Crucifixion. Graham Sutherland, UK, 1903-1980
Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some
Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to
him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew, then Andrew and
Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the
Son of Man to be glorified. 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. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world
will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am,
there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.
“Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say: ‘Father, save me from this
hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your
name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it
again.” The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others
said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for
your sake, not for mine. 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.
John 12:20-33
The African-American poet Gwendolyn Brooks has a short poem called “The Pool
Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel. It goes like this:
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
It is hard to keep in mind that Jesus of Nazareth was a young man who died soon. It
has been almost 56 years since Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. He lived only
to 39. Jesus probably didn’t last that long. We forget that his widowed mother buried this
victim of Roman violence and was left with her memories of how good a boy he had
been, like many another since her time. He was a preacher of peace, but the authorities
of the Empire took him for one more Jewish nationalist, one more freedom fighter, and
that was the end of him. “Judicial murder,” we call it nowadays – falling afoul of the
government in power with your convictions about the abuse of power in full view.
The second reading – Hebrews 5:5-10 – and the gospel quoted above, are about Jesus
troubled at the prospect of suffering, Jesus facing the reality of death and not finding it
inviting. The reading from Hebrews provides the New Testament’s clearest picture of
Jesus suffering as one of us “in the days of his flesh” (v.7). They contain this explanation
of the way our salvation was accomplished: once perfected by the obedience he had
learned from what he suffered, Christ became the cause of eternal salvation for those
obedient to him. He saves us by his example but in a more direct way still. His
obedience to God makes it possible for us to be obedient. Jesus’ “loud cries and tears”
were the sign that he faced the implications of accepting God’s will perfectly.
In what sense was God able to save him from death when in fact God did not? And how
was he heard because of his reverence? The author of Hebrews cannot have the
Passion in mind. He must be thinking of the reverent stance of Jesus throughout his life
that saved him in every instance but the last. “Son though he was, he learned
obedience from what he suffered…” This sonship of God provided him with no immunity
from suffering but equipped him in a special way for the high priestly office to which he
was called. This is a theology of being tried and passing the test. It locates Christ’s
power to save us, not in his divine status, but in his perseverance through pain as an
obedient man.
The gospel spells out the same theme though much more calmly. It reports Jesus’
temptation to pray for deliverance – “Father, save me from this hour” – but also his
rejection of that temptation. When he speaks to the Greeks who approach him at the
feast, probably proselyte Jews from paganism, he does so in terms of the coming hour
of his glorification, of life through death, of “loving” one’s life and losing it versus “hating”
it and keeping it. The evangelist John cannot remain for long within the earthly life of
Jesus: he has to get into the lives of believers. “Whoever serves me, the Father will
honour.” In other words, the glorification of the individual will be God’s response to
human faithfulness, just as in the Passion, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be
glorified.”
These two readings are indicative of the two main ways of looking at Jesus’ death on
the cross for our redemption. One stresses the hardship of his being obedient to the
point of death, the other emphasizes the glory of the outcome. That, in turn, underlies
the difficulty we have in taking the cross seriously. It happened a long time ago, to
someone else. Besides he got out of it like Houdini, whom they couldn’t keep in any
padlock or straitjacket. But the reality of death as we know it is something different. It is
a thief, robbing us of all those we love best. It is often cruel to the one who dies. And it
is final.
Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote a poem called “The Conscientious Objector” in defiance
of death:
I will not tell him the
whereabouts of my friends nor
of my enemies either.
Though he promises me much, I will
not map him the route to any
man’s door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living
that I should deliver men to death?
In another of her poems she speaks the thoughts of a wife and mother whose husband
has left her and the children:
Listen, children:
Your father is dead.
From his old coats
I’ll make you little jackets.
I’ll make you little trousers
From his old pants…
Life must go on,
And the dead be forgotten;
Life must go on,
Though good men die;
Anne, eat your breakfast;
Dan, take your medicine;
Life must go on;
I forget just why.
We have let the mystery of the resurrection do a strange thing to us in our preaching in
the Church. We have let it block out the harshness of death. But such was never Jesus’
intent. He was tempted to be saved from this hour. He faced it not without a loud outcry
and tears. When it came judgement came on this world. Jesus was no spy in the land of
the living that he should deliver himself to death.
No, he died that life would come of it. He died to give his sisters and brothers a new
heart and a new spirit; he died to place God’s law within them and write it on their hearts
(cf. Jeremiah31:31-34).
We do not glorify the assassination of Martin Luther King. We do not any more than we
take delight in the death of Jesus. To do so would be scarcely human but, rather,
perverse. No, we look on death as the enemy – the more so when hatred or a twisted
mentality have brought it on. The only thing that must die is pretense, pose, phoniness.
The unreal self must die. The real self must live. All the energy that has been devoted to
keeping up a front, to hatred among kindred can now be given to life, to reality.
“Father, glorify your name!”
Kevin+
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