This coming Sunday is the 5th Sunday of Lent. 27 “I am troubled now. Yet what should I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” With the word “now” the focus returns to Jesus’ hour and St. John portrays a different Jesus than the one we encounter in Gethsemane as portrayed by the other gospel writers.

The first prayer, framed as a question (“Yet what should I say?”), is never prayed by Jesus and stands in distinction of the prayer associated with Jesus’ agony in the garden (Mark 14:36) even as it echoes that tradition. Unlike the Markan text, the focus of vv. 27–28a is on the immediacy and urgency of Jesus’ hour (“now”), not on his struggle in the face of that hour. It is the second prayer that reflects the focus of this moment: “Father, glorify your name.”  This is the focus and true prayer of the hour. Jesus lays down his life of his own free will (10:18); he embraces his hour as an expression of his love for God and the moment of God’s glorification. [O’Day, 712].

Jesus’ prayer is confirmed by the voice from heaven: Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it and will glorify it again.” Note that past, present, and future are summoned in this response. Throughout the ministry of Jesus, God ahs revealed God’s self through his only Son. It is God’s testimony to the events of the hours as well as all that led up to it and all that will follow. It carries an echo of raising of Lazarus: “This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” (John 11:4). As well “[I] will glorify it again” anticipates Jesus’ prayer in John 17 in which the past, present, and future of God’s glorification of Jesus are also combined.

Misunderstanding. “Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it and will glorify it again.” … The crowd there heard it and said it was thunder; but others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered and said, “This voice did not come for my sake but for yours. 

The Gospel according to John is replete with revelation being misunderstood. Nicodemus misses the point in his talk with Jesus, as do many others in their encounter with the Messiah. Perhaps the same is true of the crowds present. Their opinions of the sound being thunder or the voice of an angel is headed in the right direction. Thunder was a common religious symbol for the voice of God (e.g., Exod 4:23; Ps 29:3–9), and angels were traditionally understood as God’s messengers (e.g., Gen 16:7; 18:2–8; 19:1; Luke 1:11, 26; 2:9). The crowd’s hearing the voice of God as either thunder or an angel’s voice suggests that the crowd recognized that they were witnesses to an epiphany, some revelation of the divine, but that they missed the point: they were witnesses to the unmediated presence of God in God’s relationship to Jesus. His words in v. 30 underscore that this is indeed what the crowd has missed.

Jesus explained that the voice did not come for his sake but for theirs. And as Morris points out [530-1] if this removes one difficulty it introduces another. Jesus did not need to be reassured, but if it was intended primarily for the crowds, why did they not understand it? Perhaps because they lacked the spiritual acuity to recognize the voice of God. But the voice would be of the greatest value to those of his followers who could take in something of its significance, even though they lacked the spiritual awareness to understand it fully here at “the hour.”  Upon later reflection, the memory of that voice would be assuring.

Image credit: The Gentiles Ask to See Jesus, James Tissot (1886-1894) | Brooklyn Museum | PD-US