Faith Foundations for Lent: Inclusiveness

March 20, 1994

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Scripture: John 12:20-33

“And I, when I am lifted up....will draw all people to myself.”

Here it is....finally....at long last, after all this time... the moment He knew was coming. Here was the sign He was expecting, anticipating, looking for, and dreading... the sign He knew He couldn’t evade. “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.... Now my soul is troubled.”

Much to the Gospel of John is played out as a kind of waiting game. You notice it when you read through the text. A recurring phrase, many times over, is the phrase, “my hour has not yet come.” That is, I must still wait a little longer. He seems to know...and waits... for the right moment.

The Jesus of John, the Jesus whose portrait John depicts in such strong, vivid colors, is very different from the Jesus of the other Gospels... Matthew, Mark and Luke. In those Gospels, he is self-effacing, unpretentious, almost unassuming. There is an authority about Him, of course, but a quiet authority, never brazen or pushy. When someone calls Him good, you can almost see Him blush.

He blunts the compliment, turns it aside graciously, by saying, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” He deliberately, in those Gospels, shies away from talking about Himself.

How different in the 4th Gospel. There, Himself is all He does talk about. “Whosoever believeth in me.....“I am come that they might have life”... all the way through it’s like that.

John tells stories to give Jesus a chance to talk about Himself---He asks the woman at the well for a drink from her dipper, which gives Him the opportunity to say, “I am the Living Water come down from heaven.”

He raises Lazarus from the tomb, which gives Him the opportunity to say, “I am the resurrection and the life....”

THERE’S NOTHING EVEN REMOTELY APPROACHING THAT KIND OF LANGUAGE IN THE OTHER GOSPELS. Why the difference?

How do you account for this sharp divergence of perspective? Is one view right the other wrong? Is one picture accurate and the other mistaken?

No, the difference comes out of the purpose of the writing. There’s a 4 semester course here, maybe a lifetime’s worth of study, but John isn’t even pretending to write about the historical Jesus, as He was. His purpose, His motive, His interest, His passion is not to give us a literal, photographic, precise representation of the Man of Nazareth as He walked the dusty roads of Palestine.

John is writing about the Christ of Christian experience, the triumphant Christ, the transcendent, radiant Christ, as he, John has found Him to be.

In John, Jesus is already the Christ of glory, is already the resurrected Lord of time and eternity, placed back now on the historical stage. Christ is presented in the form of what Christ has come to mean for him and for the Church.

When John has Jesus to say, “I am the Vine, the Door, the Light, Bread, Water...all those “I am” announcements, he is saying, THIS IS WHAT I HAVE EXPERIENCED IN THIS REMARKABLE PERSONALITY. He’s all these things, and more---TRUTH, RESURRECTION, LIFE....and I want you to know Him as I know Him. I want to share Him with you. He’s not writing an historical account, he’s not writing a biography;

HE’S WRITING A SERMON, and like any sermon it includes an open invitation to the hearers, to the readers, to discover for themselves what he’s found to be true.

He selects the material best suited for his purpose, omitting what doesn’t pertain best, and tells us that openly.

“If everything Jesus did were written down”, he says, “I suppose the world itself couldn’t contain the books that would be written. But these words are written.... WHY?---that YOU might believe, and therefore might have life... real life... in his name.” THE MAN IS A PREACHER, obsessed with what Christ has come to mean to him and overflowing with enthusiasm to pour it out.

In John’s Gospel there is no Temptation story.... What would be the point? Jesus is already the Christ of glory.

There is no Transfiguration account. Jesus is transfigured all the way through. There is no report of His praying in agony in the Garden....He already knows the outcome.

On the Cross in John, does He cry out in desolation, as He does in Matthew and Mark, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

NO. In John he simply says in quiet finality, “It is finished.”

The entire passion sequence, arrest, trial, appearance before Pilate, sentencing, death by crucifixion...all of it, is played out with calm, resolute dignity, almost as a royal pageant, with Jesus, not as helpless victim, even in the hands of His tormentors, but as serene, composed Conqueror, laying down His life deliberately, as the Triumphant King He is. That’s the Johannine picture of Jesus.

Except, just briefly... right here. Here, in our passage today, surprisingly, there is a little chink in that otherwise essentially monolithic portrait.

Here, surprisingly, there is a little break in the flow of the story, which lets a very human touch squeak through.

Here in our passage for this 5th Sunday in Lent, we see Jesus pause for an instant, we see a frame freeze, and we catch quickly, but movingly, a glimpse, if you will, into Jesus’ own thought processes at the brink of His impending final chapter.

Here is the moment in the slowly evolving saga when it becomes clear to Him that there can be no turning back. WE are witnesses to that moment---John lets us take a peek... and you almost don’t want to breathe.... HERE IT IS.

No more waiting, no more wondering, no more questions about the timetable.... Here it is, what from the start He’d been pointing to... what He came to do. “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.... Now my soul is troubled.” You can almost feel the earth tremble beneath you.

