SCRIPTURE
27“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. 28Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” 29The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” 30Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 31Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. 32And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. 34The crowd answered him, “We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?” 35Jesus said to them, “The light is with 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. 36While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.” After Jesus had said this, he departed and hid from them.
37Although he had performed so many signs in their presence, they did not believe in him. 38This was to fulfill the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah: “Lord, who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” 39And so they could not believe, because Isaiah also said, 40“He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, so that they might not look with their eyes, and understand with their heart and turn -- and I would heal them.” 41Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke about him.
42Nevertheless many, even of the authorities, believed in him. But because of the Pharisees they did not confess it, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue; 43for they loved human glory more than the glory that comes from God. (John 12:27-43, NRSV)
WHAT
When I was a child, we used to have a cocker spaniel named “Taffy.” She was a great dog, who was just another member of our family. We used to spend our summers, especially holidays and weekends, at my grandparents’ place in Plymouth, Massachusetts and Taffy always came with us. One July 4th holiday, some people in the neighborhood were setting off fireworks in celebration. They were quite loud. Taffy was scared to death of loud noises -- fireworks, thunder, yelling, etc. Apparently scared, she took off running to escape the noise -- and got lost. When we discovered her missing, I was heartbroken. But a kindly neighbor found her and brought her back home. I was thrilled.
My point in telling this story on day #29 of our journey through the Gospel of John is to point out that celebration is in the ear of the beholder! What was meant to be a celebratory noise to some was interpreted by Taffy the dog as something to be feared.
Once again in John’s gospel we see division among the people. John tells us:
Then A VOICE CAME FROM HEAVEN … The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” (John 12:28-29, NRSV)
In one of the rare instances in the Bible when the voice of God is audible, people can’t agree on what it is. Cause for celebration? Or fear? Some said it was thunder, others said it was an angel, perhaps answering Jesus’s prayer. What’s interesting is that no one seems to say what the voice actually was. Not fireworks. Not thunder. Not an angel. It was the voice of God of the Father!
The context for this example of the division that trails behind Jesus is that after the Greeks came “to see Jesus” at Passover, Jesus announced that his “hour” had come at last. It was to be the hour when God would once again glorify the Son. How? By having him be “lifted up,” to “ascend his throne,” which was not to be made of gold and housed in a palace. It was to be the cross.
Thus Jesus has begun to talk about his upcoming death. When Philip had brought the Greeks, i.e., Gentiles, to Jesus, he responded by saying:
“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, 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. 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.” (John 12:23-26, NRSV)
Jesus knows he must die. If he dies, his death will bear much fruit -- the fruit of fulfilling The Genesis Project, the fruit of bringing to completion what has been God’s will, purpose, and intent ever since “in the beginning.” If he dies, through that death, he will absorb and thus weaken the worst that sin and Satan and death can throw at him. If he dies, and is then resurrected, God will bring about a new creation, one in which people -- all people, not just Abraham’s descendants -- will finally have the opportunity and ability to live out their Genesis 1:27 (“created in the image of God”) vocation to bear and reflect God’s image of ONENESS, intimacy, community, and wholeness in God’s temple of heaven and earth. If he dies, he will bear the fruit of raising up those who are likewise willing to lose their life to keep it for eternal life, people the Father will honor.
But to bear this fruit, Jesus must suffer horribly. And die.
And what was Jesus’s reaction to this arrival of “the hour” and his upcoming death? John tells us Jesus was “troubled.” The Greek word is tarasso, which means to stir, agitate, roil up. When applied to a person, it means to cause inward commotion, to take away calmness of mind, to make restless, to strike one’s spirit with fear and dread, to render one anxious and distressed. You know how you would feel if your doctor, suspecting cancer, runs some tests and then you have to wait for the results? That’s tarasso.
Now, it could be that Jesus was troubled by all the division, the lack of belief. But reading in some of what we know from the synoptic gospels of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus as one who was divine but also fully human did not want to die. He trusted the Father’s plan. He knew that when he was “lifted up from the earth,” i.e., crucified, he would “draw all people to myself.” But the thought of all that was about to happen “troubled” him. It would trouble me, too!!
