John 12:20-26

02/21/10
John 12:20-26
Hudson UMC

Sometimes, when we read the Bible, we come across a verse or a passage that we can’t quite figure out. Sometimes, the author is putting together two ideas and seems to be making a connection but we just can’t put the pieces together. We often feel silly because we get the feeling that the connection is obvious to the author but we are totally missing it. Sometimes, its because we are twenty-first century Americans and not first century Jews so we come at the text from a completely different context and, while some things are clear to us, some go right over our heads.

There are other times that we read the Bible and we come across a familiar passage or verse that we have heard over and over and always assumed we knew what it meant, but then go back and see it again and catch something we never have before. We get a new insight, we see something that we didn’t know was there but was sitting there all along.

Something like this happened to me when I was thinking about this passage and getting ready to preach on it. All my Christian life, I have heard this passage, especially the parable of the grain of wheat that falls to the earth and dies, within the context of funerals. I had often assumed that Jesus was just giving us some words of comfort, but He is saying far more here than I think we often realize. I am becoming more and more convinced that this is a passage about the gift of the Holy Spirit to the church and what that means for outreach.

The passage opens with us being told that there were some Greeks who wanted to see Jesus. This is extremely significant because this is the very first time we have seen Gentiles in John’s Gospel. We have seen all kinds of people who were on the edges of Jewish society, like those who were blind, crippled, and even adulterers. We have seen Jesus reaching out to Samaritans who are something along the lines of “half-Jews,” but, until now, we have not seen Jesus interacting with people who were totally outside the Jewish nation, who had no relation of any kind to the Jewish promises.

The Greeks tell Philip that they want to see Jesus; Philip goes to tell Andrew, then they both go to tell Jesus about the Greeks who want to see Him. Jesus’ answer is very interesting. He doesn’t say to them, “Bring them here,” or, “I’ll go to see them,” but says “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified, “ and then tells the parable about the grain of wheat falling to the earth. I can imagine that Andrew and Philip would have been a little confused. “What are you talking about, Jesus? All we said was that some Greeks wanted to see you, what does your hour coming have to do with that?”

And yet, if we take a moment and remember what Jesus has said so far throughout the Gospel, we might be able to make some connections that will help us. One of the biggest advantages of going through an entire book of the Bible is that we have a chance to really get into the vocabulary and style of a single writer. We get a chance to dig into the symbolism that John has developed, to notice key words and themes that come up over and over again and allow the Gospel itself help us interpret it.

So, let’s revisit the other times that Jesus has talked about His “hour” coming. We first heard Him talk about it at the wedding in Cana where He performed His first miracle, turning water into wine. We read that, when Mary came to tell Him that the wine was gone, He said, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” The next time we heard Him say something about this is when He came to Jerusalem during the feast of Booths where He made a big deal about the fact that His teaching was not His own, but the words of the Father and that the people did not really believe in God because they did not believe in Him. We read at the beginning of the passage, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here…Go to the festival yourselves. I am not going to this festival, for my time has not yet fully come.” At the end of the passage we read, “Then they tried to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him, because his hour had not yet come.” Finally, we hear about it when Jesus was explaining that He was the light of the world. It says, “He spoke these words while he was teaching in the treasury of the temple, but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.”

So when we hear Jesus say to His disciples, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified,” it might seem to have come out of the blue, but we are meant to put it together with people trying to arrest Him. Somehow, these Greeks, these Gentiles wanting to see Jesus are a sign that He is about to be arrested and killed. Already we have heard Jesus talking about being prepared for burial, but here we have Him spelling out with remarkable and even disturbing clarity that the time has come for Him to die.

Let us pay close attention to what Jesus says here. “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.” Jesus is first and foremost speaking of Himself as the grain of wheat that falls into the earth and dies. In just a few chapters, Jesus will tell His disciples, “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.” Jesus does not come out and mention the Holy Spirit in this passage, but He is saying exactly the same thing here.

There have been times that I have wondered, “What would have happened if Jesus hadn’t been killed when He was? What if His ministry had continued? He had made such an incredible difference in only three years, just imagine what He could have done with a longer ministry.” And yet, here is Jesus saying, “If I stay, it won’t be as good as it would be if I go (that is, die).” We live in a culture that sees death as only bad. We dread it more than nearly anything else. It is hard for us to understand Jesus saying that it is better if He dies, and yet this is exactly what He has to say.

God became a human being so that we might be saved. Often, we think about salvation as the product only of the death of Christ, but there is more to it than this. Our salvation was being worked out in Christ starting at the very beginning of His life. He did not only pay our debt by dying on the cross, He also took all of our brokenness upon Himself and turned our damaged humanity back to God throughout a lifetime of obedience. What Jesus is saying here is that His cleansing of our humanity would not be done until He took it all the way through death to resurrection and ascension. What is amazing is that God, the one who is immortal, who never had to die, was willing to join with us in our sufferings even to the point of dying for us.

