Death and public speaking. Both cause people a lot of anxiety. One of them can be avoided. As a pastor, I have presided over hundreds of funerals and memorial services in my nearly 30 years of ministry. What is incredible to me is the overwhelming evidence that part of Christianity’s message has fully become enculturated given popular beliefs about what happens after we die. Pretty much without exception, when people gather to honor the life and passing of their loved ones, they confidently talk about them going to heaven where they will be reunited with their already departed loved ones. Further, they talk about seeing them again someday when they themselves die. There is confidence in heaven’s existence and God’s grace for themselves and the people they love. This is remarkable.
Jesus and his disciples never would have heard such things at funerals they attended. The afterlife was fuzzy at best, mostly dealing with the eschaton. The idea of God welcoming people with a warm hug simply didn’t exist in popular culture. What changed? What message was so pervasive that pop culture 2,000 years later would view it so differently? The short answer: the cross.
Paul had this to say in his letter to the church in Rome (and much more along the same lines):
While we were still weak, at the right moment, Christ died for ungodly people. It isn’t often that someone will die for a righteous person, though maybe someone might dare to die for a good person. But God shows his love for us, because while we were still sinners Christ died for us. So, now that we have been made righteous by his blood, we can be even more certain that we will be saved from God’s wrath through him. If we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son while we were still enemies, now that we have been reconciled, how much more certain is it that we will be saved by his life? And not only that: we even take pride in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, the one through whom we now have a restored relationship with God.– Romans 5:6-11 CEB
This is part of what is known as Evangelicalism’s Roman Road: all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God; the wages of sin is death; while we were still sinning, Christ died for us; all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. The takeaway message from the guy telling you this on your doorstep after he asks if you know where you’re going to spend eternity: Say yes to Jesus or suffer eternal death.
Fear is a very powerful, effective tool. Ask any politician, since it is the primary tool they employ in their advertising and campaign trails. Our lizard brains activate and try to avoid dying. The question we are posed: why would a holy God let us into heaven? What right do we have to be in such a perfect space given all the horrible things we’ve done, including eating cookies before dinner, and binging too much Netflix? What could we possibly do to make it up to God? The answer in this framework: absolutely nothing. There is no offering big enough to tip the scales in our favor – we’re just that nasty...
The good news is that God took care of this for us out of love and grace. He had his son – perfect in every way, even more so than Mary Poppins – suffer death on the cross as a final sacrifice covering all the sins of the world. A big enough sacrifice to cover ALL THE SINS OF THE WORLD! Including yours and mine and most politicians. To say yes to this is to accept the gift, and with it, enjoying the knowledge that we will be welcomed into heaven because we have been cleansed by the blood of Christ shed on the cross – something we could not do for ourselves. This was only possible because of Jesus’ divinity, which explains why he had to die – he’s the only one whose death would be significant enough to handle the load.
For many millions – billions? – of people over the course of history, this is exceptionally good news. There was a time in my life when I felt that my sins really disappointed God to the point where I wasn’t sure I was welcome anymore (I ate a lot of cookies before dinner). The news of God’s incredible love and grace truly humbled and changed me. I experienced the love of God in a profound way and said yes to being a professional mouthpiece for it ever since. I bet many of you did, too.
Millions of people who once embraced this good news have begun walking away from it over the last century. So drastic is their shift that they no longer identify as Christian, but rather “nones”. The “nones” represent that fastest growing “faith” identification in the United States and is growing every day. Why? I have studied this phenomenon, so I am doing more than hunching when I say that two related concerns have driven it the most: theology and praxis. The praxis? As “nones” themselves point out, the Church has become known much more for who and what it hates than who and what it loves in very pronounced, ugly fashion. Christian Nationalism will only ramp this experience up. Not only is this bad for the United States, but it will also be very damaging to the Church in the US, continuing to cause many not to want to be associated with anything close to it. Such praxis is born, in part, out of theology (by definition, praxis is thoughtful action; for the faith, it’s Christian-thoughtful action).
