(A Passion Sunday sermon from John 12.20-33)
Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?
Jesus gives us three answers to this question, just in this passage here.
There are lots of times when a sermon looks at what Jesus did and then says: We should be like Jesus. That sort of thing. But today’s sermon is not one of those.
Here we see Jesus turn towards the Cross and enter into something that we cannot do.
So we have three answers from Jesus as to why we might think of His Crucifixion as being Good – Good Friday, but we also have perhaps three gestures of comfort that might help us process this horror.
So we start with some Greeks who say ‘Can we see Jesus?’ – and then Jesus says “The Hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” – which doesn’t really follow.
But note that in the other three Gospels just before this moment, Jesus has gone into the temple, seen how blocked up it is to the extent that foreigners, or to put it another way: Greeks, non-Jews, outsiders, can’t easily get in to worship, and then Jesus has turned over the tables and driven out the doves and cattle and so on.
So you could see these Greeks, these non-Jews, as being glad to find in Jesus an advocate, someone who is on their side, who might help them come close to God.
I am quite comforted by these Outsiders coming to Philip and saying ‘Can we see Jesus?’ and Philip feeling out of his depth. Most weeks I get an email, phone call asking me something and I really don’t know what I am supposed to do about this. Philip goes to Andrew. I turn to Derreck, the CWs and PCC as best I can.
So there’s probably a lesson here about the importance of supporting each other, how its okay to not know the answer, to be unsure.
I like how Philip and Andrew support each other.
We should do that.
Jesus’ response doesn’t make sense: Can we see Jesus – “The Hour has come!”
Except that Jesus has been saying – remember?: water into wine: to His mum Mary, ‘It is not yet my time, my hour is not yet here’ that sort of thing.
But now these Foreigners have shown up and suddenly: its go time. The hour has come.
I wonder if the sudden appearance of a bunch of outsiders coming – they’ve deliberately come because it’s the Passover. Yes they are non-Jews but they are curious about God, they are seeking, they are knocking and trying to draw near.
And Jesus has had a go at clearing the temple reminding everyone that God’s house is to be a house of prayer for All Nations, for all people.
So now Jesus begins to talk about His death. He starts off in the most broadest generic sense that everyone can follow – a gardening analogy. A seed needs to “die” meaning go under the soil, in order for it to grow and as a result produce a crop, fruit, many seeds.
So in the death of Jesus we will see how the effect of that will be to produce lots of little people a little like Jesus, living their lives a little like Jesus. They will be given a name that means Little Messiahs, little Christs, Christians.
So straight off we can understand the analogy. And the comfort to us in this death is that the death of this Christ will result in lots of little people a bit like Christ in so many different ways. Christians.
The next way of understanding why it is called Good Friday, Jesus says When I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all people to myself.
That’s a phrase that should immediately make you think of last week’s OT reading.
And it should make you say – Well that’s an odd way of talking about Crucifixion.
Note the All People bit.
And the analogy that Jesus gives us is that of the Bronze Snake that Moses made back in the book of Numbers 21. There was a plague of snakes slithering their way through the ancient Hebrew camp occasionally biting people and the solution was to hobble to somewhere where you can see the bronze snake that had been nailed to a pole, and lifted up, and when you look upon the nailed snake, you would be healed.
Jesus in a late night conversation with Nicodemus used this same phrase saying that the Son of Man must be lifted up so that everyone who believes may have eternal life in Him.
So the 2nd reason Jesus is giving us here about why its Good Friday is that here in the cross you will find healing, you will find eternal life.
What Jesus is doing here is giving us ways of understanding the horror of the Crucifixion. It’s a horrible horrible, shameful way to die.
It would be impossible to point to your hero, who walked on water, raised the dead, fed thousands by multiplying loaves and fish, and then to say ‘Ah but He died this ignominious shameful death’.
So the Gospel goes to great lengths here to say ‘Actually what God is doing through Christ being lifted up is bringing glory, it is honouring, it is magnifying the wonder and power and goodness and justice and mercy and glory of God.
Yes it makes sense to look at the Cross and say ‘No that’s just ghastly and unbelievably horrible’, but Jesus is telling his Disciples in advance to hold on, to have faith, because they will see this death as a Glorifying moment.
So they, we, will come to understand how the death of Jesus not only brings about changed lives in so many people who proceed to live like little Christs. The fruit of the death of Jesus.
But also holding onto the assurance that comes from Jesus Himself that this dishonourable death will bring Glory and Honour – hold on to that – and see it as bringing us Healing, as bringing Eternal life.
Jesus gives us one more way of seeing the Cross just in this little bit of reading. In the death of Jesus, we see Judgement, the judgement of the world, and in that we see the ‘prince of this world’ driven out.
Ah, that original snake, with the original snake bite that led Adam and Eve not to look for God’s help but rather to hide from God’s help.
This curse of sin that doesn’t just affect me and my desire for biscuits during Lent, but affects us as individuals and separates us from God, from our Neighbours, from ourselves – as the baptism vows put it.
We see this curse lived large not just in ourselves, but in institutions, in wars and governments, in racism and homophobia and we see it at work even in Creation – not only in how we treat the world but in how the curse works through all of creation which is groaning and waiting for its liberation from decay.
So this last understanding of the death of Jesus – this has a Cosmic, Invisible Spiritual, implication. The accuser, the satan, the tempter who thinks that this world is his to freely give to even Jesus if he would only worship our father below as CS Lewis put it.
Jesus is saying that in the Crucifixion comes the
Judgement that results in the Devil being driven off his throne.
Jesus, in John’s Gospel, makes this point three times just in case you’re not sure. In 2 chapters time, Jn 14 Jesus reminds us that the Prince of this world has no hold over Jesus, in Jn 16 that the prince of this world now stands condemned.
Here Jesus is helping us understand why Good Friday is Good Friday – and it is because the Satan, the Devil, the prince of this world isn’t,
But rather the Accuser is condemned, has no hold over Jesus, is driven out.
Good Friday is Good because Jesus is lifted up and in being so brings us healing and eternal life as we put our faith in Him.
Good Friday is Good because since the death of Jesus Christ, we have seen so much fruit, so many people being little Christs in their own way – being a blessing and being fruitful, being Christians. Go to it. Amen.