The Resurrection of Jesus (John): New Creation

One could argue that John is written from a post-resurrection point of view. Think of chapter 2, when Jesus has gone in to the Temple and acted out that parable of destruction. Jesus says “Destroy this Temple and I will raise it again in three days.”

Then John brings in his own comments (which he often does) and he tells us what the underlying meaning was in Jesus’ rebuke: he says “But the temple he spoke of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said.” So John is not trying to surprise anyone in ch.20 and 21 with his resurrection narratives.

But we could come to the conclusion of resurrection by following John’s logic all the way through his gospel. He presents Jesus as fulfilling and surpassing Jewish customs:

John cast Jesus in a particular role in his gospel, always placing Jesus in the vicinity of Jewish festivals. The importance of Jesus actions and words around these festivals are crucial to understanding the Jesus of the fourth gospel.

The culture of his day would not have missed his message: Jesus was claiming to be superseding those rituals/symbols that they held dear, and was redefining; indeed replacing, the entire focus of the relationship between God and his people.

And so John again and again summons Israel to quiet down and ‘believe’; for what they are about to see will take them from the familiar words of “In the beginning” to the equally familiar “It is finished”, but this time it is not only the story of creation that John is telling but the story of new creation, or in other words: Jesus focused creation.

So, in chapters 1-4 Jesus is seen to be the one who brings the new wine, new temple, new birth, new law and living water which leads to true worship. He replaces these symbols as the focus of their meaning. They were outlines, shadows being cast ahead. Shadows that had a shape and told a story, and now, only by looking at Jesus is that shape properly filled in: why were humans created in God’s image?

John says that it has something to do with the fact that the Word had to, at one time become flesh and dwell among us. Humans were made to reflect God’s image, so that one day God could appropriately become human himself. In is within this idea that we need to see the idea of ‘resurrection’ in John. But how we get there?

There are two passages specifically that need mentioning at this point:

First, is John chapter 5: where Jesus spells out in v.25ff that there will be a great day of resurrection, where “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live”— which points forward to the raising of Lazarus, who indeed hears Jesus voice when he cries out to him, John tells us “with a loud voice” ‘Lazarus come forth’. (It is often pointed out that he said Lazarus’ name, because if he hadn't specified it, maybe everyone in their tombs would have come out)

But in ch.5.29 Jesus’ point, like that of Daniel 12, is that there will come a day when all people will rise, those who had done bad to a resurrection of judgment and those who had done good (like Lazarus) to a resurrection of life. But in a very real way John explains that Jesus has taken th end-time expectation of resurrection and ushered it into the present: Jesus says in 5.25 “an hour is coming and now is”. So, just like the “eternal life” discussion in John as ‘life of the new age’ being already experienced by those who believe, so this resurrection life is also something that is present through the ministry of Jesus.

But what about Lazarus (John 11)? 1) Lazarus’ resurrection is a signpost pointing toward Jesus’ own resurrection, but there are a couple of differences and identifying those differences helps to make John’s theological point.

a. Lazarus comes back to the same kind of life that he has experienced before, where he shares in a dinner party and he finds himself even facing death threats (Read 12.10). So, what is the difference? The journey that Jesus would make is a journey through death and out the other side into a new sort of existence. There could be no death threats made toward Jesus that would hold any water.

b. Lazarus came from the tomb wearing his graveclothes, but Jesus’ resurrection body apparently passed through those clothes: wrappings that Jesus will never again have use for, but something which Lazarus will indeed need again.

John is the only one that draws attention to the body wrap of Jesus. He says (20.6) “and he saw the linen wrappings lying there and the face cloth which had been on his head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself”. The point is that someone has not only taken the body away, but they have gone to the trouble of unwrapping it! And not only that but the head wrapping is where the head used to be! Someone having unwrapped the body, has worked to create an effect: it looks as though the body was not picked up and unwrapped, but that it had just disappeared, leaving the empty clothes, like a collapsed air balloon. What Jesus had experienced was to be seen as the next step in resurrection- a step that surpasses Lazarus by a mile.

SIGNS

John gives his readers ‘signs’ which he says are to lead people to ‘believe’ in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. And at the end of his gospel we see Thomas who gives the greatest proclamation of faith in the Gospel: “My Lord and my God” he says. When does he make this confession? When he meets the resurrected Jesus. Thus we should conclude that the resurrection is the final great climactic ‘sign’ . After Jesus turns the water into wine, in ch.2, John says, “this was the beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee”; and so saying that it’s the first sign alerts us that there are more to come. And so Jesus, in chapter 4 heals the centurions servant from a distance and John says “this was the second sign that Jesus did”. Having pointed out these first two John says in effect: alright your on your own from here.

And so we count: the paralyzed man at the pool of Bethesda, the multiplication of the loaves, the man born blind, the raising of Lazarus, the crucifixion and finally the climactic sign the resurrection itself. This is everything you need, John says to see and believe. But come back to the numbers, notice what number sign the resurrection was: sign eight.

So, what is significant about that? In the Jewish story (and more specifically in John’s writing of that story) this eighth sign is one that declares something in itself. Six signs in ch.1-12 and then nothing else by way of signs for the next 6 chapters. What no more signs? Surely John knows that the number six is nothing compared to the number seven. And why should we have seven in mind? Think back to chapter 1 “In the beginning…” (1.1)— John is writing a new Genesis, and thus these are the 7 signs of the new creation, paralleling with the seven days of the first creation.

And so, the cross is the seventh sign and just as the sixth day of the creation story consisted of the creation of human beings in God’s image, so Pilate displays Jesus on the sixth and final day of the passion week and says “Behold the man” and just how that sixth day had ended in triumph when God finished all the work he had done to rest on the seventh (Gen. 2.1-3), so the last words of the pre-Easter Jesus in John’s Gospel are “It is finished!” (19.30) and Jesus then rests’ in the silence of the tomb.

So what are we to make of the resurrection in this paradigm? John begins his resurrection narrative then with a shocking phrase, with heavy echoes from the creation account “On the first day of the week, when it was still dark” (20.1). This was the scene for the proclamation of the true light that shines in the world. This was the first day of the new creation week. Easter is the start of new creation.

So John's story is that Jesus died on behalf of Israel and thus on behalf of the rest of the world. That death and resurrection was redemptive because it ushered in the ‘age to come’. And now anyone who believes becomes part of the ‘new age’ people of God— children who are called to be people of ‘light’ and ‘life’; people called to a new day and thus a new way of being human. AMEN!