A Meditation on John 12:20-33
“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.” John 12:27
What a shame. That dynamic young leader, healer, social organizer, friend to the poor, and gifted teacher who had so much promise was cut down in the prime of life. What an unfortunate waste of talent it was that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified. Like a rock star who overdoses in their twenties, a 23-year-old hall-of-fame bound pitcher whose elbow snaps mid-pitch, or an activist killed under suspicious circumstances, Jesus left too much on the table when he died. What an unfortunate accident of history.
I hope you are not comfortable with that paragraph because the thinking behind it is wrong. However, I hope you also allow yourself to see that we all think about Jesus’ death on the cross this way, though we often do so in ways that are much more subtle than this. As we move nearer to the cross in this Lenten season, we are to remind ourselves again and again that the cross is exactly why Jesus came, that this fact will always be a stumbling block for us as we follow after Him, but that God gives us exactly what we need on the cross of Christ.
Our Gospel reading for this Sunday from the twelfth chapter of John touches on a theme that connects that entire Gospel: Jesus came to die on the cross, and his death on the cross is directly identified with what he continually refers to as his glorification. Not only is God going to die, but he is also going to be crucified. Not only is God going to be crucified, but we are also supposed to interpret that miserable spectacle designed to torture and humiliate those who experience it as his moment of glory. Jesus Christ the God-Man is crucified, along with all of our expectations, hopes, dreams, and definitions of what a glorious savior looks like. But this is why He came, to be glorified through His own self-orchestrated death on behalf of the very ones who kill Him on the cross.
More than any other Gospel, St. John’s Gospel presents the reader with what theologians and biblical scholars call a “crisis of faith.” When you meet Jesus, your meeting with Him demands a decision, and it is critical that you make the right one. Either this man is exactly who he says he is, or he is not. He either deserves our complete, total, and exclusive worship, or else he deserves the death he gets. There is no third way, all who meet Jesus must make one of two decisions about him.
John’s Gospel is riddled with stumbling blocks surrounding this decision. It is in John’s Gospel, after all, that Jesus tells his followers they must eat his flesh and drink his blood to have any part in him. John tells us that once things were going really well for Jesus, and that his popularity and following were growing that, in response, Jesus just…disappeared because he was afraid that his followers would make him a King. As astounding as these stumbling blocks may be, there was no greater stumbling block in Christ’s time, is no greater stumbling block today, and never will be a greater stumbling block to faith in Jesus of Nazareth than this: that when we confess him as Lord, we confess that God was crucified and that this awful moment was his glorification.
What assumptions and expectations do we heap onto Christ when we think of his glorification? Wouldn’t he be more properly glorified as a political leader, a popular talk-show host with a book club and a house in Santa Fe, or some kind of advocate for our own definitions of justice and peace? You might think so, I think so sometimes; but God puts all of these expectations to death on the cross of Christ. As disappointing as this may be for us, without this death, this glorious, horrific, unjust death, we would not know who God really is.
To know who God really is, a loving God who came to live, die, and rise again for us, is what we actually need, whether we can acknowledge that difficult fact or not.
“I, when I am lifted up, will draw all people to myself.” John 12:32
Fr. Matt