John 12:27-36a

03/07/10
John 12:27-36a
Hudson UMC

Any good parent will tell you that they do not give their children everything they want. Sometimes, children want things that they can’t have for one reason or another. What is often the case is that they want something that they simply shouldn’t have. Even at his young age, Peter has desires that I absolutely refuse to fulfill, not because I don’t care deeply about him, but precisely because I do. For example, there are times that he feels very strongly that he needs to leap out of my arms. He may have any number of reasons for this. Maybe he is tired of being held, maybe he wants a different perspective on life, or maybe he has absolutely no idea what he is doing. What I know, that he does not seem to understand, or maybe even can’t understand, is that, if I allow him to have what he wants at that particular moment, it will go very badly for him.

Over and over again, throughout the Gospel of John, we have seen Jesus radically overturning our concepts. We think God is one way and Jesus shows us that He is indeed different than we ever imagined. We think that the life following Christ looks one way when, in reality, we find that it is completely different. There is a sense that this passage shows Jesus overturning the people’s understanding in a more deep way than ever before. I think we will find that it challenges us as well, but if we allow the majesty of God, revealed to us in Christ, to impress itself upon our hearts, we will find that, though we sometimes don’t get the God we want, we have the God that we so desperately need.

Jesus has just been told that some Greeks want to visit Him. He had declared that His hour had come, that is, the time has come for Him to die. Now he has this to say. “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.” This is a heavy statement and, if we are not paying careful attention, going through it slowly and, perhaps even reading it over and over again, we will miss the huge weight of what is being said here.

First, we have Jesus saying that His soul is troubled. Now, you know what it is like to have your soul troubled; I know what it is like to have my soul troubled, but what does it mean for Jesus’ soul to be troubled? What do we make of the soul of this man, who is at the same time the fullness of God, being troubled? Now, this topic has come up before, and not all that long ago, so I am not going to rehash all the details of that again just now, but let us remember that statements like these remind us beyond all doubt that God has loved us so much that He has entered completely into our brokenness. Jesus has taken the very things that trouble our souls and brought them into His own life. Perhaps even more significantly, He takes the things that should trouble our souls, but don’t, and allows them to trouble Him deeply. Jesus stands in solidarity with us, with a soul troubled like ours is, and, in taking that troubling upon Himself, overcomes it.

The next thing we see is something that takes a whole chapter to show in Matthew and Luke. We see Jesus’ triumph over temptation. “What should I say, ‘Father, save me from this hour?’” Though we do not have the figure of Satan in this passage, we see that temptation has come upon Jesus. It is as if the thought entered His head, “Wait a minute, you are the Son of God. You are the fullness of God living on earth. You don’t have to die. You could snap your fingers and stop everyone who wanted to kill you. You could overcome all of this with a word from your mouth.” And yet, Jesus resists the temptation to do what we might want to do if we were in the same place. “No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.” Jesus would not allow Himself to be distracted from His mission.

The third thing that we see is the astonishing thing that Jesus was about to do. He says, “Father, glorify your name.” Jesus doesn’t lay it all out here, but, if we look at what Jesus actually does, we can see that the Father glorifying His name was not a pleasant process, least of all for Jesus. We see in the crucifixion that, in order for the Father to glorify His name, the Son had to be given up. This is serious enough if we just think about how we would feel if we had to give up our children. And yet, it is even more serious than that. In order to give up the Son, the Father had to turn His back on His Son, the one who had been with Him since eternity past. The Son was just as much a part of the Father as the Father Himself. The relationship between the Father and the Son was part of who they were. The Father and the Son are two distinct persons, but they share a being. There is a sense in which God, in order to glorify His name, has to give Himself up.

Throughout the history of the church, there has been a lot of discussion about who killed Jesus. Many times, unfortunately, Christians have said that it was the Jewish people who put Jesus to death and this has fueled all kinds of terrible fires throughout the years. More recently, it has become more common for people to realize that the only reason that we did not put Jesus to death was because we did not live two thousand years ago in Jerusalem. It might have been us who had Jesus killed. Other people may have actually put the nails in His hands and feet, but we could make the argument that, since He died because of our sins, too, that we killed Christ. That brings it a little closer to home, but I think that, even though there is a grain of truth in this, we need to always remember who really put Jesus to death. God Himself. It was the Father who sentenced the Son to death. He died because of and for our sins, but it was the Father who passed the sentence, and it was the Father who carried out the judgment. In Jesus, we see God identifying with our sin so completely that the intense judgment of God against sin is brought to its fulfillment without being reduced in any way and it results in Jesus, God in flesh, dying.

