John 12:12-19

02/14/10
John 12:12-19
Hudson UMC

Every once in a while, in our journey through John, we run across a story that is told in each of the four Christian Gospels. We encountered this, for example, with the story of the feeding of the five thousand. If a story is so important that every single Gospel writer, including John, whose Gospel is the most different from the others, includes it, it must be pretty important and we should pay attention to what is being said in it.

For this story, the context has a lot to say about what it means. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, this story happens right before Jesus goes into the Temple and turns over the tables and drives out the sellers. In John, that story took place right at the beginning, setting the stage for the entire ministry of Christ. In the other Gospels, the context shapes the way we read the text, so we see Jesus entry into Jerusalem as the time that He turns things upside down, that He asserts His authority over the Temple and the ways of the Jewish leaders. This is indeed true, but John puts a different spin on the events, drawing out another theme that is latent in the events.

It is possible to read this story in the other Gospels and get the idea that Jesus is, to a certain degree, fulfilling the expectations of the people for a worldly king that would transform their situation. After all, He enters triumphantly and then cleans out the Temple. And yet, even still, Jesus is not the political ruler that the people hoped for. John emphasizes this because of how he surrounds this story. In just the last chapter, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. When we look at the story of the triumphal entry in light of this context, we realize that the raising of Lazarus was a gift of life for people all over the earth, not a sign of nationalistic glory for Israel. In spite of the fact that the people desperately want a political leader who will overthrow the Romans, to Jesus, political freedom is small potatoes. Jesus set Himself to rescue us from the power of sin and death that has corrupted us down to the very core of our being. This freedom is not something that can be kept only to the Jews, but must go out into all the world. The people should not be praising Jesus as an earthly king, but as the manifestation of the Lord their God who has come into their midst to gather the outcast.

Even more immediately before this story, we have our text from last week, where Mary anointed Jesus, which He interpreted as an anointing for burial. Again, though the people see this event as the coming of their king into their midst, for Jesus, it is His death march. For Jesus, this entry into Jerusalem is the beginning of the end. Nobody else knows it, but Jesus knows just how little time He has on the earth. He will spend most of the next several days in hiding, teaching His disciples whatever He can so they can understand what is going on and that they will be ready for God to empower them for the days ahead.

Another way that John’s telling of the story helps to deflate the idea that Jesus is the conquering king that will liberate the people of Israel from their political oppression is that, in John, it is Jesus who finds the donkey to sit on and it is only after the people make a fuss and call Him the King of Israel. Jesus realizes that the people think that He has come to do one thing when He is really going to do something else entirely. So what does He do? He takes action and reinterprets what the people are doing. They thought they were welcoming an earthly king. Jesus sat down on a donkey and reminded them of what was written in the book of the prophet Zechariah. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

What is Jesus doing when He does this? He is changing the whole concept of “king” for the people. How do kings enter their capital city? Surrounded by a majestic entourage and with throngs of people waving banners and, most importantly, riding on a royal horse. Kings simply don’t ride on donkeys. Zechariah was talking about God being in the midst of the people and so Jesus was pointing out that He was no political king but the king of heaven who was willing to humble Himself because it was precisely by making Himself humble that He was going to bring deliverance to His people.

It is important for us to remember what John tells us here. “His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him.” At the time, nobody really understood what Jesus did, but once He was resurrected and ascended to heaven, all of a sudden, the Scriptures came alive in a way they never had before. Only once they realized just how big a deal Jesus really was could they make heads or tails of their encounter with Him.

The Pharisees have already planned to put Jesus and Lazarus to death. In fact, they had made public notice that Jesus was not to be harbored and that, if anyone knew where He was, they were to tell the Pharisees so they could arrest Him. This scene could do nothing to make them happy. After all, it was clear that a whole crowd of people knew just were Jesus was and had no intention whatsoever to turn Him in. When they realize just how badly their plans are going, they say to one another, “You see, you can do nothing. Look, the world has gone after him!” Just like the chief priest said more than he realized when he said that it is better for one man to die for the nation than for the whole nation to suffer, the Pharisees are saying more than they know here, too. They think they are exaggerating when they say that the world is going out to Jesus, but they didn’t know the half of it. The entire world would indeed come to Jesus. The Gospel has gone out into every continent and is making inroads in every inhabited area. Indeed, though the Pharisees had no idea about what they were saying, God was speaking through them and saying that what Jesus was doing, He was doing for the entire world.

Normally, we hear the story of Palm Sunday on the last Sunday in Lent as we enter into Holy Week. It might strike us as odd to be thinking about this event right before Lent begins. In only six weeks, we will be revisiting this story, we will consider again the events that happened on Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem right before He died. It is almost as if the entire season of Lent is being framed by this story, both at the beginning and at the end. I think that, just as the different Gospel writers bring out different themes in this story because of how they arrange their books, we can gain different insights both of these times we consider the story.

John’s telling of the story of Palm Sunday fits very well at the beginning of Lent. It is a sorrowful story. It is surrounded both before and after by passages that tell of Jesus’ impending death and what will happen within a week. We are more clearly reminded of the sadness of this story when we encounter it in John than we do when we read it in the other Gospels. Let us consider for a moment, both the intense sorrow of this story and also the intense joy and hope that it leaves us with.

