Abstract
This passage from John’s gospel is situated in the context of the Passover festival in Jerusalem. Prior to this, Jesus has raised Lazarus from the dead, been anointed by Mary, and arrived into Jerusalem on a donkey to cheering crowds. All eyes are on Jesus; but people are divided. Some plot against him and others are eager to meet him, to see him face to face.
It is into this scene that the Greeks arrive, asking to see Jesus. The message gets to Jesus via Andrew and Philip. The desire voiced by the Greeks is to see Jesus, to encounter him, not just to hear about him or see him from afar, but it doesn’t seem like the Greeks actually get to meet Jesus, instead Jesus tries again to tell the disciples what his mission in the world is, and what it means.
He does this by using an analogy about a grain of wheat falling into the earth and dying in order to bear fruit. It is a twofold lesson for the disciples. Jesus is both instructing them in being disciples, and explaining what it is that is going to happen to him.
Jesus presents us with a paradox—we have to die in order to flourish and have abundant life. One must lose one’s life in order to save it; to profit the whole world is to forfeit one’s life.
Maybe the life we will lose is the one based on all those expectations we have of what God and life should be like? And instead we might just gain life, abundant life, free of false expectations.
Our failure to let go and let some things die is a primary spiritual ailment, for new life can’t come without some death. Letting go of regrets, offering forgiveness, and letting go of control and are spiritual exercises in the art of dying so that new life may abound. You can’t move by standing still. You can’t grow by remaining the same. You can’t stand out by staying in with the crowd.
John’s focus is on the crucifixion and its implications. His main concern is not the forgiveness of individual sins, and neither does he proclaim a form of substitutionary atonement, through which Jesus takes on the divine punishment that humans deserve, in order to relieve us of blame and guilt. Rather, John’s understanding of the crucifixion is that it judges the world and drives out the ruler of the world.
The world in this case is not God’s creation but that which exists estranged from God and works in a way that is in opposition to God’s purpose. It is a reality embodied in structures and institutions that aggressively shape human life and seek to hold human beings captive to its ways, driven by a force whose ways are domination, violence and death. We see it in the social injustice and inequality that frame so much of our world.
It was the American theologian Walter Wink who coined the phrase ‘the myth of redemptive violence’. What he meant by this was the belief that the way to bring order out of chaos is through violently defeating the ‘other’ and to deal with threats from enemies by eliminating them—just as the system does to Jesus.
We see this played out in cartoons, such as Popeye, where he eats spinach and beats up Bluto to restore order, in video games and films, in the use of the death penalty, in acts of terrorism and in national and international responses to terrorism. And we are so gripped in the captivity of the system that we cannot imagine an alternative way.
But Jesus rejects violence, and so rejects the structures of the world. He exposes it on the cross for what it is and by exposing it he judges and casts out its ruler. Through his words Jesus invites us to a new and more expansive understanding of the cross and a new and alternative way of life in the midst of a violent world.
Many years ago I attended a Eucharist organised by a group of ordinands in Cambridge. In place of the liturgy of the word we moved around the church visiting prayer stations based around the events of lent and Holy Week. By far the most popular and the most powerful was the station for the events of Good Friday.
There in the sanctuary of the church were large model figures of Jesus on the cross, of the two men who were crucified either side of him, of Roman soldiers, the disciples, Jesus’ mother, and various onlookers. We were invited to enter the crowd to stand or sit amongst those looking on. Jesus said, ‘And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ and I remember lots of us sitting there for quite some time.
Perhaps this is why we hear this reading out of sequence, we are yet to get to the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, but we are being clued in to what is coming. We are being invited to walk with Jesus through the last days of his ministry, into Jerusalem and out onto the hill of Golgotha to see the God that loves us so much prepared to die for us so that we can have life in all its fullness. Jesus is lifted up from the earth in order to draw all people to himself, and there is nothing like impending death to focus our attention.
We often speak of giving things up for Lent, but what this gospel passage perhaps reminds us is that the giving up of stuff so that we can be proud of our ability to go without is missing the point a little. Which is not to say that there is no virtue in a small amount of self-denial, but that perhaps what we are called to deny ourselves is ambition that steps on other people, desire for things that mean that other people go without, our power that keeps others in their place, our status that marks us out as ‘better’ than others, and our love of our own lives and our own selves above all else.
As we approach Palm Sunday and Holy Week, may we find ourselves drawn to Christ as he is lifted up from the earth. May we see in his suffering the rejection of violence and control and oppression in our world and instead discover that it is in Jesus and the cross and resurrection that we get the God we need rather than the God we think we want.
This is the God that sheds glory to join us in our shame, the God who leaves heaven to enter our ‘hell-on-earth’, the God who abandons strength (or at least what we imagine strength to be) so that he can join, embrace, love and redeem the world at its places of weakness.
The God we meet in Jesus comes for our broken world and for all of us broken in body, mind or spirit to be one with us and for us.