Saturday 17th August
Read John 12:34
“The crowd spoke up, ‘We have heard from the Law that the Messiah will remain for ever, so how can you say, “The Son of Man must be lifted up”? Who is this “Son of Man”?’” (NIVUK)
Their expectations and Jesus’ statement now clash directly. They expect a Messiah to come who will save them and rule forever based on a reading and joining of a number of passages. The crowd has listened to Jesus and they know He speaks of a Messiah that is different in nature and that He has called Himself the ‘Son of Man’ – so the ‘lifting up’ of the ‘Son of Man’ makes no sense to them.
Jesus speaks of a victory where the prince of this world will be cast down (boxes ticked), but then speaks of death (cue confusion). That the victory would be effected through death is radical in the extreme. At least the crowds are asking precisely the right question now – who is this ‘Son of Man’?
It is the same question many ask today. How could anyone be foolish enough to worship a man who died an ignominious death on a cross in a Roman backwater two thousand years ago? Yet that very man claimed that in suffering precisely that death the entire cosmos would be re-centred and made whole once more.
