Monday, March 19, 2018

The Light has Come Into the World: A Sermon on John 12:20-33

So first off, a brief word of apology. You may know, I have a friend from seminary who I share sermons with every week. You don’t know her, but you’ve benefited from this, because Kelli is the one that says, I have no idea where this is going, here’s how to make it better. In my professional career, I have preached exactly one sermon that Kelli did not read beforehand, and it was the week after her son was born. I sent her this one last week, as I always do, and my big concern was it felt a bit too academic. She responded, well, it starts out a little heady… But you get going later on. So I probably should have reworked it on her feedback. But this is really what got me hopeful this week, and you all always seem to respond well to what really moves me, so I’m going to go out on a limb and just give you all this theology. So hang in there, per Kelli I get less wonky as it goes on.

A colleague posted an alternate translation of one of the verses from our Gospel reading for this morning. Instead of translating verse thirty-one as “Now is the judgment of this world,” as we heard from the NRSV, he translated it as “Now is the crisis of the cosmos.” Now in full disclosure, my Greek is not good enough to tell if crisis is a fair translation or not, but it definitely got me thinking.

When we think of the word “judgment” in scripture, we often think of it as this future thing, when Jesus will “come again to judge the living and the dead” like we say in the Apostles Creed. Its finality makes judgment seem like a pretty terrifying thing. Certainly we’ve all seen the tracks asking “where will you go on Judgment Day?” Implying that there will be a moment when we will all have had to make a “decision for Jesus” and we don’t know when that day will come, but it may be any minute, so we better get on board. This line from John seems to add to the urgency of the situation, “Now” Jesus said, “is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.” Now.

But, this text was written two-thousand years ago, and it seems to me like the world hasn’t ended and the ruler of the world definitely hasn’t been driven out. So what did Jesus mean when he said, “Now is the judgment of the world”?

There are a couple of different things that could be going on here. The first one is, especially in John’s Gospel, Jesus doesn’t really have a lot of concern for time as we understand it. C. S. Lewis explains it like this, as humans, we experience time like a yardstick, with us a single point on it. We know what is in front and behind, but we can only ever be at one point and we can only travel it in one direction. But while we are a point on the yardstick, God is the air around it, at the same time touching in front of us, behind us, where we are, and all around us. We see a little bit of that in the reading this morning. Jesus said, “Now is the hour for the Son of Man to be glorified.” When Jesus talks about “being glorified” in John’s Gospel, he is talking specifically about his crucifixion. That is what glory means for Jesus in John’s Gospel. And we see that very clearly, Jesus said, “now is the hour… Father, glorify your name” in chapter twelve, and by chapter thirteen we’re at the last supper, so, yeah, it’s go time. But then verse twenty-eight goes on with a voice from heaven saying, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” In that verse we see how the singular historic event of the crucifixion of Jesus is not bound by its location on a chronological timeline of human history. The bishop explained it in seminary like dropping a rock into a pond, the ripples of Christ’s death spread both forward and backward throughout time and space. The glorification of Christ on the cross and subsequent salvation of the world is not history, it’s not something we remember that happened long ago, it is happening now. It is as ancient as “In the beginning was the Word,” as current as this bread and cup, and every moment in between.

So that’s part of what I think Jesus meant by, “Now is the judgment of the world,” this vast already and not yet of living in the time and space between Christ has come and Christ will come again. But there’s something else even more immediately relevant and hopeful I found as I pondered this text, and it came from holding this text in conversation with the one from last week.

Last week, verse nineteen read, “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light.” That caught me, because I’d always thought of judgment as Jesus making a decision between who was in the light and who was in the darkness, but here Jesus seems to be saying that judgment is everyone is in the light, and the question is do we want to be there or not? How uncomfortable does suddenly finding ourselves in the light make us? In today’s reading, could Jesus also be saying that now that the hour of his glorification has come, the light is on in the world?

If judgment is the light being turned on, then my colleague’s translation as judgment as crisis makes sense. Because how we may feel about having the light turned on really depends on what we were doing in the dark. It makes me think about how sometimes when I come home and flip on the light, my cat jumps off the table. He knows he’s not allowed on the table, but he’s a cat, so as long as no one’s home and the lights are off, he could care less where he’s allowed. But when the light comes on, boom, he’s gone. Well, most of the time. He is, like I said, a cat, so sometimes I flip on the light and he looks at me like, “yes, this is my new favorite spot, and I don’t really care about you,” and then I dump him on the floor. But when he’s in a pleasing mood, and I flip on the light, he skitters off the table like something’s chasing him. If judgment is the light coming on in the world, and in the glory of Christ all of the darkness is banished away, then unlike my cat, we have nowhere to hide, we have to stand exposed in the light.

This exposure can be painful. Think of the way your eyes feel if you’re in a dark room and suddenly someone turns on the light. Our vision adjusts to seeing in darkness, and that sudden shift hurts. You might turn away, or shield your eyes, or close them. But we know from experience that we get used to it after awhile, our eyes readjust to the light and we can see better in the end then we could before. And oh my gosh, is there better news in this chaotic time, than all of this crisis we feel is that blinding moment of light coming into the world and revealing things as they are. Rather than fear, this idea gives me hope, that all of this crisis is light finally being shown in the dark places where our complacency had allowed pain and suffering and evil to fester, and what we’re experiencing now is those first blinding moments of readjustment as we learn how to see again. I had amazing conversations with the hooligans this week about the walkouts at Harper Creek and Pennfield, and I have to say regardless of your views on gun control or the protests or any of the partisanship around these issues, you should see incredible hope in the clarity and the articulation which these kids had about the future of our world and their place in it. Their opinions on the issues were as diverse as any group of adults I’ve met, from gun control to increased security to better mental health care, but universally these kids did not feel like the problem could not be solved. They did not see mass shootings as an unavoidable and intractable reality. They were also not so naïve as to think they had the answer, but they felt like bringing the conversation, like having hard conversations and trying things and failing and trying something else was the only way change could occur. I walked away from Wednesday with no more answers then I’d had before, just as confused and overwhelmed by the complexity of the problem as I was before, but I also walked away incredibly hopeful. Because rather than the big scary thing that could not be discussed, these kids turned the light on for me. They disagreed, with each other and with me, but we all disagreed openly and respectfully, we learned from each other, and we found ways to let the conversation continue. That seems to me a lot like light being let into a dark space, and maybe as that light continues to grow; possibilities will emerge that we could not see before.

And because, to use C. S. Lewis’ metaphor from earlier, God is the air around the yardstick of our time, then this judgment, this light that is turning on in our world, this is continuously happening. Since “In the beginning was the Word,” the Word has been in the world bringing life and light. On Easter we are not celebrating that Jesus died and rose from the dead once, a long, long time ago, we are celebrating that Jesus dies and rises everywhere, every minute of every day, and in dying he destroys death, and in rising he brings us to eternal life. Christ’s death and resurrection was and is and is to come, this unending unfolding of hope and light and promise that we from our finite human plane can see only in part, but God in God’s infiniteness knows fully.

So have hope and walk boldly, dear people of God. Because when Christ is, was, and will be lifted up, he will, is, and already has drawn us together with the whole creation to himself. Yes, it’s blinding, standing in the light. But your eyes will adjust. They always have before. Amen.

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