Of course, we identify with Mary; John planned it that way. Not that it would come naturally to most of John’s audience over the centuries to identify with her, a mere no-account woman—and a dangerously emotional and unpredictable one at that. Despite the fact that she shows up (for certain) only here in the gospel story and personifies—in her whining, wailing, and shamefully public behavior—the most negative assumptions Greco-Roman societies made about women, Mary gets the starring role in John’s tale of Lazarus’ death and resurrection and the ensuing events.

For instance, Mary’s fragrant and notorious deed of love is brought up even before the story of Lazarus’s death is told. Likewise, the mourners at the funeral follow Mary’s every move and the reason for their visit to the home of Mary and Martha is said to be to visit Mary. Jesus himself applauds her shocking appearance at a likely all-male dinner party to pour ointment on his feet. Mary may have been a loser in most contexts, but in the story as John tells it she is held up for the very consideration and emulation our Sabbath School lesson recommends toward her.

But Mary isn’t the only secondary character drawn into the spotlight in this miraculous tale of Jesus and Lazarus. Instead, John creates for his audience a behind-the-scenes glimpse of a silent but earthshaking widening of a great divide, which separated by ever-increasing distance the foolish nobodies who believed in Jesus from the big men at the top and their hangers-on, who did otherwise.

In a clear and jolting juxtaposition, John declares "Many of those who had come to Mary and had seen what had happened believed in Jesus, but some went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done" (11:45–46). Many believed; but some…went to the Pharisees. No statement here that they did not believe—a problem that John has not been reluctant to point out earlier or later—only the information that, whatever they made of what they had seen, they went and told the Pharisees.

The sign-miracle of Jesus drove both groups into action. Over and above the evidence of their own experience and the urge to belief it created, this group of witnesses to Lazarus’s return to life opted for the safe and political thing and checked in with the experts. And, with this, the "important people" take center stage.

Naturally it was the Pharisees they went to. The average Jew thought highly of the Pharisees, who were close to the people in economic level and working status. Highly influential among the people, the Pharisees were by most evidences men of a particular religious and political persuasion who held jobs, such as teaching and serving as scribes, that required more education. At this time, they did not have any significant wealth or official political position. Nevertheless, their position with the people gave them considerable power.

Uncharacteristically, the really Big Guys joined the Pharisees in the spotlight. The Big Guys called the shots politically and ostensibly religiously. More often than not at odds with the Pharisees, the chief priests were those with enough wealth and family connections to rise above the humble position of the average priest. They held the real clout in a society where the Romans bestowed the most powerful positions on those who could buy or bully their way in.

It was obvious from the actions of the Pharisees and chief priests already reported in the Gospel of John that there was no room for Jesus’ kind in either group’s carefully controlled master plan for the future. The religious leaders apparently kept a close eye on events in their realm, for example, sending out delegates to check out John the Baptist and assessing any threat he might pose. It was common knowledge that they were out to kill Jesus, and they had already sent their henchmen after him on at least one occasion. Learning about Jesus’ audacious words and actions, they felt the earth shifting under their feet, and John’s story states their anxiety baldly.

"If we let him go on like this everyone will believe in him…!" (11:48). Although the Pharisees and priestly leaders had battled back and forth for power for over a century, they had found in each other a measurable adversary and had carved out their own carefully guarded realms of authority and influence. Whereas the Pharisees could influence and win the regard of the people, the chief priests were prominent in Jerusalem and in the temple, and they had final say in matters relating to the Romans.

However, Jesus represented an unknown quantity. There was no telling exactly what he would do next, but it seemed certain from previous encounters that he wasn’t likely to do it in submission to—or even with sympathy for—the concerns of either the Pharisees or the chief priests. If the people gave their allegiance to Jesus, their ability to lead and shape the nation and to make it into the great people for God they dreamed of would be devastated.

Surely "the Romans will come and take away our place [probably holy place or temple] and our nation" (11:48). This was no idle or trumped-up fear. Short years earlier the Romans had reacted to another Galileean leader—a man named Judas, who had led the people of Sepphoris to resist Roman domination—by burning a city and enslaving its inhabitants.

Not many years later, they had slaughtered two other would-be messiahs with their followers in reaction to a messiah named Bark Kokhba, before finally leveling Jerusalem itself and barring Jews from ever entering. To allow Jesus to have his way would likely mean the end of everything they had worked for, of every hope for peace and security they had ever wanted.

It all makes sense, too much sense. There is no room for Jesus where humans have made their own agendas for the way it ought to be. There is no time to play around with believing in him when everything we ever dreamed of is at stake. The Pharisees and chief priests had it right. If our influence, our safety, our cherished beliefs and values, or our national identity is what we hold most dear, it would be foolhardy to even consider faith in Jesus.

Beyond a doubt, this preposterous "man" and his ideas either must somehow be put out of harm’s way or he will, indeed, turn everything upside down.

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