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The Fifth Sunday In Lent
O Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men: Grant unto thy people that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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The Fifth Sunday In Lent
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Scripture citation(s): John 12:20-33
A Sermon by
Fr. Mead
on
John 12:20-33
✛
Divine Thunder
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“Father, glorify thy name.” St. John 12:20-33
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
The Palm Sunday crowd in the Outer Court of the Temple in Jerusalem heard thunder, and it could have been out of a clear blue sky. Jesus had just raised his friend Lazarus from the dead and had made his entrance into the Holy City in humble triumph. People carried palm branches and cried Hosanna to the King of Israel. It was an unmistakable manifestation of the Messiah. Now even Gentiles, Greeks, were asking to see him. The chief priests and authorities, his enemies, planned to put him (and Lazarus) to death. The High Priest Caiaphas had unwittingly prophesied as he outlined this plan to the counsel, saying it was best that one man die for the people.¹ Jesus knew his “hour” was at hand.
What the crowd thought was thunder and others thought was an angel speaking to Jesus was the Father’s response to the Son’s prayer. The prayer followed a struggle with a temptation that had been with Jesus from the start of his ministry – in the wilderness with Satan, on the lips of Saint Peter himself, and now within the Lord’s own soul – aimed at Jesus’ natural instincts for self-concern, self-preservation. “Now is my soul troubled,” he said, “and what shall I say, ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, for this purpose I came to this hour.” So he prayed, “Father, glorify thy name.” Then the voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” No doubt, it sounded like thunder: “The voice of the Lord is a glorious voice.” (Ps 29) The Lord, in praying his prayer, already knew the answer. The glorification was his death.
It is not an exaggeration, not hyperbole, to say that God’s mission in Jesus Christ, the Father’s perfect union with his incarnate Son, consists of such love that it must die; love, in the words of John Donne, “which cannot choose but die.”² Jesus explains the necessity of his death in the simplest terms. A grain of wheat, if it is left alone (such as bottled in a jar) remains alone, fruitless, its very nature and purpose arrested in isolation. But if it falls into the earth and dies (breaking apart, decomposing and releasing its organic principle of life), it bears fruit.
God has made human beings to think, to choose, to love, to give and to receive. We are social beings. Babies, if they are not held and hugged, perish; they are starved of the vital food called love. Human beings may insulate themselves with self-concern, but such self-love is self-destructive; self-centeredness is self-exclusion from the creatures of God; and endless self-absorption is another way of naming hell or eternal death. It is the grain of wheat in a sealed bottle. Jesus uses the strong word, “hate,” here, unmasking the temptation to such self-concern as our soul’s mortal enemy: “He who loves his life [unto eternal self-absorption] loses it, and he who hates his life in this world [with its compulsive self-centeredness] will keep it for eternal life. Jesus does not teach self-loathing or suicidal impulses; far from it. He teaches true life and health. He points out the sweet reasonableness and peace of self-giving, self-forgetful love, the love which is the glory of humanity, of man fully alive.
Jesus is the Son of God and the Son of Man. He is the One True Human Being. He enjoys the love of God perfectly and forever, and it is his will, his purpose, his life’s mission to share this relationship with us. He knew perfectly well the trouble we are in, our selfishness and sin, our consequent sadness and despair. He knew what snares his love would encounter in us. He heard the authorities of his own religion laying plans to kill him. He heard the misunderstandings of his own disciples. “Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say, ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify thy name.”
Jesus could see the shape of things to come. “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” He said this, says the Gospel, to show by what death he was to die. He would be lifted up, a willing sacrifice, onto the cross. Crucifixion, the Romans’ preferred method of capital punishment for the discouragement of malefactors and rebels against the Pax Romana, would be the Father’s glorification of the Son, and the means whereby Jesus will draw all men, all human beings, into the life of God. It is an offer that can be refused. The Prince of this world and his agents, worldly government and secularized religious establishment, will judge Jesus – yet it is they who are judged by the cross and cast out as convicted and sentenced prisoners. We have heard of Pilate and Caiaphas only because they had a moment with Jesus.³ Perhaps as individuals they had second, better thoughts. For to all who receive the Son, who believe in his name, he gives power, the power of his Father and of the Holy Spirit, to become new-born children of God, fellow-members in Christ, brothers and sisters by adoption.
Jesus’ crucifixion, his “lifting up,” is at one with his Resurrection on the third day and his Ascension into the majesty of the Godhead, his return home within the Trinity. His wounds, the prints of his love, were the true signs [to Saint Thomas] of the reality of his resurrection life. We celebrate these events on Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter Day, Ascension and Pentecost, yet they are all facets of one glorious jewel, the priceless salvation we have in our crucified, risen, reigning Lord Jesus.
Sacrificial love takes as many forms as there are true lovers. The sacrifice of love need not be physically painful, like crucifixion. In the words of William Temple, “Its principle is doing or suffering for love’s sake what, apart from love, one would not choose to suffer.” Yet love, the giving of one’s self as a gift to another, is at the heart of what it means truly to be human. Jesus’ crucifixion is shame and death in the eyes of the world, but the cross he bore is life and health. Jesus’ cross is not an aberration; it is the definition of love. As we approach once again the glory of Holy Week, let us appreciate that love, receive a share of it, and try to love one another as our Lord loves us.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
__________
¹St. John 11:47-53
² John Donne, The Annunciation.
³William Temple, Readings in St. John’s Gospel, pp. 198-199.
