Lent 5
Sermon preached by the Reverend Anna Matthews
Jerusalem is busy with preparations for the Passover. Taverns and inns are crowded with pilgrims, and the atmosphere is thick with expectation. The yearly remembrance of God’s acts in saving his people from slavery in Egypt is always a cause for celebration, but for the authorities it’s a celebration tinged with danger: the memory of liberation in the past can stir up all sorts of ideas about liberation in the present. Roman soldiers and the religious leaders keep a tense, watchful eye on the people, ready to move against anyone who threatens disruption or incites the crowd.
This year that’s Jesus. His disputes with the scribes and Pharisees have already earned their hostility and suspicion. He is dangerously popular with the crowds, especially since the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Jerusalem is abuzz with talk of this rabbi, with what the signs he does mean, with speculation about whether he is the Messiah. As he entered Jerusalem, they strew palm branches before him, shouting ‘hosanna’, and acclaiming him as the King who comes in the name of the Lord.
Messianic expectation and a festival of liberation are a potent mix. The Pharisees plot, but are afraid of the crowd turning against them. As they watch people flock to see Jesus after the raising of Lazarus, they say to one another, ‘You see, you can do nothing. Look, the world has gone after him!’ (v19).
And with the arrival of some Greeks who want to see Jesus, the Pharisees’ fears are fulfilled. The hour has come. In John’s Gospel, the hour, up to now, has been deferred: in Cana, when Mary asks Jesus to do something about the wine that has run out at the wedding, he tells her his hour has not yet come. To the Samaritan woman at the well he talks of an hour that is coming when people will worship the Father in spirit and truth; to the Jews he speaks of the coming hour when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God. Now, amid the crowds, the arrival of the Greeks indicates that the hour has now arrived. The time of fulfilment has come.
But what this fulfilment looks like will perplex and anger the crowds. They know their scriptures. They are trained in what to expect in a Messiah. The signs Jesus did had made them think he was the promised one, come to save them. They had hoped for a national saviour, someone who would restore their fortunes and liberate them from the shame and oppression of Roman rule. But Jesus talks about being a grain of wheat that must die, and about being lifted up on a cross.
And this doesn’t compute. Crucifixion was a slave’s death, a shameful end reserved for the lowest of the low, for criminals and those the Romans wanted to make an example of. For Jews it was a cursed form of death, an indication that the person had died outside the covenant, beyond God’s blessing and favour. And besides, the crowds have been taught that the Messiah remains for ever. Therefore, if Jesus dies, he can’t be the Messiah.
As today’s gospel reading begins, the crowds are pressing in on Jesus, wanting to see him, to touch him, to be close to him. The Greeks arrive, also wanting to see him, but Jesus’ reaction will leave him all alone. They want to see Jesus, but only on their own terms, only as long as he can carry their hopes and expectations. ‘Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom’, St Paul writes, and this is what they want from Jesus. But even the signs and the teaching cannot make them trust a crucified Messiah. ‘We want to see Jesus’, they say. But they don’t, not really. They want to see Jesus as they wish he were, Jesus as he fits into their nationalist expectations or their hopes for wisdom. They want a Saviour – but not one who saves them like this.
The hour has come, and it will see Jesus abandoned. ‘I, when I am lifted up from the earth will draw all people to myself’, says Jesus. Salvation is universal in scope, but in his lifting up Jesus is utterly alone. The crowds’ adulation will turn to dust – and bitter, disappointed anger. His followers will desert him. They don’t want to see the beaten, bloodied, crucified Jesus. And they don’t want to see themselves in the light of the crucifixion – the way it shows up their fear, their complicity, their denials.
As the Gospel reading ends, Jesus hides from them. He removes himself from their sight, from the gaze that wants to appropriate, from the expectations of salvation on their terms, rather than God’s. Next time he appears before the crowds it will be in a parody of kingship, a purple robe covering his scourged body, a crown of thorns on his head, his glory hidden in suffering.
As we begin Passiontide, we stand with the crowds and the Greeks who want to see Jesus. And Jesus, whose sole intent and purpose is to glorify God, will hide from us, as he does from them, to the extent that our seeing is self-interested and narrow, suited to our purposes rather than God’s. This hiding is a necessary prelude to a truer seeing – the ability to see in the Son of Man lifted up not a failed Messiah but the victory of God.
For Jesus will not be the Messiah on any terms other than God’s. The sign of the Son of Man lifted up to draw the whole world to himself is the sign of divine love. The Old Testament had taught us that love is strong as death, but Jesus shows it is stronger – that it can face the worst that death, or sin, or the ruler of this world can do, and prevail.
The Son of Man lifted up will draw all people to himself. All people: the disciples, with their big hopes and smaller courage; Pilate and Caiaphas, with their compromises to secure their own power; Peter who denies him and Judas who betrays him; the women who keep vigil at a distance; the crowds who turn on him; the Greeks who want to see him but struggle to see wisdom written in battered flesh; you, and me. All of us are drawn to the cross, all of us are invited there to see the Son of Man, who reaches into our betrayals and compromises and sin and fear, and instead of leaving us in them, draws us to himself.
To embark on Passiontide wanting to see Jesus will take us on a journey to the cross. He will elude us as we seek in him the fulfilment of our own desires and expectations, but as we see him he will show us more of God’s. We will see the king crowned with thorns, the Judge judged unjustly, the God crucified, the glory hidden in suffering flesh. This will be hard to see: hard, because this suffering is bitter; hard, if we have come to know him, because we love him and would spare him this pain; hard, because in the mirror of the cross we see our own sin and the cost of it, as well as the love that will go to the utmost to draw us to himself.
The hour has come. The light is with us for a little longer. As the Son of Man is lifted up it will seem as though the darkness has triumphed. But as John told us right at the beginning, this light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.