The first thing we need to realize is that this is indeed a sorrowful story. It is not sad because of what takes place here, because all we see is rejoicing. However, it is sad because this story does not stand on its own. It took place at a particular time and a particular place. This entry took place five days before the Passover was to be celebrated and it took place in Jerusalem. We will see Jesus in front of a crowd gathered to see Him again before the end of the Gospel is told. This time, it will be a very different scene. They are still in Jerusalem and it is only about four days later. What was once a scene of coronation, a welcoming of a king, has been radically transformed. Underneath the brightness of Palm Sunday lies the shadow of Good Friday.

The people of Israel are crying out for Jesus to be their leader. The crowd shouts for him as King of Israel. But the only anointing that Jesus receives is an anointing for death; the only crown He will wear is the crown of thorns; the only robe he will wear is the cloak of mockery; and when thus anointed and robed, he stands before his people and is presented as their king, the crowd will shout, “Crucify Him!”

This is a big deal for us to think about because it shows both the intensely sinful state of humanity and the unfathomable love and mercy of God. It shows us that the people who seem the best, who seem to be welcoming Jesus into their city and their lives, who look like they are willing to obey Him instead of the other earthly leaders, the Pharisees, the chief priests and the Romans, are only making lip service to Him. They think that He is going to be one kind of Messiah and He turns out to be one that is completely different.

In a way, it is as if the trials of Israel were coming to fulfillment. Ever since the very beginning, Israel had a special task among the nations of the world. They were not called to be large or mighty, but they were called to be shaped by God in a unique way. They were called to follow a God that they could not picture in their minds, who was completely unlike the gods of the other nations. They were called to live according to different laws, living with a different sacrificial practice, and with prophets, priests and kings working together to help the people live faithful lives in every way.

However, as great a thing as it might seem to be the chosen people of God, the people that God interacts with in a more personal way, it did not come without a price. The nations who did not follow the Lord could do whatever they wanted. They were free to invent their own moral codes, they were free to engage in any kind of lifestyle they wanted. Anything they did that made one god mad would please another god so they could always rationalize their behavior. The people of Israel couldn’t do that. They had to live as God commanded them. They had to be the bearer of divine culture here on earth. And as soon as God began to interact with them, the hostility that each of us have toward God came out.

The greatest minds of the Judeo-Christian tradition have all agreed that there is something fundamentally wrong with us as human beings. God created us as good, but we have become tragically fallen and we have always, since the beginning, sought to rule our own lives. As soon as God says to us, “Thou shalt not,” we begin to want to do just that; for many reasons, but sometimes, just to stick it to God and show that we call the shots. Those who had nothing to do with God went about their merry way, never having their self-will challenged. But Israel had a history with God. They could not separate who they were from what God had done. They had a law by which they were to live, they had prophets calling them to return to God and to not be like their pagan neighbors. As God drew closer and closer to Israel, they struggled more and more to be free from God’s rule. All they wanted to do was be like the other nations, but God would not allow that.

And so, when God entered Israel in a more full way, in a personal Incarnation so that the fullness of God took up residence in a particular Jewish man, the conflict between man and God was not eliminated, but amplified. Everywhere He went, He went as God and, just like Jewish culture was fundamentally challenged whenever God spoke, when the very Word of God Himself came among them, everything false and evil in the society came out in opposition to Him. When God presented Himself to the people so that they could do whatever they wanted to Him, there was no hesitation. The crowds, that is, not just the evil Israelites, but the normal everyday people like you and me, shouted to have Him killed.

The sorrow that we have is that we all too often hear our own voice crying out “Hosanna” one day and “Crucify Him” the next. We realize that those crowds are not just people from a long time ago and from far away; we recognize our own sin, our own tendency to be unfaithful, our own desires to be free of God. We weep, not only because there once were people who really did not deserve to be saved and redeemed by the almighty power of God, we weep because we realize that we too do not deserve the mercy of God.

And yet, this weeping is indeed the turning point into joy. In the stories of Holy Week we see more clearly than in any other place just how serious our sin really is. As we realize that our sin is such a big deal that nothing short of the second Person of the Trinity becoming a human being, the Creator becoming a creature, and living a human life, being hated, mocked, spit at and finally crucified could wrench humanity out of the clutches of evil, we finally begin to understand our peril in a way we never could before. And yet, even though the crucifixion of Christ shows us just how sinful we really are, it also shows us how much we are loved by God. Yes, our sin required an unthinkable price to be atoned for, but we also see that God considers us worth redeeming, that we are worth atoning for.

It is amazing that God takes the moment where we are at our worst and uses it as the very same moment that binds us to Him. It is as if God is saying to us that, no matter how messed up we think we are, no matter how short of the mark we fall, no matter how unworthy we may be, nothing can stop Him from loving us with a love that will not let us go. Even when humanity rebelled against God so completely as to put Christ, the God-man, to death, God does not reject us, does not turn us away, but transforms that most evil act of all of human history into the most perfect example of God’s love for us and our salvation.

And so, we should be encouraged this Valentine’s day with this example of true love. In fact, we should be so encouraged that we can go out and serve God with untold confidence and boldness because even if we fail, even if we end up doing more harm than good, God will take even that failure and use it to bind us all the more fully to Him. He will take even our unfaithfulness, our resistance to Him, and transform it into the way we are reminded of God’s faithfulness. We are indeed part of that crowd that shouted to crucify Christ, but that means we are part of the crowd that Jesus died to save, even in the midst of their sins. This is the God that we see in Jesus Christ, the God that we cannot get rid of, no matter how hard we try. So let us receive Him with joy and let Him transform our lives and the lives of all we know. Let us pray.

AMEN