| Tonight, we go back to the beginning of John’s Passion narrative. The Sabbath, a week before the Passover which will also fall on a Sabbath that year has just ended at sundown, so it is what we would call a Saturday night, and a dinner has been arranged in Jesus’ honour. The next day will be what we now mark as Palm Sunday, and the high drama will begin. But in fact, the drama is already under way. The dinner is being thrown at Bethany by the friends Jesus is staying with, just outside Jerusalem. Jerusalem itself would have been packed with pilgrims and about a quarter of a million sheep for the Passover sacrifice, if Josephus the Jewish historian is to be believed, so a village outside town offered quieter quarters. But the friends were Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha, and just a few weeks before Jesus had raised Lazarus from death. That is what John sees as the trigger, rather than the provocation of Palm Sunday, and we get the sense that Jesus knew it, because the emotions run high. Read more of this post David Thomson | April 15, 2019 at 9:00 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: https://wp.me/poSLL-3Hy | 