March 18, Lent 5B (John 12:20-33)
The crucified Jesus in John's Gospel is cosmic—and magnetic.
If you reach the 12th chapter of John’s Gospel without a firm idea of who Jesus is or how he is supposed to have effected salvation, the text will more or less force you to come up with one.
First Jesus is anointed by Mary at Bethany, in an act that prefigures burial but also echoes priestly and royal consecration. Then he enters Jerusalem to the acclamation of a great crowd laying down palm branches and calling him “King of Israel.”
John’s Gospel is full of these moments of dramatic irony. People around Jesus—friend, foe, or bystander—say and do things that end up being fulfilled in a contrary sense or an unexpected manner. When the Pharisees lament that “the world has gone after him,” their hyperbole ends up being all too accurate. The world shows up at the start of this week’s reading, in the two Greeks who ask to see him. Jesus, in that moment, makes another dramatic, demanding announcement: the time for his glorification—by means of his violent public death—is at hand.
