John gives us another timestamp: it is now six days before Passover, and everyone is preparing and planning for the impending feast day. For us, it’s now a week till winter solstice, and we prepare for Christmas as they prepared for Passover. For both them and us, the days are getting darker.
Here John shows us lots of people responding to Jesus who get it wrong, and only one who gets it right (and even she is criticized as she does it). The High Priest Caiaphas is one who got it wrong. He bore the burden of keeping this precious country chosen by God intact and alive in a dangerous imperial world. If not for his leadership, the light of God would be extinguished and the pagans would win.
So he prepared plans, and prophesied his own success. The prophecy of Caiaphas chills me because on the surface it seems true:
“Jesus was about to die for the nation – and not only for the nation, but also that he might gather the scattered children of God into one.” (John 11:52 DBH)
Caiaphas’s definition of the “children of God” was likely too narrow, but otherwise, this reads as a reasonable summary of substitutionary atonement. Which is why it chills me, and convinces me that Jesus’s death must have been more than a simple substitution. Caiaphas had the same narrow vision of the other leaders, which turned the light of the word into a black flame (see 12-9 entry).
Then, as everyone wondered where he was, Jesus entered as king! On Palm Sunday, Jesus embraced the role of king on his own terms — on a donkey, not a warhorse. The people’s reaction is patriotic. The palm fronds they wave are their national symbol, like the people waving American flags at a July 4 parade.
It was a delight for the people who saw what they wanted to see, but it was exposed and risky for Jesus. The authorities now know he is in the city. The crowds were protection from arrest on that day, but crowds aren’t always around.
Everyone, even Caiaphas, knew that Jesus brought Judeans together, and the Palm Sunday crowds were fulfillment of this expectation. But this still gets it partially wrong – as usual, Jesus fulfilled more than they expected.
Even before the day is over, other sheep start to arrive, gathered in by the Spirit, those of whom Jesus had said, “I have other sheep not of this fold” (John 10:16). Greeks from far away approach Philip, who brings them to Jesus, and Jesus, seeing this, prophesies his own death in service to the Father, as a seed must die to bring forth new life.
Jesus is understandably troubled, but he turns to thanksgiving, praying in front of the crowd, “Father, glorify your name.” (12:28) Then, a response! “A voice, therefore, came out of the sky: ‘I both have glorified and will glorify again.” (12:29) This is when another misunderstanding happens. Some people heard a thunderclap, some hypothesized an angel, but Jesus said this was his Father, and the beginning of the end:
“Now is the judgment on this cosmos; now shall the Archon of this cosmos be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will drag everyone to me.” (12:31-32 DBH)
People are already being dragged to him like iron filings to a magnet, some to worship Jesus, and some to plot his demise. When people heard, responded, and participated, that was a form of judgment, positive judgment for those who approach, negative for those who turn away. Powerful rulers, those aligned with the “Archon of this cosmos,” get it wrong, and are cast out when Jesus is lifted up.
If you find this hard to grasp, you’re not alone. Jesus eludes those trying to capture him, even today. Rich Mullins has a song about this titled “Hard to Get.” Struggling with who Jesus is, this is a sign that you are approaching his mystery. He who arrives on a donkey, he is also coming with the clouds.
John even says this is hard to get, when he quotes Isaiah 53:1, “Who has understood our report?” Isaiah asks this as part of a prophecy:
“Behold, My Servant shall deal prudently; He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high. Just as many were astonished at you, so His visage was marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men; so shall He sprinkle many nations.” (Isaiah 52:13-14)
The low made high, the high made low, the near scattered away, the far-away dragged near, as Mary prophesied in the Magnificat. Mary, Isaiah, Abraham, they all saw Jesus’s day, and rejoiced (John 8:56).
The day before, an object-prophecy was made. Mary sister of Martha had washed his feet with expensive perfume, and wiped them with her hair. (John 12:3) The house was filled with the invisible freshness of Mary’s gift, pointing to Jesus’s impending burial.
Mary’s gift judged Judas, as it revealed his darkened heart. In shock from the sheer expense, Judas questioned whether this money should have been given to the poor, as the law (and common sense) required. But John tells us a detail that he knows by looking backwards: even though Judas was trusted with the disciples’ common purse, he was an embezzler who betrayed that trust, a “thief” (12:6) come to “steal and slaughter and destroy.” (10:10) Like Caiaphas, Judas sounds right at first. But sounding right and being right aren’t the same thing.
After this, Judas’s mind was made up. He went to Caiaphas and the other leaders to negotiate a deal (Mark 14:10). Their plan was one more preparation for the coming feast, a plan to capture Jesus for once and for all.
John says that only “when Jesus was glorified” did the disciples remember “that they did these things to him.” (12:16) I remember with them, not judging others, but seeing the potential in myself for coercion and scheming, for plans to hem in Jesus or his gifts, to use his gifts or his people, to steal from the purse. Such schemes may seem to work, but in the end, schemers will be caught in the pits that they dig.
They never “got” Jesus. You don’t have to “get” Jesus. God is by nature hard to get. No, you don’t get Jesus, but you can receive him, who is in nature God, as he gives himself in word, light, bread, and wine.
IMAGE: 12th-century mosaic from the Palatine Chapel in Palermo, Sicily.
Reproduced at https://katherinesandersicons.com/blog/palm-sunday-entrance-to-jerusalem-in-icons-of-lent
