John 12.12–33
The Seventh Talk in a Series The Man they Crucified given at Kalbarri Anglican Church 19 November 2023
I apologise that this talk is late and out of order. I had a hiccup with my website—and also with my memory! My next opportunity to preach will be Christmas Eve. I wish you all a wonderful Christmas and New Year.
I have only one Sunday left with you, so must speak today of Jesus’ death. The most important part of the story of his life is his death—at least, that is what the four Gospel writers give most attention to. Rather than the accounts of his trial and crucifixion, I want to zoom in on a curious incident that happened a few days earlier. Some Greek pilgrims who were in Jerusalem at that time came to one of his disciples and expressed a wish to see Jesus. To get the thing in context I need to go back to when his disciples wanted to call fire from heaven to burn up a Samaritan town. That happened a bit less than a year before his death, on a journey to Jerusalem with seventy-two missioners spreading out in front of him visiting all the Jewish communities along the way. I’m guessing they reached Jerusalem in December—he was definitely there at that time; John’s Gospel has him teaching in the temple in mid-winter. An attempt was made to stone him to death. He escaped to Transjordan, on the other side of the river, and continued teaching there. What brought him back was the news that his friend Lazarus was seriously ill. By the time he reached Bethany, Lazarus had been dead four days. You know what happened. Jesus brought him back to life. Because of the location on the outskirts of Jerusalem, and the number of people who were around at the time, it got to the attention of the authorities. At a high-level meeting it was decided Jesus had to go. They suspected he was organizing an uprising. If Rome got involved, the temple could be damaged, and they would lose their positions. They decided he had to die; it was a matter of public safety. A warrant was issued for his arrest.
So Jesus escaped once more and went into hiding in a little town north-west of Jerusalem. It was February, six weeks before Passover. Some of this is my best guess at filling in a few details. One puzzle that calls for a solution is that Jesus set out on this journey to Jerusalem along the road through the centre of the country, but Luke has him approaching Jerusalem on the road along the eastern border. I think what happened is that Jesus lay quiet in the town of Ephraim until Galilean crowds began to move south for the Passover festival. He was then able to descend with his disciples to the Jericho road and join the pilgrims. He was a wanted man. Attempts had already been made on his life. He planned to arrive with a large crowd.
On the way into Jericho he found the local chief tax-collector sitting in a tree trying to get a view of him. He called him down and invited himself to his home. The next day must have been Sabbath, when it was illegal to travel. So it was Sunday when they took the road up the mountain to Jerusalem, and spent that night with Mary and Martha and Lazarus in their home at Bethany. There was a welcome dinner, and Mary anointed him with perfume—when Judas protested the waste, Jesus defended her and said it was for his burial. It was then Judas decided to abandon the movement. On Monday Jesus rode into the city on a donkey and the crowds hailed him as the King-Messiah. It is here I want to take up the story.
Jesus had always forbidden people from saying he was Messiah. The exception was the blind man he healed coming into Jericho. He shouted to everyone that Jesus was the Messiah, and Jesus didn’t seem to mind. Now the crowd was giving him a hero’s welcome, hailing him as a king. Some urged him to control the crowd, but he wouldn’t. John, in his account of the incident, reports the reaction of the Pharisees.
Look, this is getting us nowhere. See, the world has gone after him.
John 12.19
I will come back to this. The next thing John relates is the story of the Greeks. Some of them came to Philip and say, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” It is understandable that these Greeks would be curious.
Philip doesn’t know what to think. When Jesus sent them on mission he told them not to speak to Gentiles. His business was with Jews. Philip suspects he probably wouldn’t want to be bothered. He speaks to Andrew, and he doesn’t know either. So, they go and ask Jesus. Jesus seems to ignore the question, and we hear no more about it. We never learn whether he did meet up with them or not. I said it is a curious story.
But let’s follow carefully what he did say.
Jesus said to Philip and Andrew, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”
What does this mean? Who is this Son of Man, and what does it mean for him to be glorified? And how will that happen?
Lying behind Jesus’ words is a dream in which the prophet Daniel saw a terrible storm.
In my vision at night I looked, and there before me were the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea. Four great beasts … came up out of the sea.
Daniel 7
The great sea is the world of humanity. Sometimes it is peaceful and calm, but at other times—like now— it is storm-tossed. Sometimes a new power can rise from the chaos. Daniel sees four empires successively coming out of the sea. They are cruel and destructive like wild beasts.
As I looked thrones were set in place and the Ancient of Days took his seat… The court was seated and the books were opened.
The day of judgement has come. God is about to judge the world. One by one the beast-kingdoms are stripped of their power. Next Daniel sees a human figure, quite different to the beast-emperors.
In my vision at night I looked and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory, and sovereign power; all peoples, nations, and people of every language worshiped him.
This one is not a beast, he is a son of man. He does not arise from the chaos, but comes from heaven. He is given authority over the whole world. This is what Jesus is referring to when he speaks of the glorification of the Son of Man.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.
So perhaps Jesus hasn’t lost sight of the Greeks. The glorification of the Son of Man means he is about to be given the rule of God’s kingdom, which will be for every nation and language-group, Greeks included. They have not been forgotten.
