March 29 2009    Reading: John 12.20-36

 Text: “The hour has now come for the Son of Man to receive great glory.............”

John 12.23 (GNB)

If you cast your mind back to the millennium celebrations for 2000 you might remember that because of the time difference midnight on December 31 1999 actually arrived first in the Kiribati islands away in the Pacific 14 hours ahead of ourselves here. There a boy held a torch aloft while an old man paddled them out to sea, following the new day's journey westwards. Through the Pacific islands, New Zealand, Australia and Japan, China and Hong Kong, the hour of the new millennium arrived, and moved slowly westwards around the earth,

The words of Jesus, as we read them in John 12, are these: The hour has now come for the Son of Man to receive great glory.............

The hour has now come………..now of course, the hour Jesus speaks of has nothing to do with midnight, dawn, noon or twilight, the hour Jesus speaks of, the time, has little to do with the way we measure time, by our watches or clocks in months or years,

No - the hour Jesus speaks of is in God’s time, that time in which Jesus lives from moment to moment – close to His Father in heaven. Throughout the gospel story we see Jesus healing men and women at the right moment in God’s time, speaking wonderful truth at the right moment in God’s time, journeying to Jerusalem with the disciples at the right moment in God’s time, and knowing then that all the days ahead, all that will happen in Jerusalem, Gethsemane, the Temple court, the cross at Calvary will happen in God’s time, in His Father’s care. This is the time in which Jesus lives, living in His Father’s care, following His Father’s will, in the Father’s deeper time

But, there is it seems, a moment - an hour, which is above all others. A point in time to which all of Jesus' life and ministry, all of his prayer and energy were focused. In John 2:4, when Jesus' mother told him that they had run out of wine at the wedding in Cana, Jesus says, "My hour has not yet come." In John 7:6 when his brothers urged him to go up to Jerusalem publicly and openly, Jesus replied, "My time has not yet come." Later on in that chapter, after Jesus did go up to Jerusalem secretly, the Jewish authorities tried to arrest him. But John tells us in the gospel “No one laid hands on him, because his hour had not yet come." And finally, when Jesus stood up in the temple and said that He was the light of the world, we are told John 8:30"No one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come." Jesus lives in His Father’s care, following His Father’s will, in the Father’s deeper time. So Jesus was patient. did not try to rush things, He was willing to wait, to wait for the hour to come. Now he says: "The hour has come for the Son of man to receive great glory"?

What is this hour ? which will be filled with great glory ? Well, high up on Mt. Tabor we see the glory of Jesus at the moment of Transfiguration. The gospel tells us of the radiance, the light the disciples saw in and through Jesus, up there on the mountain, that light that radiance, which speaks of the Father’s presence. But the glory Jesus is speaking of now, is glory of a different kind altogether. To understand what that glory will be we need we need to remember that John’s gospel is like the vast night sky........ as the gospel unfolds we see constellations and patterns. And one of the greatest is this: That Jesus has been sent from God, and He will return to God. He has come from the glory of God and lives among us as a human being, as a lowly servant, but though He is a lowly servant among us He will return to God. And the first great moment in which Jesus will begin His return to God’s presence, is through His death on the Cross. This is why, after saying that the hour had now come Jesus begins to speak of the Cross, and His death. "I am telling you the Truth, a grain of wheat remains no more than a single grain unless it is dropped into the ground and dies. If it does die then it produces many grains" (v. 24).

When Jesus says The hour has now come for the Son of Man to receive great glory............. and when He speaks of being lifted up from the earth, on the Cross, He is speaking of the same thing. For at the Cross we see the glory of Jesus’ love, the glory of His sacrifice for us. At the Cross, the hour has come for Jesus to receive great glory.

This is why Jesus says: "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to me".

Why will the Cross draw everyone, draw men and women ? Because the Cross of Jesus has power......... You see as the letter to the Romans declares, all of us have sinned, and all of us fall short of God’s glory, we are far away from God’s glory – but when we turn to the Cross of Jesus Christ, God opens our eyes, and we see its glory. We are drawn to the Cross, and we discover as the old hymn puts it, “In that old rugged cross stained with blood so divine a wondrous beauty I see”. Why ? Because at the Cross, Jesus has taken our place, and our sin, the sins of the whole world are laid upon Jesus Christ, and taken away. The Cross is where our sin, all our sin is taken away once and for all. And so we can come to God, because our sins are forgiven, and begin anew. We can come and find forgiveness, and healing, healing for our souls.

"And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to me".

says Jesus. That is the power of the Cross, to draw us - the old rugged cross, as the hymn says, so despised by the world - has a wondrous attraction for me.................

Most merciful God,

By the death on the Cross,

Of your Son Jesus Christ,

You have taken away our sin.

Grant that through Him

Who suffered on the cross,

We may triumph in the power of his victory;

Through Jesus Christ our Lord

AMEN.n