Fifth Sunday in Lent; 17 March 2024; Lent 4B (RCL); Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-13; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33.
I believe this is one of the central passages of John’s Gospel, and key to interpreting the whole. John loves the device I call parenthesis. He opens the device with a parenthesis (like Jesus addressing the plural you telling us that we will see visions of angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man) and then keeps us in suspense until he closes it (with Mary’s vision of angels in the empty tomb). Here, John open the parenthesis with the mention of “certain Greeks,” and then leaves us in suspense, and never closes it.
Continue reading “A grain of wheat”