John
12:20-33
Lent
5
March
22, 2015
William G. Carter
Now among those who went up to worship at the festival
were some Greeks. They came to
Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to
see Jesus.” Philip went and told
Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, “The hour has
come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very
truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it
remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and
those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever
serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.
Whoever serves me, the Father will honor."
“Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father,
save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this
hour. Father, glorify your name.”
Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it
again.” The crowd standing there
heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to
him.” Jesus answered, “This voice
has come for your sake, not for mine. Now
is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the
earth, will draw all people to myself.” He
said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.
We
continue on the road to the cross. That is what our journey for the season of
Lent. It’s an unusual journey, as we heard a couple of weeks ago. The world regards
it as foolish and weak. Last week we heard the word from Ephesians, that God works
grace in the cross by saving us from our sin. We prayed for the faith to
believe it, to trust it.
Today
we have another unusual word, this time from the mouth of Jesus himself: “When
I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.” And the
writer makes sure we understand what he is saying, “He said this to indicate
the kind of death he was to die.”
John
understands the cross in light of the resurrection and ascension. Good Friday
and Easter are one long weekend, and all of it marks the journey by which Jesus
returns to heaven. Jesus comes down from the Father, speaking the truth and
doing many signs. The cross is how he begins his return. He is “lifted up,” says
John – lifted up on the cross, lifted up from the grave, lifted up into heaven.
This is the way that this Gospel writer talks. The cross is Jesus’ “glory, his “hour.”
It will draw all people to Jesus.
What
a curious thing to say. He does say “all people.” Not a selected few, but all
people. Not only the obvious ones, the ones who trust and believe and say the
right words, but “all people.”
John
has no problem parsing people into different groups. Throughout his Gospel, he
calls one of the groups “the Jews.” He often gives them a little kick of
judgment, as a sign he didn’t like them.
Sadly that little kick became full scale anti-Semitism in the Middle
Ages, even though that was never the intended purpose.
When
John speaks of “the Jews,” it is verbal shorthand for “the Jews within the
Jews,” that is, those who refused to acknowledge that Jesus is the Messiah. In
his John’s day, near the end of the first century, the church had endured a
painful split from Judaism. The evangelist acknowledges this by referring to
Jesus’ opponents as “the Jews.” He doesn’t mean a universal statement of “all
Jews everywhere,” but only those who opposed Jesus in his earthly ministry.
And
yet he quotes Jesus as saying, “I will draw all people to myself.”
In
the passage for today, he tells of an unusual moment when some Greeks are drawn
to Jesus. It is Passover week, and Jesus
has just dismounted his Palm Sunday donkey. Some strangers went to Philip,
Philip went to Andrew, and the two of them went to Jesus. They said, “Some
Greeks are looking for you.” We don’t know who they are. Were they Jews from
out of town who spoke the Greek language? Were they Gentiles from the wider
culture who wondered what the fuss was about? We don’t know.
We do know that by the time this story got written down,
John’s church was full of all kinds of people who were drawn to the Christ.
Tradition puts John in the Turkish city of Ephesus, a major center for Jews and
Gentiles, Turks and Greeks, centurions and slaves, business owners and single parents,
widows and refugees – and it’s a good bet a smattering of them all were in John’s
church.
Perhaps he saw in the diversity of his congregation a sign
of what God wants for the world: a church that draws all kinds of people. Imagine
that! As Jesus said, “When I am lifted up, I will all people to myself.”
In the Gospel of John, Jesus has said this kind of thing
before. In chapter 10, the Good Shepherd says, “I have other sheep that do not
belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.
So there will be one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:16). Again, he doesn’t
declare who those outsiders are. Maybe they are Greeks, maybe they are Jews,
maybe they are somebody else. The Gospel of John keeps this open, so must we.
We cannot restrict what Jesus himself does not specify.
And please notice it is
Jesus who is lifted up. It is Jesus who is central. It is Jesus who draws all the
people, and Jesus through whom all people will pass. “No one is going to come
to the Father,” he says, “unless they pass through me” (14:6). He is the
tunnel, he is the conduit. Or as he says in chapter ten, he is “the gate”
(10:9) through which all the varied flocks will pass. They don’t pass through
the Presbyterian church, or the Baptist church, or the Catholic church – they pass
through Jesus.
In
fact, lambs in another flock may have lived their entire lives as Buddhists.