The cross itself reflects some of the problems. In order for this to be a perfect sacrifice, according to the paradigm, Jesus had to truly be God in the flesh. Matthew and Luke’s Gospels give their own respective versions of the divine conception of Jesus. However, it must be noted that both Gospels were written decades after Jesus died. Furthermore, the vision of a demigod Messiah in Judaism didn’t and doesn’t exist. In fact, the idea is anathema to the tradition, viewing it as one of the pagan beliefs held by surrounding cultures, especially clear in Greek and Roman mythology. What do we do with that? If Jesus wasn’t anymore divine than anyone else, how does that impact his sacrifice? Can that really be sufficient?
When God stopped Abraham from killing Isaac as a sacrifice, God made it clear that human sacrifice was abhorrent to him, and that he never wanted it practiced by Abraham’s ancestors. When they did, it was a seriously grave offense. Odd, then, the God’s solution to the sin problem was a human sacrifice. It’s like the writers in the New Testament weren’t writing to a primarily Jewish audience any longer since they would baulk at such obvious problems. It’s like that because that’s not far from reality. After the Temple fell in 70 CE, Judaism abandoned sacrificial theology, turning instead to obedience to the Torah for working out the sin problem. The Jews moved on. Those in the areas where Christianity was being introduced had not yet given up sacrificial theology and were quite comfortable with the notion of a demigod since it was already familiar to them. The New Testament was written primarily to and for them.
If the suffering and execution of Jesus wasn’t about cleaning our sin slate, what do we do with it? There is still much to be gleaned from the Passion of the Christ. We see Jesus under pressure – a test of his mettle like no other. How does he respond when tempted to give into the way of the world? He stays the course of nonviolence, of shalom, of peace and wellbeing even toward those who are killing him because the only way to cultivate such love is with love.
Sometimes the Greek doesn’t easily translate into English. There are many occasions when there could be multiple English words to translate one Greek word. The sentence structure can get clunky, too. The English translation “Christ died for our sins” could (and in my opinions should) be translated “Christ died because of our sins”. This subtle shift actually makes a significant difference in our understanding of the verse, with the latter stating a more common-sense understanding: human beings (Jewish leaders), sensing that their power was being threatened sinned by falsely arresting, convicting, and conspiring to have Jesus executed. This motivation is the way of the world, disturbs shalom, and is sin. That’s why Jesus died – the sins of human being put him on the cross. Not nearly as romantic, but accurate.
The relevance this has for us is still profound. Jesus took shalom seriously in response to the primary character and nature of God: love. Love is our deepest longing and our highest aim. Love is stronger than anything else, but we often never find out because it is not as fast as power and control. Jesus stayed true to the Love that changed his life. Toward love with love. It motivates Gandhi to do the same in his context, who influenced MLK to do the same in our context.
If this is the first time you’ve considered the case against the cross-as-means-of-grace, it may at first feel exciting (or horrifying). But eventually there is a feeling of loss that many feel who once found this mode compelling, kind of like when we hear details of St. Nicolas’ historical past compared to the fantasy that developed over the last 200 years or so. The loss is real, so we might as well feel it. But there is good news.
I love Santa Claus. I still watch movies featuring the storyline. The original Miracle on 34th Street is a classic. I love the generosity and inclusion he represents. So, I choose to keep him, even if only metaphorically, which is not nothing. Metaphor is where we find meaning for just about every “fact” we take seriously. The orthodox meaning of the cross still proclaims a great truth: God is full of grace and mercy deeper than our individual and collective sin. God goes to great lengths with great patience to offer this grace rather than forcing compliance, because God does not control us even when we are killing ourselves. I need a big enough gesture, and large enough story to remind me. The classic rendering of the cross fits, just as Santa reminds me to be generous and loving toward everyone – even those who maybe should be on the naughty list.
