Palm Sunday “A Glorious Death”
March 24, 2024 John 12:20-43
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Dear brothers & sisters in Christ,
No sooner had Jesus dismounted His donkey, and the Passover visitors were trying to find which cloak was theirs scattered on the ground, some Greeks showed up. The fact that they were Greek isn’t what’s important here; God-fearing people from all over the world had converged on Jerusalem for the Passover time. What we note about them is that they were very eager for a meeting with the man of the hour. “Sir,” they said to Philip, “we wish to see Jesus.”
I’m sure they were not the only ones with that wish; most were too meek to ask.
It was only a few days earlier that Jesus had been in Bethany, where He had astounded people with -arguably- His greatest miracle: the raising of Lazarus from being 4-days-stone-dead. No doubt, people were still talking about it; in today’s social media terms, Jesus was ‘trending on twitter.’ (I’m sorry, it’s now X) The one who raises the dead must be ‘the son of David’, & the king of Israel. As Jesus chooses a slow & humble ride into the city, news traveled faster, and the crowd that was waiting for him becomes a parade of palm branches, with shouts of ‘hosanna in the highest!’ And for a reason that is not told to us, those Greeks came to Philip and asked to see Jesus.
But it seems as if Jesus has now past the point of press conferences & interviews;
He is focused on His impending death for the whole world = including for Greeks. He says, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.’ And then He makes it clear that this ‘glory’ is not His popularity across the ethnic spectrum. But rather that this ‘glory’ was the hour of judgment for the world, with the ruler of the world being cast out. So, His being ‘glorified’ means His being ‘lifted up from the earth’ to draw all people to himself.
A glorious death. This is the first & truest definition of glory that you & I are to work with,
on this side of heaven. The ultimate glory we know is Jesus Christ crucified, by which He draws dead souls to Himself to save & give life.
To make sure that His disciples that day, (along with you & me) will have no questions about what ‘glory’ is, and what lay ahead for Jesus, He uses a very clear metaphor: ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.’ Jesus is that grain of wheat. If that grain would be hidden & protected, then we get nothing. But when that grain is recognized for its purpose, given up & buried in the earth, then it germinates, & rises up to bear much fruit.
This is how it would be for the ‘seed of the woman’ promised in Gen.3:15. Just like a seed is cast into the ground, Jesus must go the way of death & the grave. Jesus would give & forfeit His life, and then take it up again 3 days later. And in His dying & rising, He would bear much fruit in redeeming of the souls of Jews & Greeks, slave & free, male & female. This seed would bear the fruit of full & free forgiveness for the whole world, showing God’s glory in mercy & love to sinners.
For most of us, this Palm Sunday is not our ‘first rodeo’, and this message is what we expect to hear at the beginning of Holy Week. We knew Jesus would be talking about dying & rising, because it’s the purpose for Jesus being among us. It’s why we commemorate this week as ‘holy.’ Jesus says again what we expect.
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But then He also says the unexpected. This means that we are not going to to thru Holy Week like a spectator in the bleachers, just watching Jesus move again historically thru the Passover meal in the upper room, out to the Garden of Gethsemane, into Pilate’s judgment hall, out to calvary, & into the tomb. While He talks about himself as a grain of wheat, in glory, falling into the earth & dying, He then turns to tables. It turns out that dying and rising has as much to do with YOU as with Jesus. He says, ‘Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me.’
He has drawn YOU to serve Him, since He has baptized you into this faith. So now YOU must follow Him; as it goes for Jesus, so it goes for you. That means you should not expect to just ‘watch,’ hands-off, & from a distance. You can expect to get treated like Jesus got treated: trials, temptations, rejections & disappointments; and, at some point, being like a grain of wheat = you can expect dying, …and rising. You follow Jesus, and so you share Jesus’ glory. That is, the first kind of glory that is on this side of heaven.
And even tho this isn’t our first rodeo, we still don’t like this way of speaking; but with the Lord, there is no false advertising. It’s a myth that following Jesus would be easy, or make life easy with earthly glory.
To have ‘blessings’ in life is not the same thing as having an ‘easy’ life in this faith. Our old natures want that myth to be true; that idea that because God is good & helpful, so believers in God will have an easier life & earthly goodness.
Authors & preachers are heard saying that following Jesus means you should expect good things & successes here & now. They say: Follow Jesus, and watch life’s pressures & disappointments melt away. Follow Jesus, and you won’t have depression or sickness or worry. Part of us wants to believe that; that’s why those books sell, and those preachers are popular. But look at Jesus’ life in this fallen world; should we expect to have things easier or better than the sinless Son of God did? Jesus says that if we are looking to love our lives in this world, then we are losing our grip on the eternal life to come.
If we follow Him & share His glory, we will be falling into the earth like a grain of wheat and dying. Now, since everybody dies, He must mean more than those simple words; & He does. The Spirit of Jesus makes clear in the NT that Baptism is a kind of death.