That may be all they know. Perhaps their only exposure to Christians is some of
the hateful and divisive words they have heard some of the Christians who speak
on the evening news. And when they pass through, Jesus is so great he is the
One they are passing through. Because the Lord is greater than some of the
people who claim to represent him.
Or
there might be in lambs in another flock, and these would be the people who
burned out on the church. Maybe they tried it years ago and it didn’t work for
them. Or they prayed and didn’t get what they wanted. Or they got stuck in a
committee meeting and couldn’t get out. Or they grew up and discovered that
nobody really wanted them, and everywhere they turned, the door was locked. Imagine
them being drawn to Jesus, to the real Jesus – not the dashboard Jesus or a
cartoon caricature, but to the One who says at the end of our chapter, “I came
not to judge the world but to save the world” (12:47). Imagine a love that deep,
a mercy that wide!
In
the language of the Gospel of John, I believe this is what it means when he
says, “I will draw all people to myself.” All will come to him. All will pass
through him. That is what is inevitable for every one of us. Our hope is in the
words of a favorite Christmas carol: “And our eyes at last shall see Him /
through His own redeeming love / for that Child so dear and gentle / is our
Lord in heaven above.”[1]
But
here’s the thing. Those whose “eyes at last shall see Him,” shall see him only
through the eyes of humility. It won’t be through their strength or their power
or their correctness on matters spiritual or otherwise. They will see him in
their moment of need and the disposition of their hearts. As the teen choir sings
for us, “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, nobody knows but Jesus.” You can’t
sing that from the altitude of arrogance. You can only truly sing it
If
Jesus comes to draw all people to himself and save them, it is in the
universality of our need. And we see this when we see our need for Someone in
heaven greater than ourselves, Someone who knows what it is like to be us.
Perhaps
that’s why, when Jesus speaks of glory, he speaks of emptying. That is the
paradox of the Christian life. Tucked in the middle of this passage about the universal
attraction of the cross, Jesus gives three brief teachings:
- The first is a law from
nature: the grain of wheat that falls into the ground will flourish. Death
is essential for the increase of life.
- Second is a law of
discipleship: dying to yourself is the pre-condition of having a full
life.
- Third, the law of nature and
the law of discipleship are shaped by Jesus himself: his death is an act
of self-giving service, and those who follow him will give their lives in
service.
To
see Jesus involves setting ourselves aside. He has “emptied” himself by coming
down from heaven in complete vulnerability.[2] So
he has set the pattern for those who follow him, and for all who will sooner or
later see him. The cross-shaped life is not about me and what I want. It is
about emptying ourselves into the love of God and the love of our neighbors. It
means setting aside all the vain things that charm us most, and serving like
Christ, who gave up the throne in heaven to come down here and to give his life
to the world.
This
is a move worthy of our Lenten reflection. One of my friends has wrapped it up
in a story:
In a hospital chaplain training program,
a new student chaplain was requested to visit Marie, a patient with terminal
cancer who had requested a visit. This seminarian’s first real encounter with
death, he was overwhelmed with the smell of the hospital room. As he entered
the room and saw Marie’s ashen color, he felt sick to his stomach. But then
remembered from somewhere that it helps to sit down and put your head in your
hands. He sat that way for four or five minutes, and the sickness did lessen..
But when he looked at the woman,
instantly he felt so embarrassed that he just got up and left the room. Feeling
that he had failed, he went to the meditation room to sort things out. He
decided he would tell his supervisor the next day that was resigning from the
program. It was too difficult. But the next morning before he had the chance,
the supervisor found him. Marie had called again. Oh ho, he thought.
“Well, this time she wanted to say
thanks. After she called yesterday, she wished she hadn’t. She was so sick that
she didn’t feel like talking and surely didn’t want any minister preaching to her.
She said, ‘The chaplain who came must have sensed that. He sat down, bowed his
head, and prayed for maybe five minutes. And then he gave me the most loving
glance and left. Of all my visits at this hospital, this is the most meaningful
visit I ever received.’”
Somebody said, “But he wasn’t really
praying, was he?” Well, yes. He was yearning for health, wholeness, some
relief. And that’s just how she experienced his prayer.[3]
Jesus
says, “Unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just
a single grain; but if it dies it bears much fruit.” Jesus says this about
himself. He says it also as an invitation for us who would follow him, an invitation for us to
flourish in our falling. And one thing more: he says it for anyone who wishes
to see him . . . because sooner or later, everyone shall see him.
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