“Sir, we wish to see Jesus,” the Greeks told Philip as they gathered for the festival in Jerusalem. And Philip told Andrew, and Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus that some Greeks, some outsiders, some beyond the scope of Jesus teachings, wished to see him, wished to meet him, wished to know of who he was, of what he meant, of all that he could do. The movement had spread outside of the Temple, outside of the synagogues, outside of the contained social circles of the Jews. This was great news for the movement, great news for the goal of liberation for the Jews from the Romans, great news for those who followed Jesus. It was with excitement and hope that Philip and Andrew rushed to Jesus to bring news of these Greeks who wished to see him. And Jesus responded, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”
The hour has come. The arrival of this “hour” has been an on-going theme in John’s Gospel. For so long Jesus had been saying that the hour was coming. That soon, but not yet, the Son of Man would be glorified. He said it to a Samaritan woman getting water from a well, to a man born lame who suddenly could walk, as he taught to a crowd in the treasury. Nothing could happen, nothing would happen, because Jesus’ hour had not yet come.
But now, it’s time, it’s finally time. We’ve been waiting six weeks now, since we stood with Peter, James, and John on the mountain and saw Jesus transfigured, we’ve been waiting for this moment, and now it’s come. It’s time for the Son of Man to be glorified. It’s time to see what glory looks like.
“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified,” Jesus said, and then he went on, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
And a few sentences later: “Father, glorify your name” Jesus said, and a voice from heaven responded, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” Jesus went on, “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.
The hour has come and so Jesus starts talking about death, Jesus starts talking about judgment, Jesus starts talking about driving out the rulers of this world, Jesus starts talking about the cross. This maybe isn’t the turn of events the Greeks or Philip and Andrew were expecting. But we who have been watching this unfold from a distance throughout this Lenten season are maybe not surprised by it, because remember several weeks ago when Jesus first spoke about his death and Peter tried to rebuke him, Jesus’ dreams, Jesus’ plans, Jesus vision for the world, is always about more than we can imagine.
We know this to be true about Jesus, but it’s hard to make sense of it when it comes to the cross. Because the cross is so violent, so brutal, so gory. How can such an instrument of pain possibly be the place of God’s glory?
On Good Friday we will hear the passion story according to John. And when you’re hearing the story, I invite you to pay attention to the movement of the story. The passion according to John unfolds like a drama, with characters coming in and out and scenes shifting from one to another. But throughout all this movement and chaos, Jesus stays unwaveringly in the center. From the moment Jesus leads his disciples across the Kidron Valley and into the garden until he is laid in the tomb, Jesus is the central figure, constant, solid, in control, never turning from the goal. The passion unfolds according to the plan, events happen, words are spoken, “according to fulfill what was written,” or “what Jesus had said.” Every movement, every action part of a carefully directed, elegantly choreographed event, the script of which Jesus had been writing since the beginning of time. There is no hesitation in John’s gospel, no moment of doubt. Pilate comes and goes, Peter comes and goes, the crowds gather and disperse, all the while Jesus marches on to the cross, to glory. The crucifixion scene in John’s Gospel isn’t gory and it isn’t dark. It is powerful. It sheer, unadulterated power that blinds the eyes with a love that cannot be understood. The cross isn’t weakness; it isn’t violence. It isn’t about Jesus sacrificing himself, or Jesus taking pain. It is about Jesus marching straight into sacrifice, into pain, and destroying it, so that the world’s dark control crumbled under the overwhelming grace and love and mercy of Jesus.
The closest analogy I can make to this scene, and it’s not a perfect analogy, but it gets close, is the image of the marchers of the Civil Rights movement standing on the far edge of the Edmond Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama preparing to march across into the waiting arms, and clubs, of the Alabama State Troopers. They marched across the bridge because they knew that the only way to defeat the evils of racism and oppression was to march right into the face of it. Because only by uncovering it, only by bringing it into the light, only by showing the world in no uncertain terms the violence of being a black person in 1960s America could that evil be defeated. They walked into the darkness because darkness can only be defeated by displacing it with light, hatred can only be done in by injecting into its heart a love so powerful that hatred has no room, death can only be undone by replacing it with life.
That is the glory of the cross. That Jesus with his own incarnate body replaced darkness with light, hatred with love, death with life. Like a stone dropped in a pail displaces water out over the sides, Jesus on the cross displaced glory, love, light into the world so that hatred, darkness, death would have no place to go. On the cross Jesus stepped into the very belly of the beast and said even here you shall not have hold, even here you shall not triumph, even here love wins.
And because love won, hope won, life won on the cross, then we know that hope wins, that love wins, that life wins everywhere. On the cross Jesus went not to his own death, but to all of the places where we face death, and not just physical death, but death of our hopes, death of our dreams, death caused by prejudice and judgment and inequality and fear. The cross is Jesus going to the places we fear most and displacing that fear. The cross is Jesus meeting us in the places that scare us the most and saying this has no power over you. The power of the cross is what gives us power to stand up in the face of injustice and hatred and death because we know that because Jesus went to the cross there is nowhere that love cannot triumph.
After we read the passion story on Good Friday we will sing “Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Sometimes it causes me to tremble. Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” And I hope you, I hope I, I hope we will tremble. Tremble not from pain, not from shame, but tremble from the sheer overwhelming power of love. Tremble because we know that we are loved. Tremble in the presence of a love so powerful that it blazes out from the most unlikely of places, a cross, a bridge, our own broken hearts, and overwhelms us with its glory.
“Sir, we wish to see Jesus,” the Greeks said. And Jesus responded, “look to the cross.” Because on the cross we see glory, on the cross we see power, on the cross we see a God who loves us so much that the love shines through the brokenness of the cross mending our broken parts and knitting us together into the glorious children of God. Look to the cross because there is God. Amen.
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