Holy Monday: The Hour Has Come

Holy Week marks the final days of Christ’s life and ministry, leading up to His death on the cross on Good Friday and glorious resurrection on Easter Sunday. This picture of the start of Holy Week was made to decorate a Gospel Book in the middle of the AD 500s. That means this depiction of the Triumphal Entry is older than the world’s second largest religion. It was drawn before Augustine brought Christianity to England, before Maximus defended the truth of Christ's two wills, before Gregory taught how to pastor. This picture of the beginning of Holy Week is as old as the Hagia Sofia, Benedict’s Rule, or Columba’s mission to Scotland. Christians have been marking this week for a very long time indeed!

So, to mark this Holy Week, I'm going to post a short meditation on a Scripture from John’s Gospel each day to help draw our minds and hearts to the glory of the gospel. 

Reading: John 12:20-26

John begins his account of Holy Week with the some Greeks who want to see Jesus. They come along saying “we would like to see Jesus,” but Jesus gives a very strange answer. He doesn’t say “yes” or “no.” He doesn’t say, “come along and have a look.” Instead He says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” What on earth is He talking about?

Jesus is talking about what Holy Week is all about — for this week is all about the glory of Jesus. That might sound a bit odd. Maybe you think of Holy Week as being a week about Christ’s suffering. But that’s exactly where His true glory is seen. Jesus displays His glory in the midst of suffering. For His true glory is seen in the Cross, through the shedding of His blood.

That’s what He explains in the next verse. “Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” The glory of a grain of wheat is seen in the ear that’s produced when the plant grows, not in the single grain that falls into the ground. Jesus is speaking here about how His death leads to resurrection, and resurrection brings abundant life.

Jesus’ glory is seen in that He is the true grain of wheat that falls into the ground and dies, so that through His death and resurrection He can bring forth an abundant and glorious harvest.

So if you want to see Jesus in His glory, the only way you can is by looking to the cross. And that’s why Holy Week is so glorious. Because this is a week that keeps drawing our eyes to the glory of Jesus seen in His suffering and death in our place.