This teaching will be offered on St. Patrick’s Day. What, other than profound love, could have motivated this saint to return to the country and people that abducted and enslaved him? At the end of the day, whichever way we interpret the cross, we find ourselves in love.
Appreciating the full context of the Passion is incredibly powerful for me even if I take some details with a grain of salt. It has gained power over time, even if I had to travel through a season when it felt empty. Some cannot make that journey and stick with the classic. That’s fine. But for those who cannot return, the good news is that there is an alternative that yields great meaning and power as well.
John 12:20-33 (MSG)
There were some Greeks in town who had come up to worship at the Feast. They approached Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee: "Sir, we want to see Jesus. Can you help us?"
Philip went and told Andrew. Andrew and Philip together told Jesus. Jesus answered, "Time's up. The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
"Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you'll have it forever, real, and eternal.
"If any of you wants to serve me, then follow me. Then you'll be where I am, ready to serve at a moment's notice. The Father will honor and reward anyone who serves me.
"Right now, I am storm-tossed. And what am I going to say? 'Father, get me out of this'? No, this is why I came in the first place. I'll say, 'Father, put your glory on display.'"
A voice came out of the sky: "I have glorified it, and I'll glorify it again."
The listening crowd said, "Thunder!"
Others said, "An angel spoke to him!"
Jesus said, "The voice didn't come for me but for you. At this moment the world is in crisis. Now Satan, the ruler of this world, will be thrown out. And I, as I am lifted up from the earth, will attract everyone to me and gather them around me." He put it this way to show how he was going to be put to death.
Romans 5:6-11 CEB
While we were still weak, at the right moment, Christ died for ungodly people. It isn’t often that someone will die for a righteous person, though maybe someone might dare to die for a good person. But God shows his love for us, because while we were still sinners Christ died for us. So, now that we have been made righteous by his blood, we can be even more certain that we will be saved from God’s wrath through him. If we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son while we were still enemies, now that we have been reconciled, how much more certain is it that we will be saved by his life? And not only that: we even take pride in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, the one through whom we now have a restored relationship with God.
SALT Commentary: Lent 5 (Year B): John 12:20-33 and Jeremiah 31:31-34
Big Picture:
1) According to John, this is Jesus’ last public teaching. What comes next is his private goodbye to his disciples (the so-called “farewell discourse”), followed by the passion story. Tensions have been rising, and now, as Passover approaches, those tensions reach a breaking point. Jesus has just raised Lazarus from the dead, and this astonishing act — along with the widespread excitement about it — has set in motion the local authorities’ plot to kill both Jesus and Lazarus. Lazarus’ sister, Mary, has come to anoint Jesus for his death. And Jesus, enacting ancient prophecies in Zechariah and the Psalms, has just entered Jerusalem on a donkey. John goes out of his way to underline that the crowds who gather along the roadsides waving palm branches are there because they had either seen Lazarus’ resurrection or heard about it. Looking at the crowds from a distance, the authorities are concerned, and whisper to each other: “Look, the world has gone after him!” (John 12:19).
2) Stepping back to survey John’s Gospel as a whole, this is a crucial pivot point in the larger story. In the opening chapter, John writes, “No one has ever seen God” — but Jesus has come so that, in and through seeing him, God may be known (1:18). Initially, though Jesus is “in the world," "the world did not know him” (1:10). But now here, in chapter 12, “the world has gone after him,” waving branches and singing praises, and two foreign pilgrims in town for the Passover festival approach Philip and ask “to see Jesus.” In short: the word is out. Jesus’ purpose — to make the unseeable God known — is at last being fulfilled, and for this very reason, storm clouds are gathering overhead.
3) Remember, the rationale behind the authorities’ plot (11:47-53) is tied directly to Jesus’ growing fame: if the people believe in Jesus in great numbers, the commotion may well attract attention — and even provoke a preemptive attack — from the Roman imperial occupiers worried about the potential for Jewish rebellion. Thus, for the authorities, the more Jesus’ celebrity grows (and what’s more spectacular than raising someone from the dead?), the more the temple and the whole people are put at risk.
