Yes, that’s definitely about that essential question of the trust that people can have in their politicians! So, it becomes increasingly difficult to accept truth even when it bops us on the nose. Rather like many politicians then, and their surreptitious ability to keep much of the general public in total ignorance to maintain the smoke and mirrors effect, to offer unrealistic manifestos based on lies, whilst protecting their own interests. They know their Torah and it suits them that most people wouldn’t even understand it.

They consider themselves superior to the common people. The Pharisees looked down their noses and sniffed dismissively at the common crowd the rabble don’t even know their law. Not that they thought very much of their own nation, their own people, anyway. Rejecting anything that doesn’t fit with their high-ranking, nice, comfortable life-style, and their safe position, both within their own nation and with the ruling Roman Empire. To believe the well-being of the nation needed to be preserved was a lie it was for their own positions of power and prestige. It became increasingly apparent that Jesus wasn’t mounting a political-style revolution, and the theologian Tom Wright states ‘The victory Jesus intends to win will be won by self-giving love, not by normal revolutionary means.’ But in doing what he did he usurped the Chief Priests, and they clearly didn’t like it one jot. But this last act becomes one of the principle reasons for the authorities wanting him out of the way. It’s an unbelievable and amazing thing that happened to Lazarus, and the Pharisees don’t actually dispute or deny what happened in fact, they very much believed it was true. In gaining evermore followers Jesus was clearly a threat to the structure of society, and raising Lazarus, Anastasis pre-empted, was the last straw. Was this all fake? Had he fooled everyone? This most significant sign that Jesus performed won him many followers, who came to believe in who he was, and because of the countless other deeds and signs he had performed. It’s what the media do, it’s what politicians do, and it’s what the Pharisees did. We become drawn into the stories, thinking we have a choice in what to believe. The media and powers that be, have us believe what they want us to believe, whether it’s the truth or fake news and lies. What about believing a sensational headline such as: Dead man walks! What sort of Anastasis, that is, resurrection, is this? This story about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead what should we make of that? Is it so outlandish that it’s unbelievable, all fake news and lies? Or is it so off the wall that it has to be 100% real?

How do you know what to believe when we have lies about Brexit, about NHS funding, about deflection by focussing on another party’s blackhole calculations? Trust? It so often seems to be all smoke and mirrors, all fake news and lies.

‘ It’s about that essential question of the trust that people can have in their politicians’ she says. ‘I have no plans to call a general election.’ ‘There will be no snap general election before 2020.’ Flashback to all the times Teresa May said a snap election was a terrible idea – until she didn’t, reports The New Statesman recently.

The raising of lazarus