The Time is Now
Fifth Sunday in Lent
John the Evangelist, it’s long been noted, portrays Jesus rather differently from the authors of the synoptic gospels. John tells us from the first chapter that Jesus is the Son of God. Todd Edmondson points out in his reflection for the First Sunday of Lent that Mark does the same thing in his Gospel. However, whereas Mark’s Jesus wants to hide who he is (the so-called “messianic secret” theme), in John’s telling Jesus himself goes on to confirm time and again that he is the Messiah. John’s Jesus is in control of events at all points. Where the synoptic Jesus tells parables, in John’s gospel he discourses on the nature of his relationship to the Father.
To be sure, John knows how to draw character portraits as well as anyone. John the Baptist is more fully realized as a person than in the other gospels, where he is something of a chorus figure. Nicodemus and Lazarus appear only in John, and Nicodemus in particular is an interestingly complex character. Caiphas the high priest, the embodiment of First Century political realism, also takes the stage only in John, and his counterpart Pilate, the quintessential cynical bureaucrat, occupies a central role in the latter part of the story.
Nevertheless, the tone of this gospel is decidedly different. Robin Griffith-Jones’s The Four Witnesses refers to John as the “mystic” evangelist, contrasted with Mark the “rebel,” Matthew the “rabbi,” and Luke the “chronicler.” This week’s reading illustrates Griffith–Jones’s point. At the Passover festival, Philip is approached by “some Greeks” respectfully requesting to see Jesus. Philip tells Andrew, and the two of them relay the request to Jesus. Nothing odd in that. Everyone wanted to see Jesus; as the Pharisees tell us “The world has gone after him.” (John 12:19) We know from Paul that there were “God-fearing” Gentiles, not Jewish but respectful of and interested in the Jewish YHWH. Nor is it odd that they would approach Philip. Philip has a Greek name, as does Andrew, who always seems to be the one to bring newcomers to Jesus (starting with his brother Simon.)
So far so good. But then Jesus wrong-foots everyone. Does he welcome the visitors, offering them some food or drink? Does he even ask them their names? No, he proclaims “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, until a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a simple grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit.” Followed by “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 honor.”
Okaaay... That must have cleared everything up for these Greeks. It’s not reported how they received this message; it’s not even clear that they heard it. I would suspect that their reaction was of the head-scratching variety.
Jesus has been telling his followers for years that his time has not yet come. He tells his mother at the wedding at Cana in chapter 2, although he then performs his first miracle anyway, saving the day. He tells them again in Chapter 7 when he declines to go to the Festival of Booths. John repeats the theme, twice saying that the authorities want to arrest him, but cannot, “because his hour had not yet come.” (John 7:30, 8:20.) Now his time has come, and in true Johannine fashion, Jesus remains in control. When he says “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,” he does not sound, to me at least, like the Jesus of Luke’s gospel, sweating drops of blood in the garden. If anything, this sounds like a Shakespearean – style soliloquy from someone determined to meet his fate: “If it be now, ‘tis not to come: if it be not to come, it will be now: if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.” (Hamlet, 5:2). Jesus has his part to play, and he is ready.
But why now? Perhaps John gives us some clues. He tells us that the Greeks are not simply theo-curious religious tourists. They have come to Jerusalem to worship. They are brought to Jesus by Philip and Andrew of Bethsaida. Three of Jesus’s famous miracles, the stroll across the lake in Mark 6, the healing of a blind man in Mark 8, and the feeding of the 5,000 as recounted in Luke 9, occur in or near Bethsaida. Apparently, Bethsaida was not impressed. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.” (Luke 10:13.)
Perhaps, John is telling us, a disciple from unrepentant Bethsaida bringing worshipful Gentiles to Jesus can mean only one thing. Jesus’s time has now arrived. And look who shows up in Jesus’s field of vision: our ancient enemy, who gets mentioned no less than five times before the day is out. Three times by Jesus: “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.” (John 12:31-32.) “I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming.” (14:30.) “[T]he ruler of this world has been condemned.” (16:11). And twice more by John: “The devil had already decided that Judas son of Simon Iscariot would betray Jesus.” (13:2). “After (Judas) received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him.” (13:27). The final battle has been joined, and Jesus is telling us not only that it has started but how it will end. By losing his life on the cross, he will both defeat our enemy and set the model for all of us. This is the background that enlightens Jesus’s final words from the cross: It is accomplished. In death, he emerges triumphant from the battle. Lifted up from the earth, he has, as he predicted at the festival, “drawn all people to himself.” (12:32)
It’s easy to believe the tradition that the author of this gospel also wrote Revelation. Jesus closes his discourse at the festival by saying “The light is in you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.” (John 12:35-36). At the end of Revelation, the light returns for the children of God in the New Jerusalem: “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there.” (Rev. 21:22-25).
William James said that the essence of mysticism is that “we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness.” Griffith–Jones is spot on in describing John as the mystic evangelist. More than that, he lets us share what is at heart a mystical experience of Jesus, whose entire life might be thought of as one mystical experience after another. Indeed, if I had to explain to someone who this Jesus was, saying that his mind was one with God’s and he knew it strikes me as a pretty good answer.