A curious encounter takes place in the twelfth chapter of the Gospel of John. Some Greeks who are in Jerusalem for Passover come to Jesus’s disciples and say, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip and Andrew relay this message to Jesus, and Jesus responds  by saying, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” What does Jesus mean by the “hour”? And what is it about this exchange that indicates to him that his hour has come?

The key word here is “Greeks.” These are Gentiles who are asking to meet Jesus. They represent the world beyond the confines of Judaism—what the Hebrew Scriptures call “the nations.” In the fourth Gospel, apart from his conversation with a Samaritan woman (Samaritans were sort of “half-Jews” descended from the survivors of the old northern kingdom of Israel who had intermarried with the Gentile peoples in that region), Jesus has dealt almost entirely with Jews. These Greeks at the festival are the first full-on Gentiles to make an appearance in John.

That’s the signal to Jesus that the hour has finally arrived. Jesus understands his mission in terms of the suffering servant of Isaiah, one of whose roles is to be “a light to the nations.” In his prologue John describes Jesus as “the light of all people” (John 1:4) and “the true light, which enlightens everyone” (John 1:9). Now that Gentiles have been drawn to Jesus’s light, he knows his hour has come.

By his “hour,” of course, he means his death. He explains the connection between being a light to the nations and being crucified in verse 24: “Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” It is only by remaining faithful to the point of death that Jesus will truly be the light to the nations that God has designated him to be.

This word is not just for Jesus. Three chapters later, he will describe the relationship between his followers and himself with the metaphor of a grapevine. “I am the vine,” he says, “you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Our calling as followers of Jesus is to bear fruit, and unless our grains of wheat fall into the earth and die, that simply won’t happen.

As we draw closer to the climactic events of Holy Week, let us recommit ourselves to putting to death everything that threatens to get in the way of our abiding in Jesus and allowing him to abide in us, so that we too may bear much fruit.