When I turned 8, my lovely mother made me a birthday cake with sparklers! Unfortunately, it must have been her first time using sparklers because she placed a piece of wax paper over the icing in an effort to prevent any embers from ruining the beautifully decorated cake. Instead, the wax paper caught fire and the entire cake lit up in a giant flame on the kitchen table! My sister was screaming, my mom was waving a dish rag around desperately trying to put it and I took off running for the front door imagining the whole house would soon be engulfed!

Perhaps I overreacted a little, but my mom had the right idea. She didn’t just drop the cake and run, she tried to put out the flame. She knew what a flame could lead to and she was willing to burn her fingers and ruin her dish rag to save her house.

When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, he created quite a stir among the Jews and Gentiles. The Pharisees smelled the smoke from afar and knew the only way to stop Jesus from gaining followers was to snuff him out. In John 11:48 they say “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him…” What started as a flame was getting out of control and in that moment, the Pharisees sought to kill it before it could spread any further. They said in verse 50 “do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”

Their strategy made sense but they were unaware of the true purpose of Jesus. He hadn’t come to start a rebellion, he had come to be a sacrifice. As the Pharisees planned Christ’s death, they expected everything he taught to die with him, but instead, they began to prepare the altar by which he would fulfill God’s will.