Fifth Sunday of Lent
John 12:20-33
This is the hour. This is the time. The suspense has been killing us. Jesus
has been leading up to it for twelve chapters in the Gospel of John. At the
wedding of Cana, the very first of Jesus signs, Mary comes to Jesus when the
wine runs out and says to him, “They have no wine,” and he replies
“O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come.”
Somewhat later on, while Jesus is teaching and preaching in Galilee his brothers
come to him and say “Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples may
see the works you are doing,” and Jesus tells them “Go to the feast
yourselves; I am not going to this feast for my time has not yet fully come.”
Yet in that same chapter Jesus relents and goes
up to Jerusalem. He even ends up teaching in the temple. His teaching angers
some in the crowd so much that our text says, “So they sought to arrest
him, but no one laid hands on him because his hour had not yet come.”
He continues to preach in the temple and ultimately
is challenged by the Pharisees. He replies to them in the treasury of the temple
“You know neither me nor my father; if you knew me, you would know my father
also.” These words certainly incurred the Pharisee’s wrath. How could
he say these things and get away with them? But John’s gospel says “But
no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.”
Not yet, not yet, not yet.
But today, today we hear that some Greeks come
seeking to see Jesus. They come to Phillip and soPhillip and Andrew go to set
up the meeting with Jesus. They are undoubtedly shocked when Jesus says to them
“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Not yet, not
yet, not yet, NOW!!! Now is the time for Jesus to be glorified. Now is the hour.
The Greeks don’t need to be seen now for Jesus says, “When I am lifted
up from the earth I will draw all to myself.”
The disciples are assuredly ecstatic. The hour
of glory is at hand. Now is the time when Jesus will answer all those skeptics.
The moment is here when all those doubters will be put in their place. The moment
of glory, the culmination, the event that all the work and sweat and hardship
have been leading up to.
We know the feeling of those moments of glory—when
we throw our hands up in exhilaration, or jump in sheer jubilation and exaltation.
Moments of glory when the adrenaline flows and the heart pounds. If an alien
would want to know who we really are as humans, what we live and what we die
for, they would need to know what brings us glory.
Weeks and weeks they waited in the desert, eating sand and playing cards. And
then days on the road, vigilant, fearful, encountering resistance. Finally they
are in sight of the Baghdad airport, the goal. And it’s ours! Oh the glory.
Robert E. Lee once said, “It is good that war is so bloody, or we might
come to love it too much.” Nobody writes novels about being at peace. Like
it or not war brings out our glory. One of the best movies a few years ago bout
war, bloodshed, sacrifice, and death during the civil war was called just that
GLORY.
In Hebrew the word for glory is kabat and in the
New Testament Greek the word for glory is doxa. My Bible dictionary says that
these words imply “weightiness” and “splendor.” See? Glory
is that which gives you weight, substance, and that which makes you shine.
I suspect that’s why CBS has commissioned
the Song “One Shining Moment” as the culminating experience of the
basketball play-offs. There will be one shining moment for Kansas or Syracuse.
One moment of glory. One hit that puts Sammy into that elite bunch of heavy
hitters.
We speak of a weighty personality.” We sing
on Sundays a “Doxology.” Doxa equals praise. “Praise to God from
whom all blessings flow, praise God all creatures here below.”…God’s
glory is that God is high, lifted up, the creator of all that is below. So everyone
that is below lifts up their praise, their doxa to that which is above. But
wherein is Jesus glory?
The Greeks have heard of his many signs and wonders. “Who is this great
worker of miracles, this illustrious teacher?” And Jesus confirms now is
the hour to be glorified. At long last. Enough of this Galilean, flesh and blood,
ordinary human. At last Jesus will throw off his cloak of humanity and reveal
his glory. At last the hour for the weighty the high the lifted up the shining
God to reveal his ….glory.
See? We think in terms of what causes us glory.
But wherein is Jesus glory? His answer is shocking. “Unless a grain of
wheat falls into the earth and dies…” Jesus speaks of divine glory
as a seed falling to the earth, dying. The glory of God is not in his exaltation
but in his humiliation. In God’s stooping down, in the cross.
Generally speaking, people don’t build one-story
churches. They build their churches grand and glorious. High, lifted up, exalted,
glorious. We don’t write church anthems for the harmonica or the kazoo.
We pull out a thousand stops and use all the pipes. Glory!!!
They came looking for Jesus and they were shown
one who spoke of his life as a grain of wheat, dead in the earth, his glory
as his death, one who when struck on the cheek, offered his other tear stained
cheek as well. When we cursed him, he blessed us.
Those weighted with this world’s glory make the cover of Time. They do
the victory dance in the end zone after the touchdown. They point those annoying
foam rubber fingers in your face shouting we’re number one! You can tell
a great deal about us by whom we praise.
There aren’t songs of One Shining Moment
composed for the researchers who spend years painstakingly collecting and analyzing
data to find that one link to the spread of a fatal disease. There aren’t
garlands of roses for the teacher who sticks it out day after day in a near
bankrupt school district because children need him.
So when we came looking for Jesus, what we see surprises us. In the Christ we
behold God’s countering this worlds glory with glory of his own. We march
upward in glorious procession behind a silver cross. He stooped under a cross
of wood. We put crowns weighty with gold and jewels on those whom we exalt.
His crown is light. Thorns are not weighty. We work and study and strive so
that we might be weighty enough so as never to have to be required to stoop
to anyone. He enacted glory with basin and towel. We wanted to hail him on Palm
Sunday as Lord. By weeks end he knelt down and washed our tired feet.
We beheld his glory that required us to redefine the weight of glory. His glory
is in his stooping down. Not transcendence but immanence. He became as a grain
of wheat cast to the earth, buried, died. His glory his exaltation was when
he finally got his opportunity to be high and lifted up. Didn’t he say,
“I, when I am lifted up will draw all to myself? But his lifting up from
the earth, the only time when he was high enough to look down on us from the
heights of glory, was when he looked down on us from the cross.
The hour has come.
Amen.