Day 29, Wed., 14 Mar.: John 12.20-33

Some Greeks.

Sometimes Jesus responds to comments made or situations in ways that are so strange that I think "Either He's crackers or he's playing a game of chess about 10 moves ahead of me, and I wouldn't bet on the first option!" Or perhaps "Jesus is playing that 3 dimensional Japanese game called 'Go' to my 2 dimensional checkers" is a better image.

Maybe the most commonly thought of example of this is at Caesarea Philippi, in Mark chapter 8. I looked at this text in a post a couple of weeks ago. Jesus asked the disciples the double identity question: "Who do people say that I am? Who do you say that I am?" Peter identified Him correctly as the Messiah. Jesus praised Peter for this God-inspired insight, then started teaching the disciples that he would suffer, die and be raised. Peter reprimanded Him, whereupon He returned the reprimand with interest: "Get behind me Satan!" This sounds bizarrely insulting, particular when compared with the compliment He'd just handed Peter, but neither with the compliment nor with the stern order was He even operating in the same dimension as the disciples. Pronouncing the blessing on Peter, He was actually ascribing glory to God for inspiring Peter. And responding, instantly and fiercely to Peter's reprimand, He was actually responding to yet another attack from Satan, the Tempter.

So when Jesus responded to Andrew's and Philip's information that some Greeks wanted to see Him with a rambling, apparently irrelevant diatribe, perhaps we should try looking for the other dimension He was playing in.

The most interesting suggestion I've read has to do with the Greek identity of His visitors. It's perhaps noteworthy that two disciples with Greek names - Andrew and Philip - told Jesus that some Greeks wished to see Him. The explanation of Jesus' apparently strange reaction is that in God's plan Jesus was to limit His role to being Messiah to the Jews. That these Gentiles came to Him was a sign that the next stage of God's great plan of salvation for the whole world was to follow.

With Love to the World commentator John Miller puts it like this:
"Today's reading is preceded by the complaint of the pharisees on Palm Sunday: 'Look, the whole world has gone after him.' (v.19)...The Greeks who requested a meeting with Jesus are presented as forerunners of the many non-Jews who would be drawn to Jesus. They would be drawn by His being "lifted up" on the cross and in His resurrection and ascension."

Acutely aware that this was impending John's Jesus spoke of it again.  One of the themes prominent in John's gospel is that of glory. Here Jesus prays that the Father would be glorified in the paradoxical suffering, death and resurrection of the Son. A voice from heaven replies that the Father has done this and will do it again. There are only 3 occasions in John's gospel on which the heavenly voice is heard: at Jesus' baptism, his Transfiguration, and now at the arrival of the Greeks. That says to me that this text describes a puzzling but very important event of Jesus' ministry.

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