“Not the glory you’d expect”
Meditation – Tuesday, April 15, 2025
John 12: 20-36 (Forward, p. 76) CEV p. 1118
I don’t think that we’d ever be able to describe God as not being a God of surprises. On this note, I could undoubtedly offer many examples, but for now I’ll choose just one. It is Jesus’ use of the word ‘glory’ or its cognates, especially within the Gospel of John. At a rough reckoning I came up with close to twenty instances, but there may well be more. Among these, Jesus speaks of His being glorified through us His disciples or through the presence and work of the Holy Spirit. This is not particularly surprising or unexpected.
However, what is truly unexpected is His use of the word in today’s passage and others like it. Here Jesus speaks of His glory as being His death on the Cross, as being crucified. He uses two very graphic images to convey this reality. One is the image of a seed, a grain of wheat, being planted (falls is the word He uses) in the ground. Unless it is buried and seemingly dead, nothing comes of it. But if it ‘dies’ much comes of it as a way of results—a great harvest, in fact. And indeed, with Jesus, there is a dying to self, and much, much more.
The other image is that of being ‘lifted up’, lifted up on a Cross. Here He was speaking of the way that He would be put to death. This image, it would appear, was one that His audience understood fully, for they immediately latched onto their previous thinking that the Messiah would live forever. However, what Jesus was proposing was far, far worse than just that, far worse than just an unsettling of their presuppositions, for the Law taught them that whoever was impaled on a cross was cursed by God. Indeed, in a very real sense, this was exactly what Jesus did there on the Cross, and did intentionally, for there He bore our sin and became sin for us (see 2 Corinthians 5:21).
And so, Jesus entered into His glory, was glorified by His Father, through the most unexpected and surprising way, through His death on the Cross. However, the story doesn’t end there. Jesus calls us, His friends and disciples, to follow His example, to be with Him in His self-sacrifice: “If you love your life, you will lose it. If you give it up in this world, you will be given eternal life. If you serve me, you must go with me. My servants will be with me wherever I am. If you serve me, my Father will honour you” (verses 25-26).
R.V.G. Tasker, in his commentary on John’s Gospel, has this to say about this: ‘the same providential law [as we see in Jesus] is applicable to each individual believer. He must disown the imperious authority of his selfish ego, if he is to live the life of an integrated person; he must abandon ruthlessly a self-centred existence lived in conformity to the standards of the world, if the higher element in him is to be preserved unto life eternal” (p. 148).
But, as Tasker also points out, we do not do this ‘on our own.’ We have Jesus’ own example, and His all-abiding presence to assist us. And, not only that, by Jesus’ own words found elsewhere in John’s Gospel (see John 15), we are found in Him and abide in Him, and so we have His own life abiding in us and living through and in us. And thereby, as we share in His way of self-sacrifice and service, we will enter into His glory as well. Not quite the way we’d expected to be glorified perhaps, but God’s own rather remarkable way. Thanks be to God.
Forward notes: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (verse 32).
“When my youngest son Marcus was in middle school, he was invited by a friend to go to the local Baptist church’s youth group. In conversation, the youth pastor asked the children, ‘How do you get into the kingdom of heaven?’ Marcus raised his hand and repeated the words of our rector from the previous Sunday: ‘The kingdom of heaven is presented to you on a silver platter. All you have to do is accept it.’ He was never invited back!
“The reading appointed for today brings up the notion of salvation. When Jesus says he will draw all people to himself, could he mean that God will not let go of any of us? That God will wipe away every tear from our eyes and mourning and crying and pain will be no more? This week, as we walk with Jesus toward the cross, we must remember his sacrifice is offered to all of us.”
MOVING FORWARD: “Imagine Jesus drawing you to himself.”
A concluding note: Yes, as Marcus said, this is offered to all of us, to everyone that lives or has even lived on earth, but then, according to Jesus’ own words (see Matthew 7:13-14 for instance), not everyone accepts it. We have free will, the freedom to choose, and not everyone will choose well or rightly, and in this God will never coerce us or browbeat us. He leaves it entirely up to us.