Scripture: Jeremiah 31:31-34; John 12:20-33

“And when I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all people to myself.”

-- John 12:32

Today we come to the end of the liturgical year and the end of our series of ten sermons on the Gospel of John. Our series ends with the culminating symbol in John’s repertoire of signs, and our year ends on a note of exaltation and triumph. The culminating symbol is the Cross and the note of exaltation is the cry from the Cross, “It is accomplished!” (19:30). Christ is indeed King, and his throne is the Cross, and on that throne he accomplished the work of the New Creation. Unlike the narration of the Cross in the other Gospels, which includes somber notes of loss, even of despair (“My God why have you forsaken me?”), John’s presentation emphasizes that Jesus deliberately and freely chose this way and walked it to victory (10:17-18). The key to this presentation is the use of the verb, “to lift up,” (“And when I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all people to myself”).

Lifting up in this context is a pun, a use of the same word with two meanings. On the one hand, a crucified man is lifted up on the vertical bar of a cross, and on the other a celebrity is exalted by being put on a pedestal so that everyone present can take note and do homage. It is worth thinking about the difference between the sense of celebrity in normal usage and the ironic sense of the Gospel of John. Celebrity is much with us these days. The word describes people whom the public wants to celebrate for one reason or another. Would that all our celebrities were celebrated for solid achievements and extraordinary skills, as many are, but there is a whole tribe of celebrities whose only achievement is becoming a celebrity, with the mostly cynical aid of publicity people who live off them. Be that as it may, it is safe to say that celebrities real or bogus are celebrated for positive reasons, - achievement, talent, beauty, or allure, - and are not celebrated for being grotesque losers. Only the most perverse of people celebrate the victims of state execution, especially execution of the kind reserved for slaves and traitors. Crucifixion in the Roman world was not an occasion for celebration but rather for execration and turning away in disgust. That John should celebrate the Crucifixion is what I mean by the ironic use of the concept, and it is worth asking why he does this.

Before we answer the question directly let us look at some of the evidence that points to the answer. We notice that the Greeks come looking for Jesus, and when Jesus is told of them he says, “Now the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified (vs.23).” Glorification is another word for exaltation, which in turn refers to the crucifixion. Thus we are told that it is by crucifixion that Jesus will reach out to the nations beyond the little nation of the Jews to which he as a Jew belongs. How does this work? It is like a seed that dies to germinate and thus bear fruit. “I tell you most solemnly, unless a wheat grain falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest (vs.24).” We could spend the rest of our time and more meditating on the symbol of the seed. The parable of the sower tells us that the seed that falls in good ground bears sixty fold plus (Mark 4:1-9; Matt 13:1-9; Luke 8:4-8), and the same thought is present here, excepting that the seed here is not the teaching of the Kingdom but the King himself. (This is a good example of how the one who proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom of God in the Synoptic Gospels, became the proclaimed King himself in the Gospel of John).

Our text goes on to draw an ethical conclusion, - that we should not love life in this world so much that we place our own interests ahead of the interests of Christ the King, - but important as that ethical injunction is it distracts us somewhat from the main point, which is that the crucifixion is the way by which Jesus Christ becomes Lord of the world and all its nations. The desire of the Greeks for Jesus is the signal that what throughout the Gospel is called his “hour,” is now come, and that hour is the hour when Jesus Christ the divine seed falls into the ground and dies in order to bring forth a great harvest of souls from all the world. The whole process is well described in the passage about the Good Shepherd. Jesus says, “ And there are other sheep I have that are not of this fold, and these I have to lead as well. They will listen to my voice, and there will be only one flock and one shepherd. The father loves me because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me; I lay it down of my own free will, and as it is in my power to lay it down, so it is in my power to take it up again; this is the command I have been given by my Father (10:16-18).”

Now let us try to answer the question, “Why does John celebrate the ugly Cross?”  Chiefly, because he thinks in terms of the end of the story of Jesus, which is the Resurrection, and works back from the end to the beginning, and before the beginning. How does he know that Jesus is the incarnate God who was before there was a world? because he has witnessed the rising of Jesus in glory from the dead. By the same token he sees that the ugly Cross is really beautiful, the suffering victim is the divine king, the dying seed is the harbinger of a mighty harvest.

So we have arrived at the end of John’s story of the faith and we find ourselves at the beginning. The terrible Cross shines with divine Glory for the Son of Man is exalted and the Lord of Life has transfigured death. The terrible end of the divine logos on earth is the glorious beginning of eternal life for all who believe in him. This reminds me of T.S. Eliot’s meditation in the “Four Quartets.” “In my end is my beginning” are the last words of the second poem, “East Coker,” while the first words are “In my beginning is my end.” These first words might be taken to refer to the seed. It is the beginning of a harvest, a mighty oak in the dimensions of a tiny nut. What an end there is in that beginning!  What a beginning is included in such an end! So what of the end that includes a beginning?  Let me quote the last stanza of “East Coker”; it is a meditation on old age: “Love is most nearly itself / when here and now cease to matter. / Old men ought to be explorers/ Here and there does not matter/ We must be still and still moving/ Into another intensity/ For a further union, a deeper communion/ Through the dark cold and the empty desolation, / The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters/ of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.” Why is the wave cry and the vast waters, of petrel and porpoise, the cold gray beach, where our lives end and wash out to sea, - Dover Beach perhaps? - why is that cold end a beginning? Because Jesus Christ is there to meet us, the fire is lit and breakfast is cooking, and he wants to know if we love him, and if we are willing to take up the task he has for us now (Chapter 21). Not only old men, but all of us should be explorers because time and space do not matter, that is, any time and any place will do, as long as the end ends in him and the beginning begins in him, whom Eliot elsewhere calls, “the still point of the turning world.” So why does John celebrate the Cross? Because it is the place where God incarnate as Jesus Christ entered the inner sanctum of our agony, the torture chamber of our fears and opened a door through it to a new beginning, for all of us. ”In my end is my beginning.”

A coda on water: Water is a frequent symbol in John’s story; we are born anew of water and the Spirit (3:5), the Spirit is a spring of living water in us (4:14), Jesus is the water of life (8:37-39). When they pierced his side on the Cross there came forth water and blood (19:34).  The life giving water of which the Gospel has spoken is none other than the water that flows from the body of the crucified Christ, and like streams in the desert brings new life to all who drink it.