“The Word become Flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son full of grace and truth.”

You know God is present when God’s glory appears – blazing on the mountain, shining in the desert, at the altar, feeding, providing, leading. Jesus, Divine Wisdom, coming from her home above to call people to the way of life.

In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus’ “hour” is shorthand for the whole plan of divine salvation, which is the revelation of God’s glory.

As the descendants of the beloved disciple remember the words of Jesus, and the Spirit speaks Jesus’ voice through their own prayer and prophecy, their understanding of Christ opens wider and wider. Jesus’ parables of the kingdom – about shepherd who seek lost sheep and lamps that get hidden under a bushel – become revelatory speech about the identity of Jesus himself:

“I am the good shepherd. I am the light of the world.”

The enormity of Jesus’ death requires many, many images to help those with faith to grasp it, to hold it in the mind, to know it within the heart.

Here, Jesus states a botanical fact, and makes it poetry.

Perhaps its origins are in the wise parables of Jesus about the seed scattered on the path or the seed growing secretly or the tiny mustard seed that makes a bush for the birds of the air.

Or from Paul — What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.

Jesus says:

“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

Jesus offers here another key to unlock the door. One more clue to the riddle of himself.

One ordinary thing to explain necessity and inevitability.

You know that paper packet of morning glory seeds, that you bought on a hopeful whim at the hardware store, that is still sitting on the shelf in your shed?

It must be torn open—  and the seeds sown in the dirt, covered up with soil, and watered, and tended, if you ever want to see the vines covered heavy with brilliant blue blooms.

Falling, descending, rising, growing, ascending, visiting, departing, down and up, up and down… here is another image for this radical act.

No farmer here, scattering seed by the handful, but one grain, a lone one, all by itself. And it will stay alone, single… ungiving, withholding, isolated, lifeless….

…. unless, unless, it falls, comes down, unto the earth, and dies.

If it dies, goes the parable from the lips of John’s Jesus, it bears much fruit, it yields bushels of berries, heaps of grapes, abundant produce, more than enough everyone.

From transformed parable to another tradition remembered by John.

“Now my soul is troubled”  —  agitated, mixed up, confused, apprehensive, stirred up like troubled waters.

Here is a trace of a treasured gospel tradition, passed down among earliest writers.

The most gut-wrenching moment in the passion accounts of Matthew, Mark and Luke is Jesus’ agony at the place called Gethsemane. The kiss of Judas and Jesus’ arrest are imminent. With his inner circle, Peter, James, and John, Jesus asks them to wait while he prays.

The gospel of Mark describes Jesus as “distressed, agitated, deeply grieved” He prays “let this hour pass, please… remove this cup.”

Readers of these gospels and those who hear them in Holy Week, are swept up in the crisis of Jesus’ doubt and fear and spiritual struggle.

Jesus’ emotions and his prayers stir up and mirror our own horror as the clangor of swords and clubs, muffled at a distance, comes nearer.

We relate to Peter, James, and John who, overcome – with fatigue, with desire to escape, give in to the weakness of their flesh and sleep.

John’s community remembered this tradition. But we won’t hear it in John’s gospel. They knew God had answered Jesus’ prayer. They asked: “What did God say?”

What Mark leaves dark, raw, wretched, John transmutes into divine revelation, the voice from heaven, loud and clear.

“Now my soul is troubled…. what should I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour.’?”

But immediately he is without doubt.

“It is for this reason that I have come to this hour.”

Jesus asks for confirmation from the ultimate authority: “Father, Glorify your name!”

Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”

‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”

We are spared the awful scene of Jesus’ agony. We are given instead an auditory epiphany:

A voice from heaven.

This voice sounds a lot like the voice that was heard as Jesus came up out of the waters of the Jordan and opened his eyes to the sky on the day of his baptism, “You are my Son.”

Or the voice that resounded on the rocky mountain when Jesus’ face changed and his clothing dazzled white, Moses and Elijah materialized on his right and his left.

“This is my Son.”

For the gospel of John, this booming, deep, rumbling voice, that pronounces, in Johannine language, how Jesus’ death is to be understood, is a climactic word.

It is baptism and transfiguration and passion prediction all wrapped into one.

It’s about glory. The reality and presence and power of God.

God showed Jesus’ glory at the wedding when he made wine from water.

God showed Jesus’ glory when he made the man to see who was born without sight.

God showed his glory when he called his dead friend out of the tomb.

And again, one last time, through this grain falling to the earth… he will glorify it for good.

Words from God from heaven, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are meant to be messages, sent, and messages received.

But here in John, even God’s voice from heaven is not clear enough. God’s revelation is mistaken, misunderstood by the crowd.

They see it on the surface. They take it literally and leave it at that.

“They said it was thunder.” Thunder.

It was deep, it crackled and resounded over the face of the deep. It was charged with electricity, it heralded a storm.

Others said an angel had spoken.

Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew.

Angels – at home in heaven and traveling to earth as messengers.

Ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.

They were wrong of course.

And they were right.

The voice of the LORD is over the waters;
The God of glory thunders;
The LORD is over many waters.
The voice of the LORD is powerful;
The voice of the LORD is full of majesty. The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars,
Yes, the LORD splinters the cedars of Lebanon.

Listen, listen to the thunder of his voice and the rumbling that comes from his mouth.

In John’s gospel, there is no agony at Gethsemane, no prolonged troubling for Jesus.

We hear God’s answer.

And there is no falling asleep under the thunder.

On this Tuesday of Holy Week, we are hearing God speaking,

We are awaiting Jesus’ glorification.

Hoping for the judgment of the world.

Asking how Jesus might be lifted up from the earth.

Walking while we have the light.

And very soon the light will go out.

Amen.