Up From and Into the Earth
THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT
Jeremiah 31:31-34 • Hebrews 5:5-10 • John 12:20-33
If Jesus could teach his disciples one thing in the gospel of John, I think it would be this: how to look at one thing, but see something else.
At the end of today’s gospel, Jesus tells his disciples he’ll be “lifted up from the earth.” John the evangelist tells us that when Jesus said he’d be “lifted up from the earth,” was predicting how he’d die—lifted up on a cross.
But if Jesus’s description of being “lifted up from the earth” was some kind of prediction, it was awfully vague. If I were an early disciple of Jesus, and if I heard him say he’d be “lifted up from the earth,” I’d expect Jesus to levitate. I’d think that maybe, just as Jesus’s enemies were about to lay hands on him, he’d slip through their grasp and hover over their heads, lifted up from the earth and laughing down at them. Maybe Jesus would give his close friends (like me!) a gentle wave, and maybe even a wink, before lifting way up from the earth, zooming back to the heavens he’d come from.
I’d already have seen Jesus walking on water (6.18-20). Floating over the earth seems like a natural next step. I’d have heard Jesus say, “no one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man” (3.13). Seeing Jesus ascend straight to heaven would be a fitting exit for the man who first came from heaven to earth.
I’d certainly miss Jesus as he rose higher and higher and disappeared into the clouds. But, I’d find consolation in the looks on everyone’s faces after Jesus got away. His enemies would be shocked and defeated when they couldn’t restrain him. The doubters would drop their jaws and have to believe that Jesus really was a heavenly man.
But if I was expecting a moment like that . . . I’d be devastated to see Jesus “lifted up from the earth” not by his heavenly powers, but on a cross. I’d be crushed not to see from Jesus so much as a parting wave. Maybe I’d be most heartsick at the looks of scorn, glee, or nonchalance from people looking at the cross and thinking, “Jesus sure isn’t as glorious as his disciples went on about.”
I’d be left standing there to face the fact that yes, Jesus was “lifted up from the earth,” but not at all how I expected. Does that even count?
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Jesus asked much more of his disciples than to hear straightforward predictions and sit back and watch things happen just as Jesus said they would. Instead, Jesus asked his disciples to look at one thing, and to see something else.
When some of Jesus’s disciples saw him crucified—lifted up from the earth on the cross—they might have heard an echo of something Jesus said just before he spoke of being lifted up from the earth. As we heard in today’s gospel, and as Jesus apparently said several times in his ministry, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth . . . it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
An attentive disciple might look at Jesus lifted up from the earth, and recall the words, “a grain of wheat falls into the earth,” and then see something else: that Jesus lifted up from the earth on the cross is really Jesus burrowing deeply into the earth out of love for the world, like a grain of wheat in soil. Jesus lifted up is Jesus doubling down.
Throughout the church year, we celebrate Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension as separate events. Next Sunday is Passion Sunday, when we read a long account of Jesus’ crucifixion. We also remember his crucifixion on Good Friday. Then on Easter Sunday, we celebrate Jesus rising from the dead. Forty days after that, we celebrate Jesus’ ascension—when the risen flesh of Jesus levitated out of this world as his disciples watched him go.
When the church year starts again with the season of Advent, we call to mind an event that hasn’t happened yet: Christ’s return to this world as the judge who sets all things right.
Crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and last judgment: we think of these things as a sequence of events. But today’s gospel invites us to see them all at once. Jesus tells us that “Now”—not later—is “the judgment of this world,” when “the ruler of this world will be driven out.”
Jesus’ description of being “lifted up from the earth” is ambiguous enough to contain all these moments at once. What if Jesus wanted, in the same moment that he was lifted on the cross, for his disciples to see his exalted triumph . . . without waiting for resurrection, ascension, or definitive judgment as later, separate events?
The cycle of our church year is good training for looking at one thing and seeing something else. In Advent, we envision ourselves judged by our ability to see the face of Jesus in the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned. When we celebrate Christmas, we train ourselves to see the eternal Son of God in human flesh that seems newly born.
Now, we prepare to see in the crucified Jesus not someone who hovers over the earth in suspended judgment, but someone who digs into the earth in self-giving love. We prepare to see in the crucified Jesus not someone escaping the earth’s gravitational pull, but someone drawing all the world toward him. We prepare to see in the crucified Jesus the exalted triumph over destructive powers here and now. We see that victory in his fruit-bearing disciples, emboldened by faith, hope, and love, and unconstrained by fear. No matter what happens next.
© 2024 The Rev. Dr. Lora Walsh
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas