit and deeply troubled. 34He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35Jesus wept. 36So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37But some of them said, “Could not this man, who opened the blind man's eyes, have kept this man from dying?”
38Then Jesus, again indignant within himself, came to the tomb. It was a cave, with a stone lying against it. 39Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the dead man's sister, said to him, “Lord, by now he stinks, for it is the fourth day.” 40Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see God's glory?” 41So they took away the stone. Jesus lifted his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you heard me. 42I knew that you always hear me, but I said this because of the crowd standing around, so that they may believe you sent me.” 43After saying this, he cried out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44The dead man came out, his feet and hands bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him and let him go.”
45Many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what he did believed in him. 46But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. 47So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we doing? This man is doing many signs. 48If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” 49But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all! 50You do not even consider that it is better for you that one man should die for the people than that the whole nation should perish.” 51He did not say this on his own. Rather, being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, 52and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the scattered children of God. 53So from that day they planned to kill him.
54Jesus therefore no longer walked openly among the Jews, but went away from there to the region near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim. He stayed there with the disciples. 55Now the Jewish Passover was near, and many went up from the countryside to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves. 56They were looking for Jesus and saying to one another as they stood in the temple, “What do you think? Surely he will not come to the festival?” 57The chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where he was, he should report it, so that they could arrest him.