And when I am lifted up from the earth,
I will draw everyone to myself.
Jesus chose love as the way he would draw everyone to himself. He always shunned self-promotion. He came to heal and to preach but not to win popularity contests. He asked those who experienced his healing power to keep it to themselves. He spoke the unvarnished truth, but would not engage in disputes with the insincere. He came to offer redemption to the world, relationship with himself, but never in a way the was fake, or fabricated, or calculated. In short, what he offered was always he himself. In the crucifixion he revealed how perfect and unlimited this offering was.
He said this indicating the kind of death he would die.
Jesus never loved his life in this world. He did not turn aside or ask his Father to save him from the hour when he would lose his life. It was precisely for that hour that he came into the world. His whole life was a journey toward that hour. It was a long procession of the gift to the altar and there were no detours.
“Sir, we would like to see Jesus.”
Because Jesus knew what he came to do, he knew what it would mean for the Greeks to truly see him. He knew what they desired most deeply was something other than having their curiosity sated, though perhaps they themselves did not realize it. The life of Jesus was directed toward the Cross. So too their gaze would need to be directed.
Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies,
it remains just a grain of wheat;
but if it dies, it produces much fruit.
All that Jesus did and taught constituted a life that would be an acceptable offering to God, free from the bonds of selfishness that constrained all others. In that offering he embraced and included the whole world so that those who would let Jesus unite them to himself could also become offerings acceptable to the Lord, transcending their own limitations of ego and pride.
Therefore I urge you, brothers, on account of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship (see Romans 12:1).
It was not arbitrary or capricious that Jesus needed to give his very life as an offering. For this was the very root of what we ourselves could not give, ever since we set ourselves in the place of God in the Garden of Eden. He desired to set right the damage we had done, so that we could be "like God" in a true and holy way, to release our grasp and offer ourselves. He knew that when we offered ourselves we would receive ourselves back as gifts, now able to bear fruit for the world.
and whoever hates his life in this world
will preserve it for eternal life.
In offering ourselves we image the eternal outpouring of love that never ceases between the Persons of the Trinity. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit hold nothing back from one another and so are infinitely fruitful. Jesus became man, the Word became flesh, and brought that Trinitarian life to earth. He manifested it in a world broken and torn by sin. The only shape it could take in this world was that of the Cross. But because he did so, the Cross itself became a tree of life which bore fruit for all who would look to it.
Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered;
and when he was made perfect,
he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.
We are called to be where our master was, but we still cling to our lives out of fear and selfishness. We aren't often ready to prefer eternal life and the fruits of the Spirit to the earthly and the finite. Part of the problem is that it is the only thing to which we are accustomed, the only life we've known. We can't do it on our own. Only by receiving the gift first given by Jesus, the grain of wheat, bread from heaven, can we ourselves bear fruit. But the offering of Jesus, because it was love and not merely persuasion, has the power to change our hearts from within.
I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts;
I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Jesus came to offer us a way out of the prison of selfishness, transformation from inside out. As we move on toward the end of Lent may we recognize his love in the Cross he bore and be drawn by it to himself, to his offering, to the eternal embrace of love.
All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the LORD,
for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.
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