4) Apparently sensing this tipping point when he hears that two foreign pilgrims want to meet him, Jesus declares for the first time that “the hour has come” (12:23). At several points earlier in the story, beginning with the wedding at Cana (2:4), Jesus has said that his hour has not yet arrived — but now it’s at hand. Now he will come fully into view, for all to see. Now he will be “glorified” — and exactly what this means is the subject of this week’s passage.
5) The broader section of Jeremiah (chapters 26-35) foretells the restoration of Israel, and this week’s passage is in the middle of what is sometimes called “The Scroll of Comfort” (30:1 - 33:26), a collection of short oracles. The phrase used here — translated as “to make a new covenant” — is literally “to cut a new covenant,” with the notion of a “cut” evoking both (a) the ancient covenantal ceremony in which the covenant partners walk between the split bodies of sacrificed animals (for example, Gen 15:7-21); and (b) the idea of inscribing the covenant on some material (for example, the stone tablets in Exodus 31:18). Jeremiah transfigures these ancient archetypes, envisioning not dead creatures but living ones, and locating the inscription not on stone but on the human heart, then thought to be the center of a person's intelligence and will.
6) This is the only mention of a “new covenant” in Hebrew scripture, and New Testament authors pick it up in connection with the Communion meal (“this cup is the new covenant in my blood,” 1 Cor 11:25; Luke 22:20). The underlying idea can also be found elsewhere in the prophets: both Ezekiel and Isaiah refer to an everlasting, unbreakable covenant made possible because of a “new heart” and “new spirit” divinely given to human beings (Ezekiel 11:19-20; Isa 59:21). Even the Exodus covenant itself points in a similar direction: immediately after the famous line about loving God with all your heart, soul, and strength comes the verse, “Keep these words I am commanding you today in your heart” (Deut 6:5-6). In short, the essence of Jeremiah’s “new covenant” will be divine assistance for doing exactly what God has wanted from the beginning: keeping the law in our hearts.
Scripture:
1) The hour has arrived for Jesus to fully “come into the world,” as Martha has just put it (John 11:27), thereby making known the unseeable God (1:18). Two Greek pilgrims ask “to see Jesus” — and Jesus answers with his last public discourse, in effect a meditation on what it truly means to “see” him, and so to know the One who sent him. The “Child of Humanity” will now be glorified. What will that look like? Jesus turns to an agricultural image: a grain that falls to the earth and dies, and then grows as a seed grows, bearing much nourishing fruit. In other words, being “glorified” will look like a human life freed from self-centered isolation, a generous life lived for others in community, in which both self and others flourish.
2) It’s worth noting that Jesus isn’t referring only to his death here, but rather to his death, resurrection, and ascension (“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (12:32)). The seed dies, yes, but then rises again and bears fruit. Jesus goes on to spell out this theme in his subsequent private farewell to his disciples, casting his ascension (i.e., his departure) as a way of making room for the disciples to do even greater things (14:12). This is why Jesus came in the first place, he declares, for this hour of his death, rising, and ascension, all for the sake of the birth of a new community. With the two Greek pilgrims, then, in this choreography of growth and nourishment we may truly “see Jesus.” God’s self-giving love for humanity is so strong that God will undergo our rejection, even to death, and then transform that rejection into new life and flourishing for the sake of “all people” (12:32).
3) There may be a veiled — or not so veiled! — rebuke here of the Gethsemane tradition in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in which Jesus asks God to “let this cup pass.” In John, Jesus dismisses this sentiment with impatience: “And what should I say — ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.” But at the same time, in John, too, these events leave Jesus emotional and shaken. He has just wept for Lazarus, and now, even as he declares that “the hour has come,” he adds, “Now my soul is troubled” (12:27). He is courageously determined, but also vulnerable and distressed — evoking the idea that true courage does not replace or even diminish fear, but rather arises alongside it. And Jesus suggests that genuine Christian discipleship likewise must be at once courageous and vulnerable, since “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also” (12:26).