In Rom.6, we’re told that in Baptism, we are buried with Jesus into death. And in Colossian 3, we’re told that in Baptism, we’ve already died, and our new life is now hidden with Christ in God. You, a grain of wheat, have had dying & rising in your Baptism. Amen to that!
But there’s more. Remember that the dying & rising of Baptism isn’t just a one-time event, as Paul writes in 1Cor.15, ‘I die every day.’ Your Baptism began in you a new way of life: as a child of God, every day, you are dying to sinful things & disobedience, and you are rising to holy living following Jesus. In the Sm.Catechism, we confess what Paul meant: every day, our old Adam, with all his filth and sin, needs to be drowned and die, and new man daily come forth to live before God.
At first, it doesn’t sound right that we should hate this new life we have been given. But it is right, because this new life is still in this old world, & right alongside our old nature. We love our new life in Christ, but it is by faith, not by sight. So we hate this daily struggle with our old disobedient, sinful ways; we are washed into a new life, but that new life is not finished yet. In heaven it will be; but not yet. The historic facts of Holy Week, that Jesus died & rose again for me, doesn’t make my worldly life easier, but harder. His cross & death now shows me the sin I must do battle against = whatever prevents me from following Him in a new & holy life.
Jesus didn’t come to give us an easy life; he came to open the way to the new life,
and to lead us in His ways until we reach the goal. To properly celebrate this Holy Week, we will not merely rehearse the history of His agonizing prayers, arrest, trials, crucifixion & death for us. He again calls us to follow him in turning away from those sinful things in this life that we are tempted to love more than the eternal life he is giving.
Don’t ask me what those sinful things are in your life; the Spirit has a way of pointing those things out to each of us so that we can see them & turn from them. However, 1Cor.10 says that ‘no temptation has overtaken you except what is common to man.’ Man’s sins are common. That’s why God’s 10 Commandments can cover them all. The first 3 cover all those areas of our resistance & apathy toward God, his name & worship. And then the other 7 Commandments help us see those things we do to mistreat other people; because we are selfish or jealous, or we want revenge, or we want to hold a grudge. Those kinds of sins make life in this world difficult & painful, and the child of God, reborn into a new life in Christ, hates this life, because sin still threatens to keep us from the true life to come.
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Who will deliver us from this life of death in sin? Thanks be to God in Christ Jesus. Immanuel, God with us, promised: ‘I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’
With God, with Him, all things are possible. We’ve heard that old adage: ‘No guts, no glory.’ When we find ourselves lacking in the guts department, we are shown that we have a
Rescuer who is all guts, and all glory. The palm-waving crowd in Jerusalem gave earthly glory to the ‘the man of the hour’ who they hoped would be the new king of Israel; and in a
few days, the crowd would take back that glory, & be shouting in anger: ‘crucify him!’
But the Son of God saw his approaching death with a troubled soul, and asked:
what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? No! For this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’ This death, this one single death on a cross, was the hour of his greatest glory. Because only there would the sin of the world die; all the sin in you that needs to die; and Jesus would die it for you. On this side of heaven, there is no greater glory than the one life sacrificed in order to save all lives.
Yes, it is a strange combination: death and glory. The loser of the Super Bowl doesn’t get the glory or the Lumbardi trophy, only the winner does. The glory goes to the one left standing, the one who survives; they get the applause, the spotlight, the fame & the fortune.
Normally, & for those who can’t see anything beyond this world, the glory goes to the one who lives = not to the one who dies.
But God is beyond, and so the glory of Jesus is centered on the cross. The glory of Jesus doesn’t shine; it bleeds. And it didn’t live for this world, it died to this world. That’s the life He lived in our place so that we would have a new & better life; not fully now or yet, but life beyond. That’s what makes his death a glorious death.
Jesus came to undo what Adam did. When Adam sinned, he took down all creation;
he took down you & me down with him. The first man disobeyed the Father, & draws us down to the grave; from life to death. But the new man, the promised ‘seed of the woman,’ the man from heaven, the grain of wheat, comes and obeys the Father, and pays the wages of sin.
To glorify the Father’s name, to fulfill his promise, Jesus is lifted up from the earth and dies, and lifts you up from death to new life. In that one glorious death, all sinners are reconciled to God: Jews & Greeks, slave & free, male & female. We are forgiven, justified in Christ Jesus. And for all who have been baptized into Christ, have died to sin.
And “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united
with him in a resurrection like his.” (Rom 6:5).
Jesus is that grain of wheat that fell into the ground and died; and his death is bearing much fruit. He was lifted up, and is drawing all people to himself. He has drawn you to himself, and washed you, and he has shared with you his glory. It is that glory that is on this side of heaven. It is the glory of daily dying to sin, and rising to live before God in righteousness. It is the glory that is making you lose the life in this world by hating it; but in following Him & dying to this world, you are keeping your life for that eternal glory.
Amen