This is all consistent with what the synoptic gospels report. In the garden of Gethsemane, Matthew reports Jesus saying, “I am deeply grieved, even to death…” (Matthew 26:38). Mark reports Jesus saying the same words (Mark 14:34). Luke adds Jesus praying:
“Father, if you are willing, REMOVE THIS CUP FROM ME; yet, not my will but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42, NRSV)
Regarding Jesus being troubled about suffering and dying, Bishop Wright asks:
“Is your picture of God big enough for that? Or, when God speaks, do you just think it’s thundering? Jesus was, after all, the Word become flesh. Weak flesh, human flesh, flesh that shrank from suffering as we all might. His natural instincts as a flesh-and-blood human being were to say: the time has arrived – and is there some way I can avoid it? The other gospels don’t show us this side of Jesus, this internal, troubled discussion he has with himself, until we get to the garden of Gethsemane. John has brought it forward so that we see it now, in Jerusalem, before his arrest.”
John, writing some 60+ years after these events he is describing, has realized just how much Jesus was about the glory of the Father. While he does report Jesus being troubled, he does not report the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prays for the cup to be removed. It’s as if John, with all that he witnessed while he was with Jesus, and then all he has experienced during the six decades after, cannot bring himself to suggest any hesitation on Jesus’s part. Jesus trusted the plan. The plan worked. So is John to report that Jesus, having come all this way, having prepared the ground, having spoken of the Father’s will to save the world, is now asking for a change of plan? No way!
Though troubled, Jesus cries out:
“Father, glorify your name! … Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, WHEN I AM LIFTED UP from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” (John 12:28, 31-32, NRSV)
That was the sort of talk people expected from a Messiah! Someone who would “kick butt and take names.” But that is not the kind of Messiah Jesus is. Jesus would not save us FROM suffering; he saves us THROUGH suffering. Again, quoting Bishop Wright:
“He was aiming to overthrow the kingdom of the world, all right, and replace it with the kingdom of God. But the victory was to be of a totally different sort. It was all about his being ‘lifted up’, exalted – on a pole, like the serpent in the wilderness (3:14-15). That’s how the world would be rescued. That’s how God, the true God, the God of astonishing, generous love, would be glorified. Swords don’t glorify the creator-God. Love does. Self-giving love, best of all.”
Of course, all this leads to more division, more confusion. The Jewish people know their tradition says messiah will reign forever (see, e.g., 2 Samuel 7:13-16 for where they might have got this idea). The don’t understand why Jesus is hinting that he must die.
John wants us to feel Jesus’s frustration. His people’s understanding is close yet so far away. John does not hide the fact that Jesus -- the Son of Man, the Son of God -- was tarasso’d, troubled. In addition to all the external pain he was about to endure, that internal suffering was part of the price Jesus was willing to pay for my salvation, my rescue and healing, and yours.
APPLY
I’ve always been tarasso’d, troubled, by some people’s reaction to Holy Week, especially Good Friday. This troubling reaction is captured by someone who asked me once following a Good Friday service, “Bro. Bob, do we haveto do this? This service is so depressing! Can’t we just do up Easter in a big way?” I didn’t have the words then to adequately convey the idea 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.” I didn’t know how to convince him that if you don’t go through Good Friday, you can’t come out the other side to Easter. Jesus had to die. And we must experience it with him. There is no resurrection without death. For Jesus, or for me.
PRAY
Jesus, I have two things to say to you today. First, I am sorry for any time by my words, attitude, actions, or inaction, I have tarasso’d you. And second, thank-you. Thank-you for all you endured -- internally and externally -- to bring about my rescue and healing. In Christ. Amen.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
How do you react to loud noises? If not loud noises, what tarasso’s, i.e., troubles, you?
What did Jesus mean when he said, “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.” Why do we often read this verse at funeral services, especially gravesides?
What would you say to a person who wants to skip Good Friday and just “do up Easter in a big way?”
How is the kind of Messiah, “big M,” Jesus actually is different from the messiah, “little m,” Jesus’s contemporaries were expecting?
How will you apply these insights in your life?