A Palm Sunday Meditation on John 12: Prepared and Unafraid

And Jesus answered them, saying,

The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.

Verily, verily, I say unto you,

Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die,

it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

 He that loveth his life shall lose it;

 and he that hateth his life in this world

 shall keep it unto life eternal.

If any man serve me, let him follow me;

and where I am, there shall also my servant be:

 if any man serve me, him will my Father honour.

Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say?

Father, save me from this hour:

but for this cause came I unto this hour.

Father, glorify thy name.

Then came there a voice from heaven, saying,

I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.

 The people therefore, that stood by, and heard it, said that it thundered:

others said, An angel spake to him.

Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of me, but for your sakes.

Now is the judgment of this world:

 now shall the prince of this world be cast out.

And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.

This he said, signifying what death he should die.

In John 12, we first find Jesus and His disciples at the home of Lazarus whom He raised from the dead, together with Lazarus’ sisters and family.  He was anointed with a costly perfume in preparation for His burial, something His disciples did not yet understand.  Then He proceeded toward Jerusalem with the crowd hailing Him as the Messiah, casting palm branches in the road before Him, striking such fear into the hearts of the Jewish leadership that they sought to kill both Jesus and Lazarus.  This triumphal entry, less than a week before Jesus’ betrayal and murder, is how we mark the beginning of Holy Week as Palm Sunday.

Among the many lessons we learn from Jesus upon His arrival into Jerusalem, is that He knew what He was doing, where He was going, and what it was going to cost Him.  He knew His own disciples would abandon and betray Him; that His own countrymen would seize Him by night and hand Him over to a foreign power for public torture and execution; that He would be unjustly condemned, mocked, slandered, and ridiculed; that He would die in unparalleled agony, bearing the weight of every sin of every soul of every person that would ever be born from the beginning to the end of time; He knew that He was the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world, and that by His Vicarious Atonement upon that Roman cross, He would become the salvation of every person drawn to Him by grace through faith; He knew that by dying He would defeat death for all mankind, casting out the devilish tyrant of the world’s wicked system, and giving all people a path back to reconciliation with God.

Jesus was prepared for this.  He spoke about it often with His disciples, though they couldn’t fully understand it until after it happened.  Jesus’ soul was troubled by what He was about to do, the tremendous gravity of His path to save the world, but He was not afraid of it.  As the Author of Life who condescended to dwell among us, full of grace and truth, He knew all too well the wonderful blessing of life, and the terrible curse of death.  Jesus knew that death was not a blessing to be embraced, but a curse to be overcome—the curse we brought down upon ourselves by cutting ourselves off from God by our own sinful rebellion against His Eternal Word.  Jesus knew that without His saving work of redemption upon the Cross, mankind had no hope in this world or the world to come, that the curse of death in this world would be ratified by an eternal death of separation from God for all eternity.  Jesus knew what His path through the valley of the shadow of death would entail, and that He would take that journey willingly for our sake.

And He accomplished what He set out to do.  He submitted to His Father’s will, became the sacrifice for the sins of the world, descended to the dead, and rose again triumphant over sin, death, hell, and the power of the devil.  He took this path through betrayal, suffering, pain, and death, that He might secure for us a way through death unto everlasting life; that where He is, there His servants may be also.  He prepared a place for us with the Father, and left to us His Holy Spirit, that we might journey faithfully through this fallen world to be with Him where He is.  He has accomplished all things necessary for our salvation, doing what we could not do, and giving to us freely the fruits of His labors by His unbounded grace.

Thus it is that Jesus has prepared us for our journey through the valley of the shadow of death, that we might walk it unafraid.  We follow Him who has gone through death for us, conquered death for us, and risen again that we might know for certain that we are the inheritors of life through Him.  Death is still a curse which plagues mankind as a result of our fall into sin, but for those who abide in Jesus by grace through faith, it is a conquered curse, a defeated enemy.  Death has been trampled down under the sacrifice of Jesus, and just as hell could not hold the Lord of Life, neither can it hold the sons and daughters of the Living God who put their trust in Him.  We are an Easter People, joined to the victory of Jesus through faith in His Word.

And so it may be that we will be troubled by death as we journey through this world, for we know how terrible a curse death is.  But we are also prepared to walk through life and death unafraid, following in the footsteps of Jesus who has walked this path before us, and shown us by His resurrection the eternal life He has secured for us.  This path through Holy Week is a hard one, where death surrounds the world like a gathering darkness.  Yet it is a path illuminated for all by Jesus, who calls all people to gather in His light, that they might pass from death to life in Him.  Amen.