A sermon preached at Trinity-Mount Rainier at the Office of Vespers for Tuesday in Holy Week, April 7, 2020. The service was livestreamed owing to the current pandemic.
His Cross Embraces All
John 12:20-36a
(Other Readings Appointed: Isaiah 49:1-7; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31)
In the Gospel for this Tuesday in Holy Week, we see that Jesus, even with everything He had going on around Him at this moment, was not so busy that He refused to see those who sought Him out. John tells us, “Now among those who went up for the feast were some Greeks. So these came to Philip…and asked him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” We do not know who these Greeks were, what their relationship was to the God of Israel, or even what it was that drew them to seek out Jesus. None of these questions are answered for us, save one—that they were Greeks. Perhaps this is all that John felt that those who heard his Gospel account of Jesus’ life needed to know about them. Yet we still want to know more. We want to understand why this Holy Week meeting between Jesus and these “strangers” is even important to have been mentioned.
What John must want us to take away from his identification of these visitors as Greeks is simply to understand that they were not Jews; members of the house and faith of Israel. In short these were Gentile outsiders. And even if these Greeks who came up to Jerusalem for the Passover were what was known as “God-fearers”—Gentiles who believed in and followed the God of Israel, but who did not fully convert to the faith by not submitting to circumcision, they remained in a sense outsiders who were unable to be fully accepted by their fellow believers and made truly a part of those numbered as the children of Abraham.
We also do not know what part of these words which Jesus spoke concerning His coming passion and death may have actually been heard by these Greeks who came looking for Him. The text seems to leave open whether Jesus speaks these words to just Andrew and Philip, or to the Greeks as well. But if we listen carefully to the words of Jesus, we find what we need to help us comprehend these sayings of our Blessed Lord.
After asking the Father to glorify Him through the hour that is to come, namely the hour of His suffering and death, Jesus speaks to those who heard the Father’s voice respond to Him, saying: “Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to Myself”.
Why these words are important for us to hear is that we may remember having heard something like them before. Nine chapters earlier, John relates to us another meeting between Jesus and someone who had sought Him out—the famous nighttime meeting with Nicodemus. In that meeting, Jesus teaches one of Israel’s own teachers, helping Him to understand the new way of life that God was opening up for His children through the working of His Spirit, and most especially through the work of God’s Son who He had sent to redeem and save the world.
Jesus speaks with Nicodemus as a fellow Jew, even though Nicodemus did not fully understand what Jesus meant by the words He spoke. Yet, in this conversation, He speaks about the very same thing we heard Him say to these Greeks today: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life” (Jn 3:14-15).
We then must ask what all of this “lifting up” talk that connects these two meetings with Jesus is all about? John actually tells us, “He said this to show by what kind of death He was going to die.” Jesus’ “lifted up” moment is none other than the moment of the cross; that dreadful moment where Jesus is indeed raised up from the earth, suspended between earth and heaven, and many are left to wonder if neither heaven or earth seemed to have wanted Him. But it is this Jesus, who bore the wrath and rejection of the Father, and who also bore the contempt and mockery of those who refused to see Him for who He truly was, that we find, see, and discover the Savior—not only of the Jews, and not only of the Greeks, but of the whole believing world who looks in faith to this One lifted high on the tree of the cross as our only Hope and Source of forgiveness, life, and salvation.
In this Jesus and in His cross, we come to see that through the sacrificial offering of Himself to pay the price demanded to forgive humanity’s sin and sinfulness He has come to receive all those who believe in Him, embracing them in those outstretched arms of the cross. And as the Apostle Paul reminded us in today’s first reading, what God accomplishes for our salvation in and through this cross seems to be nothing but a display of weakness and foolishness. And yet, what we come to see is nothing less than the wisdom and power of God. A wisdom which knew what was needed to redeem us fully from sin, death, and the devil by providing the ransom price which no one on earth could ever pay. And a power that is so mighty and strong to save and rescue an entire creation through what to human wisdom would see and believe as something so insurmountable: that One would come out through both death and the grave alive.
As the Son of Man is lifted up from the earth on the cross of Calvary, Jesus’ word is proven true as the world is drawn to Him through faith, receiving from Him God’s gifts of forgiveness, eternal life, and everlasting salvation. And what is the magnetic force which draws people to it? It is nothing less that the very love of God displayed there for us sinners. It is that love which calls all people to come to it. It is that love which sees the cross, and the outstretched arms of the Savior who hangs on it, and there we ultimately see the loving embrace of the Heavenly Father whose arms welcome us home again to Him that we may be His own and live both now and forever with Him.
Look to the cross, and to the One who hangs upon it, and see there the God who through the cross embraces all—you, me, and the entire believing world. Thanks be to Christ! Amen!
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