Sunday Music: Stabat Mater, BWV 1083
It is the fifth Sunday in Lent. The title of today’s piece is “Tilge, Höchster, meine Sünden” (Cancel, Highest, my sins), an adaptation of a Stabat Mater by Pergolesi.
Today’s Gospel reading is John 12:20-33:
Jesus Predicts His Death
Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the festival. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. “Sir,” they said, “we would like to see Jesus.” Philip went to tell Andrew; Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus.
Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.
“Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!”
Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.
Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince 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 show the kind of death he was going to die.
The text is available here and contains these words:
Let me feel the joy and pleasure,
let me gladly sound the triumph,
when the cross me hard doth press.
Happy listening! Soli Deo gloria.
Thes are absolutely devastating statements. It staggers the mind and breaks the heart when grasping the totality of the fact that Jesus knew precisely what He would soon be enduring on our behalf. And it wasn’t Him that needed reassurance about what was going to happen but rather it was for those around Him.
Dana (fd537d) — 3/21/2021 @ 10:26 amHappy Bach’s birthday and Palm Sunday to all!
Golden Eagle (8e3954) — 3/21/2021 @ 11:36 amAgree with #1 about 95%; well said. The 5% (if even that much) is that Jesus was also human and it seems like his own understanding of all that he was doing increased as his ministry went on. At one point, he said salvation was only for the Jews, but later he broadened that to include all people who believed and followed him. He at first was willing to let his friend Lazarus die, and Lazarus’s sisters endure grief, just so the power of God could be shown when he raised Lazarus from the dead. But he was plainly moved by the grief felt by the sisters of Lazarus that he wept, and it feels (to me, anyway) that he also raised him from the dead because of human sympathy. Even on the Cross he cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me, which is what a human being who did not know what was going to happen would say. You could argue that even Jesus did not fully understand the Resurrection until it occurred.
The fact that Jesus was human doesn’t make him any less the son of God. It makes his sacrifice, the fact that he was willing to face the grief and pain and fear that humans face, all the greater. He could have avoided death entirely, or at least made sure his death was painless, but instead took on the full measure of uncertainty and agony and pain that a human could suffer, all for our sake. Staggering indeed.
RL formerly in Glendale (fda61c) — 3/21/2021 @ 4:06 pmVery interesting thoughts, RL. Thanks for posting them.
That Jesus had human responses would not necessarily negate or diminish that He was fully aware of what was coming and what was necessary in order to save a fallen world. I actually think that to believe that He didn’t know is to argue against His divinity and being an equal part of the trinity. My thought is that He cried out “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me” because, in that very instance, He was separated from God the Father. He had to be separated from Him in order to complete the mission as the sacrificial lamb bearing not only all of mankind’s sins but also His father’s terrible and righteous wrath for said sins: “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.” That was our only path to freedom here, and eternal life afterward. I also think He cried out because of the human urge to escape said pain. I cannot even begin to imagine how fierce and terrible the wrath of God would be. We can certainly read about it in the Bible, but to experience it as the only way for us to know salvation boggles the mind. However, given that Jesus had the power to end His misery or get off of the Cross, or even stopped the earth yet didn’t, further reflects the full knowledge and understanding of what He had to do.
My thought is that He always knew the whole picture and what His future would hold and on whose behalf He would need to go through such an unspeakable experience.
Dana (fd537d) — 3/21/2021 @ 6:12 pm#4, This is kind of a belated response, but I don’t really disagree with you, except that I don’t think saying Jesus’s apparent understanding of his ministry grew as it continued necessarily detracts from his divinity. I forget the exact reference, but one of the recent daily readings was of a passage from the Old Testament where God told the Israelites that if they were to start obeying his commands he would “choose not to remember their sins.” Jesus might have chosen not to know everything that was going to happen so that he could really experience what it means to be human. Or I may be completely off base. I’m just glad that after living as a man for 30+ years Jesus still thought the human race was worth saving.
RL formerly in Glendale (fda61c) — 3/22/2021 @ 4:38 pm