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Welcome to Westminster Abbey's Lent and Easter reflections.

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On the fifth Sunday of Lent,

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we begin with the book of John, chapter twelve,
verses twenty to thirty-three.

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Now among those who went up to worship at the festival
were some Greeks.

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They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee,
and said to him,

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‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’

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Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew
and Philip went and told Jesus.

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Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the
Son of Man to be glorified.

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Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls
into the earth and dies,

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it remains just a single grain;

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but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

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Those who love their life lose it,

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and those who hate their life in this world
will keep it for eternal life.

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Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am,
there will my servant be also.

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Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.’

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‘Now my soul is troubled.

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And what should I say—“Father, save me from this hour”?

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No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.

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Father, glorify your name.’

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Then a voice came from heaven,

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‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’

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The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder.

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Others said, ‘An angel has spoken to him.’

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Jesus answered, ‘This voice has come for your sake,
not for mine.

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Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world
will be driven out.

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And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all
people to myself.’

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He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

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This Sunday marks the pivot between Lent and Passiontide.

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From here we slide inexorably towards the
awfulness of Good Friday,

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yet always backlit with the glory of Easter.

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When some Greeks say that they want to see Jesus,

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when the Gentile world is paying attention,

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 Jesus senses that ‘his hour’ has come.

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He will be lifted up to draw all people to himself.

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His death will bear fruit in the church,

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the new community-without-borders that will bear
his life forward.

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But his soul is troubled.

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This ‘hour’ is terrifying.

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His humanity, like ours, shrinks from the knowledge
of death; its proximity.

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Pivotal moments come in many guises:

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in a phone call, a knock at the door,
a declaration of war

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Suddenly our comfortable assumptions are shattered,

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and our dependable world feels anything but.

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With a sickening tilt, everything starts sliding into nothing.

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In his hour, Emmanuel slides with us.

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He will be tipped into pointless suffering, a senseless death,

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and an empty grave, where meaning decays.

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 If he hadn’t, if he had been ‘saved from this hour’,

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then the glory of Easter would have nothing to do with us.

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As it is, it makes even the grave a ‘bed of hope’.

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Most merciful God,

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who by the death and resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ

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delivered and saved the world:

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grant that by faith in him who suffered on the cross

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we may triumph in the power of his victory;

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who is alive and reigns, now and for ever. Amen.