Read John 12:20-26
ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Jesus replied, ‘Believe me, dear woman, the time is coming when it will no longer matter whether you worship the Father on this mountain or in Jerusalem’” (John 4:21, NLT).
When we think of God’s people, we tend to think one of two things. We might think of the Israelites who were God’s “chosen people”, or we might think of specific characters in the Bible. Either way, we tend to idealize the people we are thinking about. For instance, we may think that God’s people are super faithful, holy, perform miracles and live wholly devout and righteous lives. Unfortunately, this idealism enables us to distance ourselves from being God’s people, because we feel that we fall short of those ideals. As such, I have decided to write a devotion series on specific characters in the Bible in order to show you how much these Biblical people are truly like us, and how much we are truly called to be God’s people.
Part 226, Greeks: Jesus was a Jewish rabbi who claimed some pretty astonishing things about himself, things that would have sent up all sorts of red flags for the Jewish establishment. He claimed that he was Lord of the Sabbath, that what one ate did not defile a person, that one could do work on the Sabbath, that he was God’s son, that he was the Son of Man, that he was the way, the truth and the life, the bread of heaven, the light of the world, the life-giving water, the vine, resurrection and the life, and the great I AM. Such claims would have been scandalous and would have set Jesus at odds with the Jewish religious and political leaders of his time.
His association with Gentiles would also have been frowned upon by the Pharisees, who were a group whose name literally meant separatist. The Pharisees believed that strict adherence to the Torah and separation from all Gentile cultures was the way to faithfully follow God. Gentile cultures worshiped a plethora of other gods and, as had happened so many other times in Jewish history, they had the tendency to lure the Jews into idolatry.
Jesus life is actually bookended by relations with the Gentile culture. A child who was no more than two years of age, he was visited by Zoroastrian astrologers from the East we know as the Wise Men. At the end of his life, he was sought out and approached by a group of Greeks. Both the Greeks and the Zoroastrians were Gentiles as they were both non-Jews.
But those weren’t the only relations with Gentiles. He healed a Roman centurion’s son, he healed a Syro-Phoenician woman from bleeding, and even conversed with and taught a Samaritan woman. This willingness to engage with a culture at odds with Judaism would not have sat well with his critics.
Yet, throughout his life and ministry, Jesus engaged with Gentiles and, according to John, it was one of the final things he did before his arrest. When the Greeks requested to meet with Jesus, he saw that as a sign that the time of his suffering and death had come. His ministry had mostly been to the Jews, but now his name was known to even these Greeks (who may have been from the Decapolis, ten cities in northern Israel, Jordan and Syria). This was as sign that his message of salvation and the imminent coming of God’s kingdom was about to go from being exclusively Jewish to a global message that included Gentiles as well.
That is why Jesus responded to their request in this way, “Now the time has come for the Son of Man to enter into his glory. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives” (John 12:23-24, NLT). Jesus was foretelling the impact his death and resurrection would have on the spreading of the Gospel to all the world.
Jesus went on to proclaim that “Anyone who wants to serve me must follow me, because my servants must be where I am. And the Father will honor anyone who serves me” (John 12:26, NLT). Jesus was not just including a specific group of people as God’s people, but was opening the doors to ANYONE and EVERYONE who followed him as the Way, the Truth, and the Life! What good news, right? That means you, that means me, that means anyone who loves and follows Jesus our Lord. The challenge for us is to be a part of spreading that GOOD NEWS to anyone who will open their ears and their hearts to that profound message of hope!
THOUGHT OF THE DAY
“The carnal nature of man is that he places his tribe above others, but the only basis for the power and unity of the church is that there is no Jew or Gentile.” – Yemi OsinbajoPRAYER
Lord, help me to serve Christ in all that I do so that I may be a part of spreading the Good News of God’s coming Kingdom. Amen.