The Fifth Sunday in Lent --- 22 March 2015

John 12:20-33

20 Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. 21 They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus." 22 Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23 Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 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. 25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor. 27 "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. 28 Father, glorify your name." Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again." 29 The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, "An angel has spoken to him." 30 Jesus answered, "This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 31 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." 33 He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

"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.

• Words have great meanings and weighted meanings. What means one thing to one person might mean something entirely the opposite to another or it might have no meaning at all.
• Not long after I moved to this area, I was speaking to a few of my friends. These fellows said something like this: “Well, that was done and then everything was tickety-boo.”
• I don't need to tell you that I was confused. That was an expression I had never heard before, and I'd heard some truly weird sayings and expressions.
• It ends up that the phrase “tickety-boo” means “everything is fine” or “everything is in proper order.” My friends could not tell me where this expression came from, but that didn't matter. It's what they said and it made sense to them.
• Believe or not, it is the same way with the Scriptures and in particular with John's Gospel. John makes a lot of what might be called 'code words', words that have a particular meaning to him and to his original readers. John's words often mean the same thing as entirely other words used in the other three Gospels. It's just hard to translate from one to the other.
• In this day's Gospel reading, Jesus declares that The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. He goes on to say 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. For John, hour is not a 60 minute time period, but a pivotal moment, the point in time where something is going to happen. Jesus' hour of glorification is longer than 60 minutes and reaches its highpoint when he is lifted up on the cross.
• Another word particular to John is “glory.” For John, this word means nothing less than the Passion of Christ and his crucifixion. This may not seem like glory to us, but for John and for may others in the history of the Church, the crucifixion of Jesus is his most glorious action and the most glorious point in his life.
• This may come clearer to us if we realize that for John the crucifixion of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus are not two events, but one event that cannot be pulled apart. They are one event that must be considered as such. If we separate them, they lose their value and become things that happened to Jesus, things that we can watch from afar.
• The crucifixion without the resurrection is a senseless thing that leads to despair and defeat; all that Jesus did and said is lost in death. Further, the resurrection without the crucifixion is meaningless to us in regard to our salvation and our justification; it's just Jesus' escape hatch. If we consider one without the other, they are just historical events that happened in the past and are events do not include us.
• Together, the crucifixion/resurrection event has so much meaning and so much power, lives are changed and people are moved to things that would usually be impossible.
• Jesus goes on to use the farming analogy of the seed dying in the ground: 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. This statement has been taken and interpreted in so many ways that it would be hard to bring up all of them and bringing them all up would not help us here today.
• One of the interpretations takes us to Jesus' first statement, that this was the hour of his glorification. The analogy of the grain of wheat applies to him. It is a statement of how he ultimately sees his own death. Jesus is the seed that ultimately gives up its existence as a seed to become something more, that is, to bear fruit for greater good.
• As the passage goes on, other code words are uttered. The word, “world” is far beyond the created reality that we call this world. For John, the world is everything that opposes Jesus and his reign. He says the world is under judgement and the “prince of this world” is being driven out. The world and all that opposes Jesus and eternal life (which is John's way of saying “the kingdom of God”, the equivalent term used in the other Gospels.)
• Finally Jesus speaks of the nature of his own death in saying this: And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. Being “lifted up” reminds us of the bronze serpent raised up in the desert by Moses to heal those bitten by the serpents. Being “lifted up” is an apt demonstration of the figure of the crucifixion. Odd to hear, but it is this horrendous figure of the crucifixion rather than the teachings or the utterances of Jesus that will draw all people to him. This is his glorification. In fact, one commentator has said that in John's Gospel, Jesus goes to the cross like a king going to his throne in a coronation processional.
• Why did John use these words? It seems that the words used had meaning and power among the people he was writing for. Just like any set of words, they take their meaning from their situation. This is the reason why our scriptures are re-translated every so many years; for them to have real meaning and power, they have to speak to the people of that time and place.
• As we get close to Holy Week and the celebration of our salvation through the cross and resurrection of Christ, we will hear all sorts of words. Lets let them sink in and become part of us again and again. As Paul wrote to the Colossians: Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly... for in those words, we know Christ lifted from the earth, drawing all people to himself.