Dear Friends,
Our reading for this Tuesday of Holy Week is John 12:20-36. It centers on Jesus’s hour, his understanding of time.
Time is ever-present for us, but it’s an extremely hard concept to fully understand. There’s an entire branch of philosophy that focuses exclusively on time, and while I don’t pretend to have a complete grasp on it, I’d like to share just a few observations as we consider this passage.
Time has a number of meanings for us mortals. We don’t think about it much, but we’re acutely aware of its passing every year, when our birthdays come around. It moves way too slowly for children, and way too fast for us. And our perception depends on what we’re doing. New mothers wryly talk about each hour passing like a day, and each year passing in a minute. As I see trees flowering and grass greening up outside, I’m happily reminded that it seems like spring lasts longer here than it does up north. Springtime in Virginia is marvelous, and I’m especially grateful this year for our long Virginia spring; in the midst of so much bad news, the rebirth and revitalization of this season seems more important than ever.
We say we waste time, or we run out of time, or we don’t have enough time. Before the pandemic sequestered us in our houses and changed all our schedules, many of us (including me, I confess!) chained ourselves to demanding schedules and calendars and worried that we’d never have enough time to do it all.
The truth, however, is that time is simply time. Time measures change, but time doesn’t actually change itself. There’s neither too much nor too little, there’s just time.
As important as time is to our awareness of ourselves and our places in the world, it exists in the background. Look around. How many clocks do you see? Your watch, your cell phone, the cable box, the microwave, the computer screen, the thermostat – they all display the time, and I suspect you have others to add to the list. Before we had all those clocks, we relied on the sun to know the time, and people were able to tell time with surprising precision. As much as we may feel we’re ruled by the demands of time on our lives, we don’t think much, or very often, about the notion of time itself.
A Greek mystic once said that “For God, time and eternity are the same.” As we read the Gospel of John, however, Jesus’s awareness of his finite time on earth is very clear. This is just one of the many ways we know him to be fully human. He knows when his hour has come. When his mother asks him to save the wedding feast at Cana from ruin when they run out of wine, his first words are mysterious: “My hour has not yet come.” (John 2:4) With the benefit of hindsight, we know he’s saying “Not yet.”
“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” We hear this for the first time in John 12:23. “The hour has come.” What a thought-provoking notion. We are tumbling through time to the events leading up to Easter.
It’s significant that Jesus’s first, somewhat unexpected, response is, “The hour has come” when he learns that there are “some Greeks” asking to see him in John 12:20-22. These Greeks have approached Philip, whom we know to be a disciple from Bethsaida in Galilee. He tells his fellow disciple, Andrew, and the two of them then go to Jesus to ask if he will see them. Philip’s home of Bethsaida was originally a Greek community on the Galilee that had been conquered by the Romans, and both Philip and Andrew are Greek names. So, it’s not surprising that these Greeks would seek out these two disciples, with their familiar Greek names and likely Greek origins.
That they are Greek is an important twist in the story, as is Jesus’s response. Some scholars suggest that John defines them as Greeks because they come not from the Jewish community, many of whom are already following Jesus, but from the Gentile community. That would indicate that Jesus had already caught the attention of those outside of his preaching audience, a foretaste of the rapidity with which word about him would spread after the miraculous events of Easter, and a reality by the time John was writing his gospel at the turn of the first century. John also lays out this possibility earlier, when Jesus says to his followers, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also.” (John 10:16) Word of Jesus was spreading beyond the Galilee and beyond Israel. Greeks are also seeking him. His otherwise mystifying response thus makes sense.
Jesus shares with Philip and Andrew that “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.” (John 12:24) Here, he is explaining what it means that “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” We know that his hour will include a savage death as well as the triumph of resurrection, but it will also yield the spreading of his word to all the corners of the earth. The grain of wheat that is Jesus will bear much fruit indeed! Step by step, and hour by hour, during this Holy Week journey, Jesus is moving closer to Golgotha and the resurrection, a story that will be shared across the earth.
Neither his followers nor those new to his word want to accept what he warns them is coming. “We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up?” (John 12:34) Despite the confusion of his followers and their reluctance to understand or believe his predictions of his death, Jesus knows and accepts what was to come. At many points, it seems as if he were directing the action that was unfolding. The voice from heaven in John 12:28-30, which the crowd hears as thunder or an angel, is not for him, but for us. We are the ones who are called to set aside our shallow, one-dimensional notions of time, and our assessment of what should be in order that we may accept and then live lives that reflect the glorified name of God.
Let us pray together,
Ever-listening God, we know you hear even the prayers that remain unspoken sighs. Help us to step back from our worries and our concern that time is slipping away from us. Open our hearts to your eternal, unchanging reality. Watch over us as we struggle to understand the hour that is to come for Jesus, and as we struggle to walk the way of the cross. Do not let us escape the pain of Jesus’s holy passion, but grant that we will more fully understand his purposes for us and experience his peace. Enable us to continue to find new ways to reflect our growing understanding in all we do. Amen.