We read that a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” God the Father is confirming that, indeed, Christ will die and that, in spite of the fact that it will expose the evil of humanity in a way that we have never seen before, it will result in God’s glory because the death of Christ will proclaim salvation and liberty to all who will come. Some of the people said that the voice was actually just thunder. Some others said that it was an angel who spoke. I always find statements like this interesting. I have heard people explain that they yearn to hear the audible voice of the Lord telling them what they need to know. Here we have just that happening and the people miss it. Some people realize that it is speech, but think it is an angel. Others hear the very voice of God and imagine that the weather is changing. If we do not have ears to hear, God Himself can speak to us and we will miss it. God, give us eyes to see and ears to hear.

“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.’” Jesus explains to us that what is about to take place is the judgment of the world. His going to His death is the ultimate act of judgment. In the cross, we see God passing judgment in all its severity on the sin of the world. Jesus has taken our sins upon Himself and nailed them to the cross. Our sins have already been exposed as evil, have already been condemned by God, and yet, we have not been consumed, we continue to live and we have the joy that comes with being reconciled to God. The ruler of this world has been cast out. We no longer need to live in slavery to sin and death, but have been purchased with the very blood of Christ.

The statement, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself,” is interesting. Earlier, Jesus compared Himself to the bronze serpent that Moses made that was lifted up on a pole so that the people of Israel could be saved, but He seems to be getting at something more here and the people know it. When Jesus says that He will be lifted up from the earth, He is pointing out that He is going to be crucified; that is nailed to a cross and lifted up from the earth. It is an odd expression for us today, but it was clearly understood at the time. “The crowd answered him, ‘We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?”

This is a key moment. Here we have Jesus surrounded by a crowd of people, all of whom presumably think He is a really big deal, who is going to change their lives, but they have a big problem with what Jesus has just said. They are under the impression that He was not ever going to die because the Messiah is said to remain forever. Here is Jesus saying in no uncertain terms that He is not only going to die, but that He is going to die soon. The people do not like this and they begin to doubt Him. Before, they were ready to call Him Messiah and Son of Man; now they are asking, “Who is this Son of Man?” Jesus doesn’t fit in with what they want, so they have turned on Him, at least a little bit.

The people want a Messiah who will never die, who will march into Jerusalem, take over and kick the Romans out and make sure they never come back. They want a leader who will put them back on the political map. They had not been a sovereign nation for over fifty years and they wanted to be free from foreign rule. As a side note, not only did they not get this from Jesus, but Israel was not a self-governing country until 1947. More than anything else, the people did not want a hero who was going to allow Himself to be captured and killed. The one Messiah the people refused to have was a suffering Messiah. The only problem with this is that the only Messiah there is had come to suffer and die.

How important is this for us today? All too often we live our lives as if Jesus was the kind of leader who comes in and takes over, who takes out evil by a display of brute force and makes good win and evil lose. We often confuse Christ’s kingdom with our kingdoms, whether national or local. What is more, many people live their lives truly believing that their faith is meant to make their life easy and to make everyone like them. We hope against hope that, when everything becomes clear, we will find that doing whatever it takes to make ourselves happy will somehow be revealed to be in line with God’s plans for us and our community. Wesley’s covenant renewal service that we have used for the last three years puts it well. “Commit yourselves to Christ as his servants. Give yourselves to him, that you may belong to him. Christ has many services to be done. Some are more easy and honorable, others are more difficult and disgraceful. Some are suitable to our inclinations and interests, others are contrary to both. In some we may please Christ and please ourselves. But then there are other works where we cannot please Christ except by denying ourselves.”

We follow a Lord who was put to death, not because He did anything wrong, nor because He treated people badly, but simply because He was the very presence of God in the midst of the people. The only Son of God there is came to suffer and die and we are called to follow in His footsteps. This doesn’t mean, of course, that we will be executed by a mob in Jerusalem, but it means that following God is not always easy. In fact, it will always challenge us and urge us to put our own likes and dislikes aside and seek what God wants.

“Jesus said to them, ‘The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.” God has shone His light on you and on me. He has overcome the darkness of the world and invites us to live as though we have been redeemed because redeemed we are. We are so completely and utterly redeemed that we can endure hardships and face the world unafraid. We have the very Spirit of God dwelling inside of us who unites us to the courage, the love, and the passion of Christ. Because we have been united to Christ, we join in His ministry to all the world.

In a few moments, we will celebrate Holy Communion. We remember that Christ has indeed been lifted up from the earth. His body has been broken and His blood has been spilled, all so that we might be transformed. The price has been paid; the bonds of sin have been broken. God has done the work and calls us to join Him. We cannot say, “But God, I am far to unworthy. I know all too well that I have sinned.” He knows it, and it is precisely because you have sinned that Jesus died for you. We cannot claim any insufficiency because God has taken every shortcoming, every failure, every mistake upon His own shoulders and defeated the curse once and for all. We cannot say that we are unable to participate in the sacrament because we are not good enough, because, by God’s grace you are forever bound to Christ who is good enough. Christ has been lifted up from the earth and now He is drawing all people, that is, you and me, to Himself. Let us rejoice as we celebrate this holy meal together for, as people who have been redeemed, we join Christ in His victory feast. Let us pray.

AMEN