The Cross IS Troubling. John 12.27-36

The Cross IS Troubling.  John 12.27-36

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“Now my soul is troubled and what shall I say?  ‘Father, save me from this hour’?  But for this purpose I came to his hour.” John 12.27

Good Day.

My teen-aged sons just returned from summer church camp—one a new freshman and the other a senior.  I wondered all week how it was going—you know, whether the older, Dylan, would make things rougher or easier for the younger, Danny; of course, I prayed fervently that they would meet God in a new way—that they would come home in love with Jesus.  When I picked them up at the bus, I took them for burgers so I might have a little while to get the ‘lowdown’ on their experience.  They ate like horses, and in between bites, gave me glimpses of their time … and then Dylan said, ‘yeah, and Danny was crying.’  ‘Dan?’ I gently queried.  ‘Yeah—one night,’ he proffered.  ‘What was it, Hon?’  ‘The Cross,’ he quietly said.  With a little more back and forth, he told me how it really got to him—what Jesus went through, what he endured for him.

There it was—the Cross.  The Cross had undone my tender 14-year-old-son.  I have flashed on that throughout the last week, thinking, ‘When was the last time I was really undone by the Cross?’  The Cross that cost Jesus everything.

It was in anticipation of that ‘everything’ that Jesus was troubled here in John chapter 12.  Just a few days hence he would be arrested, beaten, and crucified.  “Now my soul is troubled and what shall I say?  ‘Father, save me from this hour’?  But for this purpose I came to his hour.”  I love this verse because it shows his humanity; truly, he was fully God, but he was also fully man, which is difficult to absorb—just how his human-ness fit with his being fully God.  Like, did Jesus really get tired or hungry or troubled?  In anticipation of the cross, his flesh recoiled at the notion of what was coming.  Oh, Jesus … Oh, Jesus.

Lord God, lead me to the Cross.  May I walk in the shadow of what cost you so much—knowing that you endured it for me, to set me free from my sins.  May it move me like it moved Danny … again and again.  In Your Name I pray,  Amen.

Christine

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