How did He know? What was the sign? What tipped Him off? Why that moment in the story? What had occurred that made Him recognize that this was the moment for which all that had preceded it was preparation?

Ahhhh, in John’s account it is the arrival of those Greeks who ask to see Him---those non-Jewish men, and maybe women, too, those persons from outside his own particular, specific heritage, those people who are simply people, human beings without further qualifying limitation....

It is the arrival of those Greeks which tips Him off that this is the moment He’s been waiting for.

The word about Him has gotten out to the world; the word about Him has spread beyond the confines of Judaism; the word about Him now has drawn attention on an international plane..... He’s more now than just local news, bigger than just this parish, wider and more extensive than the bonds of a parochial pharasaism....

The Greeks are a sign of His universal appeal, and the broad inclusiveness of His ministry. Their coming means that now He must move on to even bigger and more dangerous things.

That part of the story by the way, the opening part, where these outsiders seek to gain access to Jesus through Philip and Andrew, is so attractively told one is tempted just to stay there and make that the basis for the sermon.

It does offer grist for a sermon, just that part, and many a good sermon has come out of it. Probably hundreds of preachers, who knows the number across the years, have dug in at that point, focusing on the approach to Philip, whose very name, after all, is a Greek name---could that be why they went first to him? What’s in a name?

And Philip calls Andrew in----Andrew is also a Greek name---and the two of them serve as channels of introduction. They bring those strangers, those outsiders, those Greeks from the world out there, and present them to the Lord. That’s good preaching stuff. You could wax eloquent on the theme of bringing people to Jesus, using Philip and Andrew as paradigms of evangelistic excellence.

And of course, there is a perfect text, laid out and ready to go, in that opening request of the Greeks at the outset of the story. Only one sentence is recorded, but it makes a magnificent text. I don’t know many preachers who haven’t used it: “Sir”, the Greeks say to Philip, “WE would see Jesus.”

Think what you can do with a text like that---Don’t give us human cleverness, Don’t bore us with your personal theories. Don’t try to dazzle us, or impress us, or entertain us... that isn’t what we want.

And for God’s sake, don’t feed us pablum, or platitudes, or a plateful of pious pleasantries....We don’t come to hear about current events, or 10 easy steps for overcoming nervous tics, or something....

We can get all that stuff somewhere else.... WE WOULD SEE JESUS, the perennial, deep-seated request of the genuinely seeking heart. You could stay right in that first part of the story and have something of enormous value to share.

But to focus only on the opening segment of the passage is to miss the major thrust of John’s emphasis, I think. The spotlight falls on the Greeks at the outset, but as always with John, it quickly shifts to Jesus. After they come with their request, they disappear from the scene. In fact, we’re not even told that He talked with them.

It’s the effect of their coming John is pinpointing, what their arrival asking to see him does to Jesus’ awareness of what must come. He has been waiting... waiting... and now, this is the sign.

 “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.... Now my soul is troubled.”

Does it not mean that the scope of His ministry will have to be enlarged, will have to be broadened, to meet all people, in all places?

Does it not mean a stretching of the jurisdiction of His redemptive power? Does it not mean that He will no longer be limited just to the geographical region of Palestine?

Does it not mean that now He must make Himself available to the world? AND DOES THAT NOT MEAN that to be available everywhere will require His death so He can be set free for universal ministry?

THE COMING OF THE GREEKS FROM THE WORLD SIGNALED HIS DEATH KNELL, HIS CALL TO GIVE HIMSELF UP FOR THE WORLD.

Is it any wonder His soul was troubled?

I like J.B. Phillips translation of that verse. J.B. Phillips, the great Scottish teacher and Bible student, did a translation of the New Testament a few years back. You ought to have a copy of it. It’s not technically a translation, I suppose. It’s more a paraphrase. He took some liberties with the Greek manuscript, didn’t stick with a literal word for word rendition, but he caught in a fresh way the flavor of the original, and put it into vigorous English.

Phillips translates “Now my soul is troubled” this way: “Now comes my hour of heartbreak.” Isn’t that powerful? Isn’t it moving?

Reading it is almost like looking into His very soul. John gives us so little of that that when it does come, it takes your breath away.

Remember there is no Gethsemane experience in John, no drops of blood popping out on His brow, no moments of agony in prayer as He wrestles with the Father’s will and what He must do, what faces Him.

But here in one concise phrase, in one tiny opening in the text is the Johannine equivalent, or as close as he comes to the Synoptics’ account of Gethsemane, the very human, very tender, very personal expression of Jesus’ own struggle with the recognition of the implications of His mission.

There is no mention of drops of blood, but they may well have been there. There is no reference to sweat, no pleading that the cup he is being asked to drain might be taken away---Those details are not touched on.... This is John, remember.

But you can feel the power of the emotion here, can’t you? You can almost touch it. You can sense the stunning impact of realizing what He doesn’t want to do, but has to. You can feel the tremor rising from an awesome disquietude in Jesus himself. It breaks through John’s simple words, “Now comes my hour of heartbreak.”