It was only when our humanity was fully reconciled to God that the Holy Spirit could be given to the people of God. Jesus says that, “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.” What is the fruit that Jesus is talking about? We are! With Jesus falling into the earth and dying, we were forgiven of our sins. If He had stayed alive, there might have been a bunch of good instruction, we might have had a clearer picture of who God is, we might have a great set of moral teaching to live our lives by, but we would still be missing out on the single most important aspect of the Christian life: Salvation. If we were a bunch of supremely moral people who could describe God in the most clear and precise terms ever, but were still in our sins and had a fundamentally unchanged nature, what would we gain? God did not die to make us nice people, but to transform us from God’s enemies to his friends, to change us from children of evil to children of God. Without that, Christian faith is nothing more than one more religion made to make us feel like we are doing the right thing.

But, Jesus is saying that His death will bear much fruit. It does, it has and it will continue to do so. If you have experienced the dramatic and life-changing power of God, you are some of the fruit that the death of Christ has produced. If you have had your sins forgiven and your life transformed, it is because God loved you so much that He took your brokenness upon Himself and dealt with it Himself so you might be set free. Even the least experienced Christian can bear witness to the fact that the death of Christ has indeed born fruit that is real and powerful and worth telling the world about. But there is more to it than just simple forgiveness.

Jesus will tell His disciples that, when He goes, He will send the Helper, that is, the Holy Spirit. In chapter fourteen, He will explain to His followers, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” We might not be sure how Jesus can say this because He is God in flesh, while we are not. How in the world could we do anything close to what Jesus was doing, let alone greater things?

The reason is that, when Jesus took our brokenness all the way to death, raising our humanity from the dead and sanctifying it, He paved the way for the Holy Spirit to be given to us. The gift of the Holy Spirit is an idea that is heavily emphasized in Pentecostal and Charismatic circles but is often ignored in the Mainline tradition. However, it is one of the most important things for us to understand because, if we don’t have a grasp on the basic idea that we, as Christians, have the Spirit of God dwelling inside of us, we will only ever think of our ministry as our ministry and not the ministry of God through us. If we don’t have at least some basic clarity about the role of the Spirit in our lives, we will tend to confuse the Holy Spirit with our spirit. Most importantly, as we more fully understand the gift of the Spirit, the more we will be excited about our role in God’s plans, we will be encouraged and empowered to do what we never thought possible and participate more fully than we ever dreamed in the transformation of the world. It is tremendously exciting.

Christian faith has always proclaimed that there is one God but that this one God is a Trinity of Persons, who are all equal to each other. One of these is the Father, who we are often referring to when we just say, “God.” Another one of these is the Son, who became a human being as the man Jesus that we read about in the Gospels. The third one is the Holy Spirit. This Spirit was given to the church at Pentecost and has continued to dwell in Christians ever since. If you are a Christian, you have the Spirit of God living inside of you.

What is amazing, and might be even overwhelming is that the Holy Spirit is the same God as Jesus is. When we live according to the Spirit, we are joining in the life of Christ. When we do the works that the Spirit prompts us to do, we are joining in Christ’s works. This is why Pentecost bothered so many of the leaders at the time. They thought they had gotten rid of Jesus, but now they had twelve other people who were doing the same things He was doing. It was as if the same God that was present in Christ was now present in all the Christians.

Indeed, that is exactly what happened. The same God that we read about in the pages of Scripture has taken up residence in our own lives. This is both exciting and scary. It is exciting because it takes the limitations we think we have and it throws them out the window. When we have the very power of God strengthening us, what can hold us back from doing mighty things? On the other hand, it is scary for the very same reason. If we are upheld by the very power of God and that power is meant to be used in transforming the world around us, it can be a scary thought because, in spite of the promises of the Gospel, we might still feel unworthy of the task. God calls us to step out of our comfort zones to join Him in His work and promises that, in spite of our personal unworthiness, He will supply our needs and will do mighty things through us. After all, God Himself has taken up residence in you and in me.

One of the things that we learn from our passage today is that the work of God crosses all boundaries. The Messiah who was thought to be only for the Jews turned out to be for the Gentiles as well. The Good News of Jesus Christ is not just for those on the inside, that is, those who already believe and go to church, but also, indeed especially for those outside. After all, it is precisely for those people that Christ laid down His life.

Jesus finishes this statement by saying, “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.” Jesus has told us that, if we want to be Christians, if we want to serve Christ, we need to follow Him. He is leading the way, He is showing us by His words and His actions what we should be doing. No matter how far along we are, Christ has still gone on before us, calling for us to follow Him. And so, since we have such a glorious Lord, one who has gone even to death for us, who has forged out the path so that we might become full participants in the work of God, let us go forth with boldness, knowing that the very God of the universe has taken up residence in our lives and gives us the power to succeed at tasks that are bigger than we are. Our God is good. Let us follow. Let us pray.

AMEN