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Today is the Fifth Sunday in Lent. Next week is Palm Sunday.
A prayer for the day (from Steven Shakespeare):
Lord, in Christ you draw all people to yourself; may we die with him to the powers of hate and let him show us a world loved by you. We pray through Jesus, the fruitful grain.
John 12:20-33
Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 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. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.
“Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say — ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.
A few days ago, a friend and I were talking about Holy Week. He used a poetic phrase from the Gospel of Luke to describe Jesus’ final journey: “Jesus turned his face toward Jerusalem.” Then, he added in his own words, “where Jesus would confront religious and political authorities.”
Today’s selection from John is from Jesus’ final public discourse, on the last part of that journey, and it explicates the coming confrontation with those authorities. Jesus is in Jerusalem, and he speaks of what he fears is ahead — of his own troubled soul, the impending clash, a violent end. He proclaims the crux of it all: Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.
The ἄρχων (archōn) of this κόσμου (kosmos) will be expelled.
That’s quite an announcement.
But it begs a question: Who is the ruler of this world?
Some Christians are certain they know the answer. Satan is the ruler of this world. And Jesus is fully aware that he is going to take down the literal devil in a duel-to-the-death-and-beyond for the souls of humankind. Jesus predicts both the spiritual battle of the cross and its end result of eternal judgement. This is one of the great “heaven and hell” passages of revival meetings and apocalyptic fervor. Choose your side. Now. Before it is too late.
Others regard this story as less a prediction and more a description of temporal realities. The language in this passage is suprisingly “secular.” The word used for judgment is the Greek word used for a legal decision; it is the language of a trial. The word for “ruler,” archon, simply refers to one who wields power, the human agents who exercise the offices of civil government. And the word for “world,” kosmos, typically means the arrangement of things, an ordered system or structure. If you pay attention to the language, this passage seems to be about this world.
Thus, some Christians read this as a supernatural battle; others see it as a description of systematic powers in society and politics. In the first case, Jesus’ death on the cross is primarily concerned with what happens after one dies; in the second case, it is primarily a demonstration of corrupt and inhumane imperial violence. In one, Jesus confronts Satan; in the other, Jesus confronts Rome.
Whose rule is ending? Who will be driven out? The Devil or Caesar?
Since Rome didn’t end and Caesar stayed on the throne — and Jesus’ crucifixion seemed to be of no political consequence — it isn’t hard to see how a more spiritual interpretation gained traction among many Christians. Easier to spiritualize the whole — or move the reality of the cross into some heavenly future — than to think this has anything to do with here and now.
But I can’t get my friend’s comment out of my mind: Jesus turned toward Jerusalem to confront religious and political authorities.
It isn’t Satan or Caesar. It is both.
There appears to be a belief in some early Christian communities where Satan was identified as the angel of Rome. This idea may have originated in a Jewish apocalyptic tradition that Rome was allied with Satan and other fallen angels. In today’s reading, John seems to be drawing from this tradition — a theme that will re-appear in detail in the Book of Revelation (a book in the corpus of writing attributed to John).
Thus, in John’s thinking, the spiritual and the political are caught up together in a structure of oppression. Both soul and body are victimized by the agents of (dis)ordered systems of injustice in this particular world. When Jesus is lifted up — and is killed — the powers of Satan and Caesar will be revealed as the death-dealing deception they are.
