Lifting Him Up
THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT
John 12:20-33
One alert listener might have said to another at this point in the gospel of John: “This isn’t the first time Jesus has said something about being ‘lifted up.’” In fact, it’s the third time in the gospel of John that Jesus has used this expression. And each time, it sounds better and better.
The first time Jesus spoke about being “lifted up” was in last week’s gospel, when Jesus compared the Son of Man to the serpent lifted up by Moses in the wilderness to heal people of their snake bites. Jesus had been talking to Nicodemus about the Son of Man—the only being who has both ascended to heaven and descended from heaven. Jesus said that the Son of Man had to “be lifted up” so he could give eternal life to those born from above and looking up to him (John 3:14-15). Being “lifted up” was the natural trajectory of this “Son of Man” guy, who descended to earth and who will head back to heaven, showering eternal life on those who follow him with their gaze.
The second time Jesus mentioned being “lifted up” was a few chapters later, when the people listening to Jesus couldn’t grasp that he was speaking to them about God the Father. Jesus told them, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own, but I speak these things as the Father has instructed me” (John 8:28). In this case, “lifting up” is something that believers can do to Jesus, exalting and glorifying Jesus as that life-giving “Son of Man,” and as the one who reveals the Father to them.
Today’s gospel recounts the third time Jesus spoke about being “lifted up.” Here, some Gentiles have asked to see Jesus after being drawn to Jerusalem for a holy day celebration. Here, Jesus promises that those who serve and follow him will get to be with him forever. Here, a heavenly voice and a thunderclap confirm that Jesus speaks for God the Father.
Here, Jesus stops speaking about “the Son of Man” being lifted up and clarifies that he himself is the Son of Man, the elevated one: “I,” he says, “when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32). “Lifting up” is something that happens to Jesus, so that he can attract not just explicitly those who believe, but all who can’t resist his gravitational pull toward God the Father’s love, truth, and clear judgments about the damaging effects of this world on God’s beloved children.
Attentive followers of Jesus would know that Jesus, as God the Son, would be lifted up to the heart of the heavenly Father he came from, and that they too could lift Jesus up themselves by exalting Jesus of Nazareth as the Son who shows us God the Father. “Lifting up” is a wonderful thing.
These followers might have expected that Jesus’s next move would be the ascension—the celebrated mystery in which Jesus beamed straight up into the heavens from a mountaintop, leaving his disciples staring up after him.
But that isn’t what happened next. And the last words of today’s gospel reading claim that when Jesus spoke about being “lifted up,” he wasn’t just talking about returning to heaven, being praised, or drawing people after him. He was dropping a hint about the particular form of execution that he would suffer—being lifted up on a cross.
The evangelist tells us that when Jesus said, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself,” Jesus “said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.”
With all of Jesus’s talk about being “lifted up” ringing in their ears, imagine the followers of Jesus seeing him lifted high off the ground on a cross. “That’s what Jesus meant by being lifted up??,” they might have said to one another. How easily they could forget that the “lifting up” of Jesus truly meant healing, praise, intimate union with Christ and God the Father, and broad fellowship with all people.
But all that too is what Jesus meant by being “lifted up.” And it must have meant that most clearly to those who heard and remembered every word that dropped from the savior’s lips when he walked among them.
© 2021 The Rev. Dr. Lora Walsh
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas