NewCreation

Homily for Tuesday in Holy Week, Years ABC, RCL

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for Tuesday in Holy Week. Today we will look at something that actually happened during Holy Week. You remember that yesterday, Monday, we saw the Saturday evening dinner before Palm Sunday. Now we jump the Palm Sunday Gospel, and the next chunk of John after the Palm Sunday Gospel is one of the signs that Jesus did, the plethora of signs that Jesus was working up until his Passion. This is the end of Jesus's public ministry. So it says: "Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks." Now the festival was the Passover, and it's interesting that here Jesus is no longer referred to as the Passover of the Jews, which John sometimes calls it. This is the third Passover that has been celebrated during Jesus's public ministry, and this is the first time that he's come up into Jerusalem at the time of this feast. But he's been teaching something different at each of the previous Passovers. The first, he taught Nicodemus about birth from above, which of course was part of the understanding of what made the high priestly figure able to live already now in the holy place in the company of angels. In other words, this was part of the teaching concerning the rite of the atonement. In the second Passover he talked about the bread from heaven, the bread of blessing, which was also going to be given by this priestly Melchizedek figure, and which was utterly alive — unlike the manna in the desert, which just lasted so long and then carried on… the life just carried on, and people died. So this is the third time he's coming for a celebration of the Passover, except that in John's calendar this is the one time when the Passover — which was always a varying date — and the feast of the atonement — which was always on a Friday in the old calendar — coincided. So Jesus is coming in celebrating the old feast of the Tabernacles so as to perform the rite of atonement on the key day, which is this year only on the same day as Passover. In the new calendar, the Second Temple calendar, there was a different setup for the feasts. So Jesus is bringing together the days in which the old calendar had the atonement and the new calendar had Passover, so as to enact the reality of both on the same day — which is why our Eucharist contains elements both of the ancient sacrifice of the atonement and of the Passover sacrifice. But so, amongst those who come up to worship at the festival are some Greeks. By Greeks, people from Greek-speaking countries — which was most of the eastern Mediterranean — as a second language, but Greeks in this case Jews who lived in Greece, and they would have been Greek-speaking and they had Greek names: diaspora Jews. And they came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, because he spoke Greek. Philip is a Greek name, so Philip was already part of the wider Greek-speaking world. Greek community and said to him, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus." In other words, he could understand — they knew he would understand. So Philip went and told Andrew. Andrew — Andreas — another Greek name. And Philip go together and tell Jesus. In other words, an ambassador has arrived from abroad, an embassy has arrived from abroad, Greek speakers. And Jesus answers them very solemnly, rather than just saying, "Oh, I can fit them in this afternoon," or something like that. He says, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified." Now remember, he had been choosing this date quite specifically. He'd avoided the hour too soon. He knew that the hour was coming, and he knew that he was bringing together the ancient feast of the Tabernacles, which he'd shown in his Palm Sunday entrance, and the feast of Atonement, which is what he was going to live out in full. But the arrival of the Greeks is the confirmation of this. Why? It's the fulfillment of a prophecy from the prophet Isaiah. The prophet Isaiah — this is chapter 49 — it's clearly hugely important for the Christians at the time, and we often get it as our accompanying passage during Holy Week: "And now the Lord says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him, for I am honored in the sight of the Lord, and my God has become my strength. He says, it is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel. I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." Then a little later: "And I will turn all my mountains into a road, and my highways shall be raised up." This is to allow people to come to Zion. "Lo, these shall come from far away, and lo, these from the north, and these from the west" — that was a standard way of referring to Greece, so these are the people who come from the west — "and these from the land of Syene," which was from south of Egypt. In other words, Jesus interprets the arrival of these people coming to speak to him as a sign that yes, he's on the right track, this is what he's supposed to be doing, and he's in the right place, and the time has now come. With, as I say, this very strong message to them, he then says to Philip and Andrew: "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." In other words, he knows exactly what he's about to do, now is going to do it, he's not running away from it. "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." So he's saying to the Greeks, to give them the message that this is how they will see him. "Whoever serves me, the Father will honour." And it's this key notion of honouring that's so important. Jesus is talking about being glorified; he's talked about the Father glorifying him, and this means being given the honour, the reputation, the true identity of who he is before all time. And he's saying that that is what's going to become visible when he's lifted up. And we'll hear more of that later on in Holy Week. This is the key moment when he's saying: you want to see me — in that case you've got to follow me and serve me in the place where I am in fact being honoured by my Father and where my Father will honour me. And that is going to look awfully like handing yourself over to being killed. Then he says: "Now is my soul troubled, and what should I say? Father, save me from this hour? No, it is for this reason that I've come to this hour." Now please notice this is extremely similar to what the synoptics have in the garden of Gethsemane, and in fact it's fulfilling the same prophecies. The troubling of the soul was something that the high priest did on the eve of the Feast of the Atonement. He would go up preceded by an acolyte and trouble his soul for the sins of his people, and obviously it would be painful for him — a painful watch before the very joyous celebration of the atonement the next day. And here we have Jesus… Actually, there are two moments when his spirit is troubled: here at this point his soul is troubled, and actually during the meal that he will celebrate soon with his disciples, which John carefully does not refer to as a Passover meal at all. But so here we have Jesus saying: "Should I say, save me from this hour? No, it's for this reason that I've come to this hour." In other words, he's stepping into what he knows is what he's supposed to do. "Father, glorify your name." In other words, let who you are be really known by what I'm going to do. I am your name, I am the named one, I am bearing your name as the high priest who's going to go up and do this sacrifice, and I am going to be killed. And that's how I'm going to give you glory, and your true glory is going to be known in my being able to perform this sacrifice, to give myself away in the midst of violent men, thus undoing their sacrificial world forever. And then a voice comes from heaven saying: "I have glorified it and I will glorify it again." Now this voice from heaven — the comforting voice of the angel, which we also get in the garden of Gethsemane scene, where the angel comforted him — it was one of the predictions in the oldest version of the book of Deuteronomy, a version that mysteriously got altered after the time of Christ. In the oldest version, the angel comes to comfort him before the figure in Deuteronomy makes the sacrifice. So here we have the fulfillment of the Deuteronomy promise that the soul is troubled, the angel comes to comfort, and this is how the requital, the atonement will be able to be done. So the voice is comforting him. The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said an angel has spoken to him. And Jesus says, "This voice has come for your sake, not for mine." In other words, I didn't need comforting about this, but this has come so that you understand what's really going on here. This is the fulfillment of the promised comforting of an angel before the atonement, this voice that you have heard. Indeed, there are references to a strange voice in the Temple at the time. Josephus makes reference to such a thing without the dates being at all clear. "Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out." So the judgment is going to come upon the world passively. The world is going to throw Jesus out; it's going to join together in a priestly and royal lynch against the one who is in fact the true priest and the true king. And he is going to be the judge of it passively from the cross, and the ruler of the world will then be driven out, because once it is clear what is going on, the rule of the world will lose its power. We will know what we are involved in doing, and we will start to be able to be set free from being addicted to it. We'll start to be able to be set free from building our world, our unity, by scapegoating and by sacrificing and by killing and by lying. And Jesus then says, "And I, when I'm lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. Once again, John is luminously clear. The crowd answered him, "We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever" — that the Christ, the anointed one, remains forever. Well, it's not exactly clear what they meant by that, but the promise of the Melchizedek priest was "you are a priest forever," that there would be no other successor for generation after generation. So the promise is that the promised Messiah — Melchizedek king-priest who is to come in and who is to feed people bread and wine — this one remains forever. So how can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man? In other words, they're trying to put together the prophecies that they suspect that he's fulfilling, but they're not quite clear how that is to work. And Jesus says to them — and these are the last words of his public ministry, and they're a rerun of the prologue to the Gospel. Remember: "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God," coming into the world to create light. Jesus said to them, "The light is "Walk 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're going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light." And remember that what is in the prologue: "In so much as they believed in him, he gave them power to become children of God." So here he is indicating, as his last public speaking, exactly what we were told at the beginning of the Gospel. And in their confusion — the people who are now going to be confused — are they going to understand what he's saying? But he's announcing that he is the one, he is the fulfillment of all the Scriptures. He is the King Prophet. He is going to die and he is going to remain forever as the Melchizedek priest. And then it says, "And after Jesus had said this, he departed and hid from them." He hid from them. "Truly, O God of Israel, thou art a God who hidest thyself." Again Isaiah, in this beautiful conclusion to Jesus's public ministry, leaving them questioning what's going on. And we'll see over the next few days how that questioning and that wandering leads to the judgment actually happening in their midst. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.