In his magnus opus on ideas of power in the New Testament, the late Walter Wink explored the dual nature of ancient thinking about Satan and Caesar. After praising the contemporary work of liberal Christians to understand Jesus and the gospels through social sciences, political analyses, and critical theory, he continued with this caveat:
But always there was this remainder, something that would not reduce to physical structures — something invisible, immaterial, spiritual, and very, very real . . . I will argue that the “principalities and powers” are the inner and other aspects of any given manifestation of power. As the inner aspect they are the spirituality of institutions, the “within” of corporate structures and systems, the inner essence of outer organizations of power. As the outer aspect they are political systems, appointed officials, the “chair” of an organization, laws — in short, all the tangible manifestations which power takes. Every Power tends to have a visible pole, and outer form — be it a church, a nation, or an economy — and an invisible pole, an inner spirit or driving force that animates, legitimates, and regulates its physical manifestation in the world. Neither pole is the cause of the other. Both come into existence together and cease to exist together. When a particular Power becomes idolatrous, placing itself above God’s purposes for the good of the whole, then that Power becomes demonic. The church’s task is to unmask this idolatry and recall the Powers to their created purposes in the world [God’s wisdom].1
Wink wrote that in 1984 (he died in 2012). Honestly, it sounds as if he wrote it yesterday — and is speaking directly to our current politics and the multiple crises we’re facing.
Is there any hope in such a situation? People ask me this all the time! Wink insisted that we needed to heal the rift “between one-sided materialism and one-sided spiritualism.” We need to understand both dimensions of the problems we face. And the solution is two-fold: a just politics and a new spiritual imagination are necessary to repair the world. “Change is possible,” he insisted, “but only if the spirit as well as the forms of Power are touched. And that spirit can only be spiritually discerned and spiritually encountered.”
And so, Jesus confronts — or perhaps, is confronted by — both Caesar and Satan in the dramatic events in his last journey to Jerusalem and the cross.
Jesus’ proclamation — Now is the judgment of the world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out — is followed a few verses later by a personal confession: I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.
Jesus’ ultimate business wasn’t to judge the world or cast out Satan/Caesar. His final public speech is remarkably passive. These things will happen to him — the lifting up, the falling to the earth. But the actions about to unfold would unmask the powers of oppression, the archons of this world. His death would reveal their unholy collusion. And this unmasking would disarm them. They bring judgment on themselves.
When we see the powers for what they are, everything is transformed. The agents of this world are found to be deformed and wanting; those who confront and resist that power seed a world conformed with the love of God and neighbor.
Jesus knows this confrontation will not be easy. The powers of this world don’t give up without a fight. Yet, Jesus will not fight back. Resistance will not be on the terms of the “ruler of this world.” Instead, he will step out of the spiral of demonic imperial violence and choose a different path. And he finally claimed agency amid his own fears, stating without equivocation: I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.
His work isn’t about eternal judgment or getting anybody to heaven. It is about righting what is wrong here — the horrible consequences of complicity between Satan and Caesar.
Those powers bring judgment and death. But those who love and embrace the way of peace turn toward healing what has been corrupted in this world.
The journey continues. And, as Holy Week reminds us, the path won’t be easy. The unmasking is underway.
INSPIRATION
A voice from the dark called out,
"The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war."
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can't be imagined before it is made,
can't be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses . . . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.
— Denise Levertov, “Making Peace”
Now the green blade riseth, from the buried grain,
Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.
In the grave they laid Him, Love who had been slain,
Thinking that He never would awake again,
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.
—John Macleod Campbell Crum, “Now the Green Blade Riseth”
We must not engage the Powers without rigorous examination of our own inner evil,
which we often project on our opponents. We must ask how we are like the very Power we oppose, and attempt to open these parts of ourselves to divine transformation.
We must attempt to stop the spiral of violence both within ourselves and in our tactics vis-a-vis the Powers. We must discern the spirituality that we oppose and be careful not to grant it victory with ourselves.
And we must settle it within ourselves, once and for all and then over and over again…
—Walter Wink
Walter Wink, Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament (1984)
What is brought here is what I hear from the best of my spiritual friends. The "what" is the need for real world reform combined with spiritual refinement of oneself. Both is the applicable word.
Oh! How I wish that this had been available before last Wednesday's "Reading Bedtween the Lines" in which we discussed this passage It adds so much! Thank you. Even our priest, who preached on this Gospel, didn't give us neary as much insight. Thank you!