The chapter
Simply Six days before Passover, Mary pours a jar of expensive perfume over Jesus' feet and Judas objects to the waste. The next day a crowd meets him at Jerusalem with palm branches. Some Greeks ask to see him, and instead of meeting them he starts talking about a grain of wheat that has to die. A voice comes from the sky, which some hear as thunder. Then he hides, and the chapter ends with him calling out one last time in public.
Context This is the last chapter of the public ministry, and the book knows it: verse 36 has him leave and hide, and verse 37 sums up everything before it in one sentence, that he had done so many signs and they did not believe. Everything after this chapter happens indoors or under arrest. The chapter also collects the reactions one after another, and they do not agree: a crowd shouting, priests plotting, Greeks asking, rulers believing in private, a voice from the sky heard as weather.
Verses 1-11
Simply At a supper in Bethany where Lazarus is at the table, Mary anoints Jesus' feet with a pound of pure nard and wipes them with her hair, and the smell fills the house. Judas asks why it was not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor, and the narrator says outright that he did not care about the poor and stole from the money box. Crowds come to see Lazarus as well, and the chief priests decide to kill him too.
Context Where the perfume goes is not the same in every Gospel. Matthew and Mark have a woman pour it on his head; John has Mary anoint his feet and wipe them with her hair. Both are in this app and a reader can put them side by side. The sum is the same in John and Mark, three hundred denarii. Verse 6 is one of the sharpest things the narrator ever does: instead of leaving Judas' objection to stand or be answered, he tells the reader what Judas was, and he is the only person in this Gospel given that treatment. Verse 10 is easy to miss and hard to forget, because the plan to kill Lazarus is a plan to undo a miracle by killing the evidence.
Verses 12-19
Simply The next day a great crowd going to the feast hears he is coming and goes out with palm branches, shouting Hosanna and calling him the King of Israel. He finds a young donkey and sits on it. The writer says the disciples did not understand this at the time and only remembered it later. The Pharisees say to each other that they are getting nowhere and that the whole world has gone after him.
Context John is the only one of the four that names the branches as palm. Matthew and Mark say branches cut from trees, and Luke has no branches at all, only clothes on the road. The quotation at verse 15 is Zechariah 9:9, and it can be opened here. Verse 16 is the most honest sentence in the scene: the disciples did not understand it while it was happening, and the writer says so rather than making them wiser than they were. The Pharisees' line at verse 19 is meant as complaint and reads as summary, which is why the Greeks turn up in the next verse.
Verses 20-36
Simply Some Greeks at the feast ask Philip if they can see Jesus. Philip tells Andrew and the two of them tell Jesus, and his answer is not about a meeting but about a grain of wheat: unless it falls into the ground and dies it stays one grain. He says his soul is troubled and refuses to ask to be saved from the hour. A voice answers from the sky. The crowd hears thunder, or an angel. He says the voice was for them, not him, and then hides.
Context The request at verse 21 is never granted in the text, and the reader never learns whether the Greeks got their meeting. What they get instead is the sentence about the grain, which answers them at a level they did not ask about. Verse 29 is the closest this Gospel comes to describing an event and its reception at the same time: the same sound is a voice, thunder, and an angel, depending on who is standing there. Verse 27 is where John comes nearest to the agony the other Gospels put in a garden, and the difference is that here he states the refusal out loud and moves on in one verse. Verse 33 tells the reader what being lifted up means, so nobody has to guess.
Verses 37-50
Simply The writer stops and sums up: he had done all these signs in front of them and they still did not believe, and he quotes Isaiah twice. He adds that many of the rulers did believe but would not say so, because they did not want to be put out of the synagogue and preferred the good opinion of people. Then Jesus calls out one last time, saying that whoever believes in him believes in the one who sent him, and that he came to save rather than to judge.
Context The two quotations are Isaiah 53:1 at verse 38 and Isaiah 6:10 at verse 40, and both can be opened in this app. They are put to a hard use here, and the text does not soften what it takes from the second one. Verse 42 is the one that keeps the summary from being tidy: it says many rulers did believe, which contradicts the flat statement three verses earlier unless you read verse 43 as its explanation. The last speech has no audience given and no place given, which is unusual in this Gospel; it reads as the book speaking rather than a scene.