4) In the passage from Jeremiah, God promises to “cut a new covenant.” But what’s “new” about it won’t be its content; this is not a new law, but rather a new ability, on humanity’s part, to follow the law, and in that sense a new ongoing intimacy with God. In short, what will be “new” (or renewed) will be the inner life of human beings: God will write the law within us, such that knowing God will be second nature. This interior transformation is what’s being referenced in the Christian Communion meal, not only by the term “new covenant” but also by the very act of eating, of God's body and blood somehow going into ours. The gift of the law, already a pathway for living intimately with God, for knowing God in and through daily life, will become fully “internalized” — and as a result, Jeremiah declares, all teaching (including lectionary commentaries!) will be rendered unnecessary. On that day “surely coming,” everyone will know God already, sin will become obsolete, and God will freely forgive and forget past sin once and for all.
Takeaways:
1) Jesus says all this, John reports, “to indicate the kind of death he was to die” (12:33) — and so the passage invites a fresh look at how we understand his death. First, for John, the focus is not on the death per se but rather on what the death makes possible: the resurrection, the ascension, and not least, the bearing of “much fruit,” the birth of the church who will do even greater things (14:12). This is what Jesus has in mind when he says, “when I am lifted up” (12:32): a symphony in which his death is only the first movement, and which will swell to even greater crescendos on Easter morning, Ascension day, and beyond. In this sense, John’s Gospel provides a helpful corrective against over-emphasizing the cross alone.
2) And second, for John, the story of Jesus’ death is shot through with a kind of sacred, subversive irony. They thought they were burying him in a grave, but actually they were planting him like a seed. They thought they were killing him to ward off the Romans, but actually they were making possible a new harvest of “much fruit,” a “lifting up” through which Jesus will “draw all people to myself” (12:32). This kind of sacred irony is itself a comfort, since it illustrates how God can work through even the worst we can do, redeeming and remaking what seems irredeemable into the service of new life. Seen through this lens, the cross is an act of subversive, redemptive divine irony: one of the worst objects on earth remade into one of the best, a sword into a ploughshare. What kind of death did Jesus die? A fruitful death, a death that subversively enabled even greater things, including a new community: men and women, young and old, Jews and Greeks.
3) Though Jeremiah prophesies a “new covenant,” there is no room here for supersessionist ideas, as if the Christian covenant replaces or surpasses the Jewish one. Jeremiah doesn’t speak of a new law, but rather of an upcoming era in which God provides new, merciful assistance, enabling human beings to follow the existing law by way of an interior transformation of the heart (or as Ezekiel puts a similar idea, a “new spirit” (Ezekiel 11:19-20)). This is a Jewish idea picked up by Jesus and the early Jewish-Christian communities that followed him, and what’s more, it’s an extension of an impulse toward intimacy and authenticity already present in earlier forms of the covenant with the Israelites (see Deut 6:6). Today’s Christians, like our Jewish brothers and sisters, seek that inner transformation that would render sin obsolete and teaching unnecessary — but to put it mildly, that hour has not yet come (though it is, the prophet insists, “surely coming”!).
4) Finally, reading this passage from John 12 alongside Jeremiah 31 encourages us to interpret the cross in covenantal terms. The purpose of covenantal law in the first place is to know God intimately in our daily lives, and thereby to live with God in love and companionship. For Jeremiah, this is ultimately what the prophesied “new covenant” will allow: “they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest” (Jer 31:34). And for John, this is also the reason Jesus comes to dwell among us: so that the unseeable God may be seen — not in Jesus’ physical appearance, but rather in the choreography of actions, the shape of his love (John 1:18). This kind of communal knowing is arguably the “greatest” of all the “greater works than these” that Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension will make possible (John 14:12): an inclusive covenantal community, the beloved community, continually knowing God in genuine, written-on-our-hearts love, justice, and humility, a community of which God may truly say, “I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jer 31:33).