But how will it happen? We remember at his baptism God told him he was to be king of the world; we asked then how it could be. Come back to our reading!
Truly, Truly, I say to you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.
John 12.24
Jesus says he must die. Until he dies, he remains a lone individual, but his death will bring about a great multiplication. He continues—
Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honour him.
Is this is a message to the Greeks? tThere is no point in coming to him like a tourist. But anyone who comes to him as a disciple—and that means total commitment, even a willingness to die—such a person will receive eternal life and be honoured by the Father. Jesus goes on:
Now is my heart troubled, and what shall I say? “Father, save me from this hour? No, it is for this reason I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.
Jesus is disturbed. He knows what lies ahead of him. He wonders what to pray. Should he ask God to deliver him from death? No, this is what his mission has been leading up to. He will pray as he prays later in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Father, your will be done! It is your honour and glory I seek.” It is significant that he has just mentioned the glorification of the son of man, but now his overriding concern is for the glory of God. We will see in the end that they are one.
The next moment a strange thing happens. A voice comes from above.
Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”
Three times in Jesus’ life a voice came from heaven: at his baptism God spoke to him, at the transfiguration God spoke to his disciples, and now, a few days before his death, the crowd hears a voice. It is not a little thing when God speaks from heaven.
I have glorified it (my name), and I will glorify it again.
God is going to be glorified by the cross—his Son is going to trust him to the very end.
Not everyone understood the voice:
The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.”
It must have been a freaky thing. Jesus said the voice had come for their benefit. It must have been one of the things they remembered after his resurrection. When Peter preached for the first time on the Day of Pentecost—only eight weeks away—three thousand people believed he was alive. What they had seen and heard of Jesus, how he died, and some of the strange things that had surrounded his life, convinced them he must be the Messiah. This voice must have been one of those things.
Jesus goes on:
Now is the judgement of this world; now is the ruler of this world cast out; and I, when I am lifted up, will draw all people to myself.
The “ruler of this world” is the Devil, of course. The thing to notice is that the four beasts of Daniel’s vision have become one. That is because the dictators who do such damage—we are seeing it played out once again in the Ukraine—these rulers are puppets of the Dark Power. Psalm 110 says Messiah, when he comes, will crush the “great world-ruler.” This is the “Hideous Strength” C.S. Lewis writes about. Satan is about to be stripped of his authority—because of Jesus’ death—and Jesus will emerge from death as the God-appointed ruler of the whole world.
This is the glorification of the Son of Man again. The judgement of the world is about to take place. God is about to dethrone the beastly powers. Jesus will be lifted on a cross to die. And then a great multiplication will take place—he will draw all people to himself. And that will include the Greeks.
We don’t know whether he met with them, but it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that he is about to die for them; he hasn’t forgotten them at all, and nor has John. Through his death Jesus will make a way for all peoples into the presence of God and into his everlasting kingdom.
This is what Jesus said when Philip and Andrew told him about the Greeks. Did he really think the Day of Judgement was about to take place? Did he really think God was about to make him the king of the world? You would have to dismiss it as the raving of a madman, if it were not for the fact that from his baptism until his death this is what everything pointed to. And then God raised him from death. But there is something else. Look back at verse 19.
The people are waving palm branches and shouting, “Hosanna, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the king of Israel.” The disgusted Pharisees say,
Look, this is getting us nowhere. See how the whole world has gone after him!
John 12.19
This was a terrible exaggeration, but you can understand how they felt. The whole world was not going after him, only a crowd of Galileans, many of whom would turn against him before the week was over. But many years later as he writes his Gospel, John remembers these words. And as he looks back over the fifty years that have elapsed since Jesus died, it seems like the whole world has gone after him. The gospel has spread from Jerusalem to Judea, to Samaria and Syria, to Cyprus, Turkei, Greece, Rome and Spain. It seems that a great multiplication is taking place. In the first century people were believing in Jesus in Arabia in the east, Egypt and Sudan in the south, and even as far away as France and England in the north. John saw this, and was part of it. “Look how the whole world has gone after him!” he thinks.
And it still does. There was a time when some of those original countries turned their back on him—Turkei, Palestine, Egypt. These were once Christian countries. But as they turned away, others were drawn to him: Germany, the Ukraine, Russia.
The greatest tragedy of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is the great turning away of the western world from the one who it once recognized as King of kings, and Lord of lords. But he is drawing others to himself: Africa, India, South America, Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, New Guinea, Korea, China. When missionaries were expelled in 1948 there was estimated to be a million Christians in China. The number is now above seventy million. Churches are springing up in Nepal, the country that fifty years ago boasted of having no Christians. Today there will be above 20 million Anglican Christians in church in Nigeria, along with all the other Christian groups. “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains a single seed. But if it dies it bears much fruit.” Truly, the miracle of multiplication growing out of the cross of Christ goes on. God is building his kingdom. The day is surely approaching when it will be complete, and the Lord will return from heaven, and God will be totally glorified in the glorification of his Son.
I hope you will want to be part of this movement. “Go and make disciples from every nation,” Jesus said, “baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and see, I am with you every day until the end of the age.” “Come to me all who labour and are hard pressed and I will give you rest.” “See, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in, and I will eat with him and he with me.”