I’m glad John tells us that, and I’m glad Phillips translates it that way. We can be grateful that John gives us all those stirring images of what he’s found Jesus to be... Resurrection, Truth, Life, Bread, Vine, Door, Water.... HE is all those things. People from John’s day on have experienced the truth of those images in their own lives.

But here’s what makes it so personal-But He is all of that, and MORE, not just by automatic attribution, but by rite of passage, by His own faithful wrestling His way through the demons of heartbreak. Jesus didn’t want to die. Does anybody? BUT HE WENT ANYWAY, TRUSTING, accepting His role as crucial in the Father’s sweeping plan of redemption for all.

I don’t know anywhere else in the Scriptures, certainly nowhere else in the Gospel of John, where Jesus, the Savior, seems more accessible, more immanent, more approachable, and closer to us in our personal struggles as human beings than here in this depiction of His personal struggle. “Now comes my hour of heartbreak.”

That’s language with which every one of us can identify....Who doesn’t know heartbreak, in some form or fashion, from the little child, weeping copious tears over a broken toy, to the Junior High, enduring the humiliation of putdowns at the hand of his peers-----There’s nothing worse than that when you’re a Junior High Schooler.

Heartbreak! Teenagers know heartbreak... the agony of a broken relationship... adults laugh at it and call it “puppy” love, which only makes it hurt that much more.... You haven’t forgotten, have you?

The agony of rejection... when the school you applied to says “No, we don’t want you.” Heartbreak!

The agony of living through a broken home...the pain of divorce isn’t limited just to those whose name is on the paper.... “Now comes my hour of heartbreak.”

And you can fill in the rest of the litany yourself---you can recite it as well as I. Not all of it applies to everybody, of course, but not many are totally immune... joblessness, marital tension, anxiety over children... or health issues, financial stress, disappointment, loneliness, no advancement, no improvement, no hope... what is left for me now? Someone has said that anybody who goes around today looking for trouble just isn’t paying attention. It’s everywhere. You can’t scratch the surface of a single family without finding it.

There’s a lot of joy in the world, of course, BUT THERE’S A LOT OF SORROW, TOO. Heartbreak language is spoken everywhere you go.

Look at the faces of those people in Bosnia that come into our homes each night on the evening news.

Look at the emaciated faces of women in Somalia, the angry faces of Palestinian refugees, the distrusting, skeptical faces of residents of South Africa, on both sides of the upcoming election, who have seen promise after promise fail to materialize.....

Look at the sullen faces of our native American brothers and sisters, whose proud heritage and resources have been eroded to the bone.

Heartbreak? Just look around... or look within. How can you miss it? Not everybody’s story is the same, but not many are not hurting in some way. We’re talking humanity now, and we’re talking universal experience.

HERE IS THE POINT AT WHICH FAITH IS EITHER DISCARDED, thrown away, heaved into the garbage can to be abandoned as a reality, OR is seized as a key for dealing with the basic issues of life.

Aren’t you glad Jesus has been there, too? Your heartbreak, whatever it is, however painful it is, however debilitating its grip, can’t begin to approach His own. He didn’t want to die, and He especially didn’t want to die like that, as an object of public display, stripped of all dignity, the butt, if you will, of ridicule, scorn, and misinformation....the recipient of scourging, spitting, and raging, savage pain. Of course He didn’t want that. “Now comes my hour of heartbreak.” BUT HE FACED IT....There’s the grandeur, the glory of our salvation. HE FACED IT HEAD ON.....

Phillips translates the next line, the line following “Now comes my hour of heartbreak”, this way: “What can I say, ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ NO, it was for this very purpose that I came to this hour. Father, honor your own name.”

I wouldn’t stand too close to that if I were you unless I meant business. Something very big is going on here, something earth shaking, something history altering. The Son of God has decided you and I are worth dying for....and the Jews, and the Arabs, and the Bosnians, and the Somalis, and the South Africans, and the Indians, and the rich and the poor, and the homeless and the destitute, and the ugly and the deprived, and the blessed and the fortunate.... He has decided we are all worth dying for. Think of it.

He’ll go on now to Calvary in John’s Gospel with the issue settled.

He’ll go serenely, composed, with regal splendor....

They’ll think they’re getting rid of him. He’ll know they’re only turning him loose, to go to everybody, to be present everywhere, for all to know and receive. It was both the worst thing and the best thing that could possibly have happened.

Oh, I almost forgot... the text. I’ll have to confess. I chose the text before I wrote the sermon. About all I can do now is just add it on here.... But maybe that’s all right.

“And I, when I am lifted up... will draw all people to myself.” It’s a pun in John, you know... it’s a play on words. Lifted up had a double meaning. It means both exalted and crucified. In John they are the same. That’s the Gospel.

WE exalt Him BECAUSE He was crucified, because He was WILLING to be crucified. When you realize that, how can you help but be drawn to Him? “Now comes my hour of heartbreak. And what can I say, ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ No, it was for this very purpose that I came to this hour.”

THANK GOD. WE can face our own heartbreaking experiences because He faced His...and WON.