You’d think it would have pleased Jesus to hear that Greeks were asking to meet him. It meant his message of freedom and transformation in God’s love was spreading. I would have said, “Yay! Growth! Expansion! My efforts are paying off!” But Jesus' mission went deeper than the healing and conversion of individuals. His mission was to bring freedom and transformation to the entire cosmos. Something about hearing that these Greeks wanted to meet him signaled to him that the final part of his mission was about to start.
Philip had gone to Andrew with the message from those visitors, and together they’d come to tell Jesus. “Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” He talks about dying and bearing fruit, losing your life and servanthood. And then he gives voice to his anxiety and sorrow. “‘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.’”
Matthew, Mark and Luke show Jesus wrestling with his mission in the Garden of Gethsemane, just before his betrayal by Judas and his arrest by the temple guard. But as John tells it, it is here, some time before his passion fully begins, that Jesus starts to feel the dread and turmoil, the desire for some other plan to be revealed. It’s a poignant reminder of how much he suffered as a full human person, with all that emotional load to carry. He had to anticipate the betrayal, the abandonment by his closest friends, the injustice, the physical pain. He had to carry that load long before they beat him and made him carry his cross to Calvary. It begins now, here. The hour has come.
“The hour has come.” So much human experience can be contained in those words. The hour to give birth, or leave this world. The hour of an examination, an interview or being fired. The hour of diagnosis, being sentenced, hitting bottom, admitting a deep truth about ourselves.
Does it help us to know that Jesus experienced anxiety and dread, irritation and anger, that his soul could be troubled? I hope so – it reminds us that there is really nothing we can suffer that Jesus did not, including rejection and loneliness, misunderstanding and exhaustion. It gives us another way to connect with him in our spirits, when we feel such emotions, when we face challenges.
What comes up for you when you hear those words, “The hour has come?” Are you overtaken by dread of what lies ahead or regret for what cannot be recovered? Either is ground for prayer, to ask for the grace to receive the gifts and the challenges of this day, and remain centered in God’s presence here and now.
In his earthly life and ministry, Jesus was bound by time as we are, time moving inexorably toward an event, a conclusion, a beginning. He inhabited that hour and every hour afterward until he hung for those six hours on the cross. And then he was released into the eternal Now, where he exists forever, outside of time, from which he inspires and empowers us to participate in his mission of reclaiming, restoring and renewing all of creation to wholeness.
When we are made anxious by the “hours” that are momentous for us, we have a remedy. We can meet Jesus, in prayer, in that land where it is always Now.
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