If you like watching thrillers, you’ll know the moment in the story when the tables turn. The heroes have their backs against the wall – but suddenly the very thing that their captors or enemies thought they had under their control is turned against them, and the heroes prevail. The idea repeats itself so often that we more or less take it for granted. We rarely stop to think where it comes from, why humanity so often needs to tell such stories – or indeed to trace it back to the greatest ‘table-turn’ of them all.
As we reflected yesterday, Jesus sees the bigger picture well before anybody else does – he knows where this is leading, and, amazingly, he goes there anyway. And what we see in today’s passage is Jesus ‘turning the tables’ on the very idea the Sanhedrin were discussing after the raising of Lazarus – let’s head back briefly to Caiaphas’ words in 11:50: ‘It is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.’ One person for all people…
…exactly what Jesus has in mind – but here’s how he describes it in today’s passage: (v24) ‘Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.’ It’s the same ‘one on behalf of all’ image – but notice the crucial difference. Jesus is not just saving others from death (which he is), he is also bringing life to many. The very thing Caiaphas describes brings so much more than Caiaphas can imagine: it brings life, it reproduces itself multiple times over.
Jesus calls this his moment of glory – and let’s not miss how radical this description is. How is the ‘the Son of Man… glorified’? (v23) By his sacrificial death. What a world-changing definition of glory! Who else before Jesus could possibly have thought of glory like this? And in the 2,000 years since, the vast majority of the extraordinary human beings who have also lived like this have been inspired by the original blueprint of Jesus’ own life and death.
Near the start of the gospel (ch3), Jesus foretold this moment when talking with Nicodemus: he calls it his ‘lifting up’ (3:14). But it doesn’t refer to his resurrection, what you might call his subsequent and ultimate ‘lifting up’, or even his ascension into heaven. It refers to his death – his lifting up on the wooden cross. This, for Jesus, is the ‘hour’ when he is glorified, and draws people to himself.
What a wonderful Saviour we have! Today, let’s give thanks for Jesus’ courage, his obedience, and way his abundant life has marvellously reproduced in us. We are his ‘seeds’ – may we too keep growing in this abundant life and hope which our glorified Lord won for us. Amen.