Today, on the verge of the Holy week, John plunges us into a pre-Easter setting. In the early stages of Jesus’ ministry, the Temple authorities had shown little interest in the figure of Jesus or in the movement that formed around Him.

The situation changed on Palm Sunday: the Messianic homage paid to Jesus Christ on His entrance into Jerusalem; the cleansing of the Temple with the interpretation He gave to it, which seemed to indicate the end of the Temple altogether and a radical change in the worship; Jesus’ teaching in the Temple, from which there emerged a claim to full authority; the miracles He worked publicly and the growing multitude that gathered around Him… were facts that could no longer be ignored.

—John recounts in more detail a session of the Sanhedrin —before Palm Sunday— shaping an eventual decision on the "case" of Jesus (cf. 11:47-53). The immediate reason was the popular movement generated by the raising of Lazarus. O Jesus! I must confess you are God!