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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Greeks wished to see Jesus; the Jerusalem crowd saw Him and still did not believe. The Greeks were among those who went up to worship at the Feast and so came to one of Jesus’s disciples in order to see Jesus; the Jerusalem crowd stood there in front of Jesus and could not make sense of even a voice that came from heaven. We are not told whether the Greeks got their meeting and in the end believed; we are told that in the end the Jerusalem crowd no longer even could believe. Different results, to be sure, but, as we heard Jesus say, if He might be lifted up from the earth, He would draw all people to Himself. This morning we consider today’s Gospel Reading under the theme, “The Lifted-up Jesus draws us to Himself”.
In today’s Processional Gospel (John 12:12-19) we heard the Divinely‑inspired St. John’s unique account of the event that gives Palm Sunday its name. A crowd from Jerusalem went out to meet Jesus, Who was humbly coming into the Holy City from Bethany, with a crowd of people who had been with Jesus when He called Lazarus from the tomb, the narrative of which we heard last week (John 11:1-53). As far as the Pharisees, some of the Jewish leaders, were concerned, the world had gone after Jesus. Then, as we heard when we picked up St. John’s account in the Gospel Reading, the Greeks’ coming to see Jesus, likely later in Holy Week, seems to confirm the Pharisees’ statement about the world going after Jesus, and Jesus went on to say that He draws all people to Himself.
Now, the fact that the Jerusalem crowd did not believe in Jesus and ended up not even being able to believe in Jesus admittedly raises questions about Jesus’s drawing all people to Himself. Some say that Jesus does not earnestly draw all people, and others say that Jesus does not earnestly draw all people. In short, we simply take Jesus at His word in the Gospel Reading and take Holy Scripture elsewhere similarly at face value: God wants all people to be saved (for example, 1 Timothy 2:4), and He genuinely draws them. That some people are not saved is on them. Already in the prophet Isaiah’s day people did not believe, and St. John refers to two passages from Isaiah as prophetic of the rejection in Jesus’s day, the first passage more‑closely connected with Jesus’s suffering (Isaiah 53:1) and the second passage more‑closely connected with God’s glory (Isaiah 6:10). Those passages are also arguably prophetic of rejection in our day; perhaps at times those passages are even prophetic of our own rejection.
Like the Greeks, we should wish to see Jesus, but, too often, like the Jerusalem crowd, we do not believe in Him. As Lazarus was physically dead, by nature we are spiritually dead in our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1, 5). Through His Word, God calls out to us, to raise us from our spiritual death, but, unlike Lazarus and his physical “revivification” (or, being restored to life), we can resist our spiritual “revivification”! We see such resistance in the Gospel Reading, as the people of the crowd failed to rightly understand God’s Word, as they limited its possibilities to their own understanding, and as they seemed to be unwilling to accept a crucified Savior. We also may fail to rightly understand God’s Word, we may limit its possibilities to our own understanding, and we may be unwilling to accept a crucified Savior. Or, maybe instead of being in His light we prefer the darkness away from Him, where our works are not exposed as evil (John 3:19-21).
Whatever our sin, for which we deserve eternal damnation, God calls us to repent, and He calls us to repent while we have the light. If we continually resist, like unbelievers of all times, we risk being blinded and hardened so that we are unable ever to see and understand, and so unable ever to be turned and healed. But, when we, like the Palm Sunday pilgrims, cry out in the words of the Passover processional liturgy (Psalm 118:25‑26), “Hosanna!” (that is, “Save us!”), then God indeed saves us; He saves us by forgiving our sinful nature and all our sin for Jesus’s sake.
That there were both presumably Gentile wise men present after Jesus’s birth and presumably Gentile Greeks present before Jesus’s crucifixion may be significant (so Gerhard, cited by Lenski, ad loc John 12:20, p.859), but what surely is significant is that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity was born and crucified in human flesh in our place and for our benefit. As we heard four weeks ago from chapter three of St. John’s Gospel account, Jesus privately told Nicodemus that, as Moses had lifted up the serpent in the wilderness (Numbers 21:9), so it was Divinely necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up, so that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life (John 3:14-15; confer John 8:28). That is how God loves the world! In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus’s words to Nicodemus are seemingly quoted back to Him publicly, likely years later, by the Jerusalem crowd. Yet, they did not understand, as we should, that Jesus was the Son of Man, the Christ, the Suffering Servant of today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 50:4-9a), the One Who, as today’s Epistle Reading put it, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and, being found in human form, humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, therefore God highly exalted Him (Philippians 2:5‑11).
The idea of foreigners, presumably like the Greeks in today’s Gospel Reading, coming to God’s House seeking the forgiveness of sins certainly is not new to the New Testament but was evident, for example, when Solomon dedicated the Temple (1 Kings 8:41-43; confer Lenski, ad loc John 12:20, p.859). Even as foreigners, our otherwise‑hard and uncircumcised hearts are replaced with hearts of flesh and circumcised, as we are sprinkled with water and the Word at the Baptismal Font (Ezekiel 36:25-26; confer 11:19; 44:7, 9; Colossians 2:11-12). There in Holy Baptism we are made “sons” (or, “children”) of light. As such, we privately confess the sins we know and feel in our hearts so that we receive individual Absolution in God’s glorious Triune Name. And, we sing, Blessed is He Who comes in the Name of the Lord” as He comes to be present in this House and we receive Him in bread that is His Body and wine that is His blood given and shed for us, for the forgiveness of our sins.
We do not need to question whether or not God intends to be gracious to us and save us. We do not need to depend on our own subjective feelings in order to be sure that we are saved. God declares to us both His intentions and our reality objectively through His Word and Sacraments. So saved, instead of loving our lives in this world more and losing them, we do as Jesus did: we love our lives in this world less and keep our lives for eternal life. We believe in the light, and we walk in the light. We do not love the glory that comes from human beings more than the glory that comes from God, so we, who repent and believe, are not afraid but publicly confess our faith. As we sang in today’s Psalm (Psalm 31:9-16; antiphon: v.5), our faithful God has redeemed us, and our times are in His hand, so into His hands we commit our spirits. God glorified His Name not only through Jesus’s death, but God glorified His Name also through Peter’s death (John 21:19), and God can glorify His Name also through our deaths.
The Lifted-up Jesus draws all people to Himself, including us. Enabled by Him, we do not resist His drawing us, but we live every day with sorrow over our sin and trust in God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake. And, through His Word and Sacraments, God does so forgive us our sins! Jesus told those who did not repent and believe that where He would be they could not come (John 7:34), but, to us who do repent and believe, He says that, where He is, there we will be also. He has prepared a place there for us (John 14:3), and there we will see His glory, the glory the Father gave Him because He loved Him before the foundation of the world (John 17:24). We rejoice insofar as we share Christ’s sufferings now, that we may also rejoice and be glad when—and where—His glory is fully and completely revealed (1 Peter 4:13).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +