Sermon: Fifth Sunday in Lent, John 12:20-33

March 17, 2024 

Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

We just heard in today’s gospel story that some Greek people attending the Passover observances in Jerusalem wished to see Jesus. They wanted to have a meeting. The Greeks were seeking a holy encounter. 

As seekers from another culture and speaking a different language, these Greeks no doubt brought their own expectations about what they might be wanting in a meeting with Jesus. 

Ancient Greeks were lovers of philosophy and wisdom. So maybe they sought in Jesus the wisdom of a teacher. 

Of course, lots of other people sought out Jesus. They wanted Jesus to heal their illnesses. They wanted Jesus to free them from the demons that possessed them. When word spread that Jesus was able to feed five thousand people in one setting, I’m sure there were those looking for a good and plentiful all-you-can-eat lunch buffet.

That’s our fallen human nature, isn’t it? We have our own self-focused reasons for seeking out encounters with Jesus. That was true for people in the days when Jesus of Nazareth walked this earth in ancient Palestine. And it’s true for us today. 

So, I invite to you think for a moment about the reasons you want to see Jesus. Pause….

Maybe you’re needing your own forms of healing. Maybe you want Jesus’ presence to help you feel less lonely, to give you some peace of mind, less anxiety in these uncertain times. These are all worthy aspirations, and I encourage you to embrace them. But a lot of what we want from Jesus is about us and our needs. Again, that’s human nature.

Yet, in today’s gospel reading, Jesus set the record straight, as he usually does. His response to the Greek’s desire to see Jesus was in essence to say: “You really want to see me? Then wait a few days and look at me hanging on the tree of the cross.” 

For Jesus said, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” 

That’s code language in John’s gospel for the crucifixion. Jesus goes on to talk about the grain of wheat that falls into the earth and dies, and yet manages to create new life that bears much fruit – another reference to Jesus’ death, but also his resurrection. 

Which is to say, the true image of Jesus is cross-shaped – and has the shape also of an empty tomb. 

The cross and empty tomb are the glory that John reports that Jesus made much of in his sayings in the final days of his earthly sojourn. Again, John reports that Jesus proclaimed: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” – by being lifted up on the tree of the cross.

This is an understanding of glory that confounds human logic and wisdom. It’s surely not what the Greeks were seeking. Nor was it on the minds of Jesus’ own followers and the throngs of people in the crowds which Jesus attracted. 

And seeing Jesus on the cross may not be exactly what we’re looking either. But it’s what we get and it’s the God-awful, and godly, awesome truth about Jesus. The cross may not be what we want, but it’s what we need.

Here’s how the author of the letter to the Hebrews puts it, as we heard in today’s second reading: “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears…. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered, and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him….” (cf. Hebrews 5:7-9) In short, what we need is eternal salvation – and not just a good lunch, or the relief of symptoms that trouble us. We need the bread of life that lasts forever and does not go stale. 

So, when we genuinely seek the ultimate, eternal truth about Jesus, the cross is what we see. The cross is what we need. And it all leads to the empty tomb, resurrected new life from death such that the cross becomes a tree of life with an abundance of harvest that never ends. The tree of the cross gives life that is eternal. The leaves on this tree don’t turn brown and fall to the ground.

The 40 days of Lent are beginning to draw to a close. Next Sunday is Palm and Passion Sunday that begins Holy Week and leads to Easter – those holiest of holy days during which the cross of Christ comes into ever clearer focus. 

We will glory in the cross of Christ, because God chose that very cross to be the means through which to plant holy seed firmly in the earth, only to die, only to give birth to new and eternal life. 

Thus, in our Christian journey, in our life together, everywhere we turn, we see the cross, one way or another, explicitly or metaphorically. 

We see the cross emblazoned throughout our churches. Look around you in this room, see all the crosses – up in this chancel, in the stained-glass windows, adorning some of you as jewelry. Come to my office here at church or visit my home. You’ll see lots of crosses. 

But it’s not just the images of the cross that abound in Christian settings. We see the cross of Christ in the stories we hear each Sunday, as we have again today. 

We see the cross metaphorically in the water bath of baptism. If you look with the eyes of faith into those holy waters, you’ll see the cross and the empty tomb in your mind’s eye, for through those waters, we are joined to Christ’s death and resurrection. So, think of the font as a tomb from which we rise to new life in Christ. Then go outside to enjoy the water fountain in our garden which is cross-shaped!

We see and even taste the cross in this holy meal, for here, too, we share in the supper Jesus hosted for his disciples on the night before his death. Blessed bread and wine give us the gift of Jesus’ living presence, along with his saving death and life-giving resurrection. Here we have a taste of life eternal even now.

Our life together in the church, in Christian community, is also cruciform as we care for each other, when “we share our mutual woes, and our mutual burdens bear, when often for each other flows the sympathizing tear.” (cf. ELW 656, stanza 3) 

When we see the life-giving tree of the cross everywhere we turn, we truly see Jesus. And this has the effect of generating and renewing our faith, thus, fulfilling the prophecy about a new covenant made by Jeremiah as we heard in today’s first reading: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people…. For I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:33b, 34b) The cross is inscribed on our foreheads, as it was with oil at baptism and with ash on Ash Wednesday. And through those means, the cross becomes inscribe in our hearts as well. 

Then, in our usual routine, we leave this cross-shaped Sunday morning experience to return to the wider world in our own cross-shaped living, obedient to Jesus’ teaching as we heard today, “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will be servant be also.” (John 12:26)

That is to say, we take up our own crosses to follow Jesus into the world. At our best, in our loving deeds and words, the world will see our cross-shaped mission and ministry and be blessed by it toward the world’s share in eternal life that Jesus wants us all to enjoy even now in this life. 

And that’s how God accomplishes today the work that God sent Jesus to do, thus glorifying God’s holy name, as Jesus said: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” May it be so, Lord Jesus, may it be so, for the healing of the nations. Amen.