“The Hour Has Come”: Holy Tuesday’s Radical Upheaval

While Holy Week has many notable days, the oft-forgotten Holy Tuesday is the most well-recorded day in Jesus’ life. About 400 verses describe Holy Tuesday—nearly twice as many as the Last Supper or Good Friday. This day, his last day of teaching, features many of his most memorable parables, confrontations, and prophecies. Among these many famous verses lies a uniquely confusing event which signaled the fundamental restructuring of the entire world.

While Jesus was at the temple, some Greeks approached Philip, who (being from Bethsaida near the Decapolis) was likely a friendly face. Most scholars agree that these people were likely Gentiles who were seeking God, having made a pilgrimage all the way to Jerusalem for Passover. These Gentiles were relegated to the outskirts of the temple, where a wall barred their deeper entrance on pain of death. The Greeks asked Philip: “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” Philip, upon hearing this, brought the request to Andrew, and the two brought it to Christ. Jesus never meets the Greeks, but instead responds to the disciples saying:

“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (John 12:23-24)

He answers, as he tends to, with a cryptic, apparent non-answer. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus repeatedly says that his hour has not yet come: at the wedding at Cana, the Feast of the Tabernacle, and again when he’s teaching in the temple. Only now does Jesus declare that his hour has indeed come. 

These Greeks traveled to Jerusalem to worship God and, in doing so, found Jesus. Even so, the existing structure of Judaism didn’t allow for them to physically draw near to God. The Jewish temple courtyard was organized in concentric circles, with each step in becoming more exclusive. The outermost court, or the court of the Gentiles, was the closest Greeks could reach to the temple. The wall of Soreg marked this boundary line. On it, an inscription warned trespassing Gentiles that they could be killed for moving beyond it. Next, there was the Court of Women, where only Jews could enter to worship and offer to the temple treasury. Further in, the Court of Israel was only for men to gather for sacrifices. Beyond, there was the Court of the Priests, where ritual sacrifices were performed by the Levites and descendants of Aaron. Finally, the sanctuary itself contained the Holy Place (only for priests) and the Holy of Holies, where the High Priest entered once a year. 

Literally central to Second Temple Period Judaism, the temple’s layout was a microcosm of its foundational limits on participation in worship. Institutionally, only the High Priest could fully approach God, with diminishing access to ordinary priests, men, women, and then Gentiles. These practices were not necessarily evil. These customs had been essential to setting Israel apart and preserving their monotheistic, reverential mores that upheld the Torah and prophets’ teachings. Israel was called to be a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). The Jewish institutionalized power structure served its purpose: preserving a people to carry the knowledge of the one, true God throughout ancient history. 

And yet, this institution’s ability to fully enact God’s true law was limited. Most people (particularly Gentiles) did not have full access to God’s presence. By Jesus’ time, the temple system had calcified, and mechanisms intended to set Israel apart ultimately kept others out. This is where Jesus enters. He came not to abolish the law, but fulfill it (Matthew 5:17). The telos of vegetation is growth. Israel, the kernel of wheat, had been preserved throughout its adolescence. But now, for a plentiful harvest, the kernel had to fall to the ground and die (John 12:24). 

Renowned anthropologist René Girard explained that human communities naturally organize around mechanisms of exclusion. While Girard praised the Hebrews for being progressive in many ways (banning human sacrifice, critiquing the oppression of empire,  etc.), he still viewed them as a transitional, liminal community​​—the threshold between ancient regimes and a truly just society. The Jews required a resilient, distinctive identity to prepare for the arrival of the Messiah. For there to be cleanliness, there must be uncleanliness. For there to be sacred, there must be profane. For there to be Jews, there must be Gentiles. 

But as Jesus arrived, history was converging upon the messianic prophecies. Not only would he redeem Israel, but he was to be a “light for the Gentiles” so that Lord’s “salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6). He could only do this by removing the boundary mechanism. Israel had been sustained until the arrival of the Son of Man, and now began the next step of God’s will. The kernel had been carried safely through the centuries, and now the time was ripe for it to die. 

