Lent 5 B: The Great Inversion

John 12:20-33 Dear Partner in Preaching, I’ll just confess it: I’ve never known quite what to do with this passage. It is, like so many passages in the Fourth Gospel, so symbolically and theologically rich (or, if you’re feeling as I am right now, dense). One thing I do notice however, is a series of interesting inversions. The scene starts with some Greeks wanting to see Jesus. Just what the Greeks represent is not entirely clear, but I tend to think it means that word of Jesus, and simultaneously Jesus’ word of grace, has reached far and wide enough for him to feel confident that this part of his mission is complete and he can now...