For the last several weeks our Lenten journey has taken us through the remarkable Gospel of John. The ancient church regarded the gospel of John as the spiritual gospel which interpreted the previous Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. By this name, “spiritual,” meant that the Holy Spirit used the Gospel of John to unveil deeper significance for us and our salvation of the story of Jesus culminating in his passion. The deeper meaning is what the passion of Jesus means not only for us, but also for God. We see a remarkable instance of this unveiling in today’s reading from John 12 as we approach the Holy Week of the Passion.
First of all, it is the inquiry of some Greeks in the Temple precincts that occasions Jesus’s prediction of his impending suffering and death. You may recall that in the other Gospels this prediction occurs three times to the disciples on route to Jerusalem. But in John it is an inquiry of those from outside the range of the Jerusalem Temple who are seeking Jesus that triggers this stranger version of Jesus’s prediction of his suffering, humiliation, death and burial. Stranger, I say, because Jesus names the hour of his approaching passion as his hour of glorification! And what is this strange glory? It is the glory, he says, of a grain of wheat falling into the ground to die so that from it new life will emerge. And the new life will include the ingathering of the outsider Greeks into a new and spiritual temple, who is the crucified-glorified Jesus in person drawing all people to himself.
Now it’s also very interesting to observe that in John’s telling there is no episode of the Garden of Gethsemane, you remember from the other Gospels, where on the eve of his death Jesus prays in agony to be delivered from drinking the bitter cup. Nor is there any account of the Transfiguration in John. But in the next several verses, John retells these stories; first of Gethsemane: Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? `Father, save me from this hour'? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour. Notice that John does not deny the anguish of Jesus. His soul is troubled just as in Gethsemane. But John accentuates Jesus’s final, firm resolve, just as in Gethsemane “Thy will be done!” The effect is to portray Jesus’s fidelity to his calling, his obedience of faith to his mission, his willing surrender to his Father’s will overriding his natural human desire to be spared. He has come to this hour for this very purpose that lifted up upon the cross he will draw all peoples to himself.
The reading today from the letter to the Hebrews supplements John’s account: In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard for his godly fear. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. That spells out the astonishing thought! The divine Son of God is humble, willing as truly human to learn obedience! Yes this humility to be human and to learn obedience is, neither for John nor for Hebrews, no diminution of his almighty deity but actually it’s true and proper expression! Jesus learned obedience through suffering, showing himself this way truly to be the Son of God.
So, returning now to the Gospel of John, having thus pronounced himself and confirmed his divinely appointed purpose, Jesus prays, Father, glorify thy name." Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again. Notice that like John’s retelloing of the Garden of Gethsemane and the passion predictions, here also this next event take place in public, on the grounds of the temple in Jerusalem, and not only in the presence of a few select disciples. So in John’s distillation, the Transfiguration episode occurs right here, not on a remote mountain but in the courts of the Jerusalem Temple. And yet with another twist. In John it is not so much revealing that Jesus is the beloved Son to whom we are to listen, for in John Jesus has been openly declaring himself as the Son all along and indeed has been walking on this earth as already the transfigured One. But in John it is rather that heavenly voice sounding in the temple precincts declares the God of Israel, of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of Mount Zion and the and the throne of David, this very God of Israel answers publicly to confirm Jesus’s address to him, Father. The bewildered people, just like the bewildered disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration, wondered what had just happened. Jesus explains: This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the ruler of this world be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.
As it is the glory of the Son to come down to the depths and to be exalted or lifted up, not upon some royal throne of this earth, but upon the imperial stake, so it is also true that in just this way the Father’s judgment falls upon the world which crucified him – and just so the evil usurper of the kingdom of God on this earth is dethroned. How can this be? How can the cross be an enthronement, the humiliation of Jesus his exaltation, this profoundest weakness an all the more profound display of divine power exorcizing the forces of darkness?
On the grounds of the Jerusalem temple that will be destroyed within a generation by the siege of Roman legions, just here Jesus becomes himself the tabernacle of God in whom the nations are gathered to worship in Spirit and in truth. As the letter to the Hebrews today comments: So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, "Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee"; as he says also in another place, "Thou art a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek." And being made perfect he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest … Jesus is the high priest of the new “spiritual” temple, for he offers not a substitute, not a scapegoat, but himself. He gives himself, the righteous for the unrighteous, the worthy for the unworthy, the beloved Son for disgraced prodigals who have made a ruin of their inheritance. And this self-giving suffices once and for all, not repeatedly as in the animal sacrifices of the old temple, but persists as an everlasting intercession which may be presented again and again as accomplished and sufficient to us in our need. So it is that Jesus is lifted up upon the cross to draw all people to himself. And just this eternal intercession of our great high priest is how the evil ruler of this fallen world is cast out.
Or, are we too proud to be drawn into the crucified Savior as our only tabernacle in life and in death? Too proud to glory in the cross of Christ towering over the wrecks of time? Too proud to live by the grace of his intercession as our great high priest? Too proud to give away our status and power under the evil ruler of this fallen world?
Consider: what real power has this evil ruler? Biblically, Ha Shatan, literally, the accuser; he is not God’s equal, but a usurper. He is some kind of corrupt creature maliciously doing what it can to undo God’s purpose to redeem all that he is made – precisely from the ruinous sinful pride of which this Satan does repent. So what power really does the proud and malicious devil, a liar and murderer from the beginning, have? Only this: to entice us to vanity in its own proud image and then, when our vanity fails, as surely it does, and we come to our senses and want a new start, the malicious devil doubles down to prosecute, accuse, lash us with bitter reminders of our proud failures to love God above all and our neighbors as ourselves. And so he would confirm us in sinful pride making us too proud to receive the humble Son of God given in our place, too proud to tabernacle at the cross, too proud to give up the status and power of our sins. That is the sum and total of the demonic power.
Yet this malicious pride of the devil has in reality been undone by the astonishing humility of the divine Son of God. Just this one who did not exalt himself but has come as our faithful friend and is now made our intercessor, a true priest who pleads for us ceaselessly to comfort us as the Lamb of God who really takes away the sin of the world. So we may in truth and power prevail against the evil ruler of this world, if only we pour contempt on all our pride before the humble Son of God. One little word defeats him: “I am Christ’s and he is mine. He is written by the Holy Spirit on my heart so you have no power over me.”
Thus, according to our testimonies today from the Gospel of John and the Letter to the Hebrews, to know these marvelous things is to possess priceless treasure in life and in death. We are not talking here merely about intellectual knowledge, some item of information that we can store in our memory banks, call up and use as the need may be. We are talking about the kind of knowledge which lovers have, the empowering knowledge of new life together. So the prophet Jeremiah gave voice to the word of the Lord, speaking of all of us in the figure of his people Israel, us who he took by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. [Yet] my covenant they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. See, the Lord knew his people, but his people did not know the Lord. And thus they proved faithless. The Lord does not respond in kind but resolves to give his people the very knowledge of him that they lack with the new covenant: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, `Know the LORD,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.