In today’s Gospel Story (John 12:20-33) Jesus says “It is for this purpose that I came to this hour”. He also reminds us that if we love our life we will lose it, and a grain of wheat must die before it can produce wheat.
In God’s loving providence, everything that has gone before us in our life has prepared us for where we are now -- the things we are happy about, and those we are not. Looking back on our life we find we may have grown through our experiences. They have made us the persons we are now. We might be happy about the way we are, or we might not. Jesus talks about death bringing us to life. As we look back on our tough times we might come to see them as little deaths which have brought us to new life in any number of ways. Many of these tough times came to us because of choices we made, others we might have had little to do with bringing them into our life. They happened, we dealt with them, our life changed somehow, and here we are. We may have learned a lot, or we may not have. We may have gained the wisdom or insight that when we look at a problem long enough we come to see our part in it. We are where we are. Things are as they are.
The life Jesus teaches we have to lose is the web of images we weave to make ourselves acceptable to others and to ourselves. We don’t just choose to let these images go, because they are so much a part of our everyday life that we think they are real. We find out what has to go as we live every day in Jesus’ company. It might be that, instead of having a conscious plan of realigning our life, we simply consent to our realization from time to time that we no longer need a particular image or value. It might be that we gradually become aware we don’t always have to know everything, that we don’t need people to live by our expectations, we don’t always have to get what we want. As this life begins to die – always with our consent – we might become aware of a new life happening within us. We also become aware that a lot of the images and habits do not want to go peacefully. At times we might have a battle on our hands as our old habits fight a rear guard action and we are getting beat up. We are learning humility, and another death begins for us.
Jesus says, “I am troubled now, yet what should I say, ‘Father, save me from this hour?’, Yet it is for this that I came to this hour”. Outside the setting of a journey with Jesus this makes no sense at all. In the setting of our journey it makes perfect sense, as Jesus invites us to follow him, and walks with us on our own way of the cross. As he shows us in his life, the only way to fullness of life for us is the death in us of what keeps us from going ever deeper with him. Jesus does not offer us an escape from difficult times but a way through them. Our journey offers us a different perspective on our life, one that is not recognized or accepted since it makes no sense at all outside the setting of our journey. We come to know God not as someone who is out there watching us, but as Someone in whom we are living all the time. And so our perspective begins to change. We move towards being willing to accept what comes on its own terms as an expression of grace, to being as best we can in practical circumstances obedient to the demands of our daily life, and open to the possibility of grace in everything, including the concrete realizations of our own weakness. “It is for this that I came to this hour; Father, glorify your name.”
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