Paul understood the dissolution of the distinction between Jew and Gentile. In Ephesians, he explains this, saying: 

“For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.” (Ephesians 2:14-16)

His phrase “dividing wall of hostility” would have been contemporarily understood as a reference to the foreboding Wall of Soreg, separating the Court of Gentiles from the Court of Women. Paul notes the effect of this dissolution of identity: “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Difference is no longer the organizing principle of relation to God.

The old system had to be put to death for its true goal to be realized. To do this, Jesus himself had to die. Without these deaths, these intertwined tragedies, the wheat kernel could not spread. A stalk of wheat can only grow so high, but a field can be endless.

This is why Jesus answered with this cryptic agricultural commentary in response to the Greeks’ request. The outside world was knocking on the door, and he knew how to let them in. The identity of the Hebrews had culminated throughout history into this moment. It served its purpose. But now, the hour had come. The hour for the Wall of Soreg to be torn down. The hour for the veil to be ripped in two (Matthew 27:51, Mark 15:38, Luke 23:45). The hour for the kernel to die so that it could produce many seeds. This was why Jesus came. Even while acknowledging his troubled spirit, Christ proclaimed, “it was for this very reason I came to this hour” (John 12:27).

The cross was a single time, but the hour’s calling is not a discrete moment. His followers were (and are) called to expand and multiply his work. Soon after telling his disciples about the wheat, he declares, “Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be” (John 12:26). Later that day, he explains this further, and any palatable interpretation of his earlier words are immediately dismissed. Jesus says, “you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me” (Matthew 24:9). His assurance of pain was not localized to Jerusalem or even Israel. All nations would hate anyone carrying the good news of Christ. All of society up to that point, including Judaism, had been built upon systems of ethnic, religious, and social exclusion. Jesus was challenging the social engine that had led to the development of powerful nations. This would not come without cost to anyone carrying the message of freedom. The excluded, the scapegoats, and the outsiders were promised an invitation of radical inclusion, necessarily undermining every existing power.

Evolutionary anthropologists Joseph Henrich and Robin Dunbar note that parochial altruism—strong in-group cooperation and out-group hostility—is what allowed early human groups to outcompete rivals. Internal group cohesion was driven by shared rituals, enemies, and sacrifices. Groups with this type of cohesion were more capable of organized violence, resource extraction, and territorial expansion. The power of existing groups was predicated on normed exclusion and out-group dehumanization. Groups who did not practice this were often conquered by or subsumed into groups who did. This played out with the Romans, Assyrians, and Babylonians. Beyond military expansion, regimes consolidated their power through further exclusion. When internal tension (famine, plague, military defeat) threatened to collapse a group, communities historically resolved this by scapegoating an innocent group. By absorbing the divisive anger and hatred, scapegoats restored social cohesion.

This is the structure Christ was dismantling: the mechanism that bestowed riches, the system that worshipped power. This is why the Sanhedrin gave him over to Rome, and this is why Rome killed him. And this is also the system Jesus sent his disciples—first the twelve and now us—to destroy, and the world hates it.

After Christ’s death and resurrection, his disciples scattered to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth. They were not miraculously spared. Peter was crucified upside down in Rome. Paul was beheaded under Nero. Bartholomew was flayed alive in Armenia. Jesus was right. Every nation hated them, and every power reviled them. But these powers’ grasp on authority was slipping. With every martyr, the kernel once more dropped to the ground, spreading the message further.

On Holy Tuesday, Jesus was met with the request for out-group inclusion. They, too, wanted to worship the one true God. In response, Jesus recognized and declared the only way to let them do so: his own sacrifice. By willingly taking on the scapegoating architecture itself, he met humanity on its own terms. And, in ultimate defiance of all of history, he would rise again. He spread his seeds—his disciples—to the ends of the earth to continue the expansion. On Holy Tuesday, Christ saw the world pressing on the Wall of Soreg, and he finally declared that the culmination of the ages was arriving. The hour had come.

Jesus knew his task. He must defeat the entire structure of all power, not through conquest but conscious, willing sacrifice. In doing so, he would usher in the Holy Spirit to guide his followers to continue this into the new age, spreading the good news to the victims and scapegoats. Jesus didn’t answer the Greeks with words, but he answered by breaking the bedrock of power itself.