Lectionary Year B
April 6, 2003
John 12:20-33
Step VI: Contemporary Address
(KH)C. ADDRESS
We Wish To See Jesus
Focus: New life is made possible for all through Jesus’s death and
resurrection.
The roads leading to Jerusalem are well traveled this bright, spring day.
White and yellow wildflowers are scattered among lush green pastures.
Figs and olives are in bloom. Travelers coming through the hill country
see grazing goats and sheep. It’s lambing season and the countryside is
vibrant with new life.
Where these roads converge on the climb to Jerusalem, travel bogs down as
old acquaintances pause to greet and embrace. It’s the closest thing to a
first century traffic jam one might imagine. Strange accents...people in
unusual dress... There is an electricity and excitement in the air that can
only mean one thing---its festival time in Jerusalem. I envision those
ancient Passover Festivals to be some combination of homecoming, class
reunion, and Thanksgiving Day all rolled into one.
It’s against this backdrop that today’s Scripture reading takes place.
The text informs us that among those going up to the festival were some
Greeks. These Greeks went to the disciple, Philip, with the request, “Sir,
we wish to see Jesus.” Phillip goes and tells Andrew. Phillip and Andrew
go and tell Jesus. Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of
man to be glorified.”
I can almost hear one of my more impertinent youth group members
asking---is that a yes or is that a no?
As I’ve reflected on the passage this week, it’s troubling to me that
Jesus never appears to directly answer this request. It’s troubling for me
because I believe Jesus is the one who came on behalf of the outsiders, the
marginalized, and the strangers in town. It just doesn’t correspond with
the Jesus I’ve come to know through the Gospel message. This doesn’t seem
to relate to the Jesus we profess in The Brief Statement of Faith---the
Jesus who proclaimed the reign of God:
preaching good news to the poor
and release to the captives,
teaching by word and deed
and blessing the children,
healing the sick
and binding up the brokenhearted,
eating with outcasts,
forgiving sinners,
and calling all to repent and believe the gospel.
“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Why does it appear that Jesus ignores this
request of the Greeks?
Perhaps Jesus took issue with their motives. We as gospel listeners are
not given any direct insight into those motives. However, the context
seems to suggest they could be part of a larger group of curiosity seekers.
Earlier in John’s gospel we learn of Jesus’s miraculous raising of
Lazarus from the dead. Word spread quickly through the crowds that were
assembling early to prepare for the Passover feast. The high priest and
the Pharisees were concerned and had already taken counsel on how to put
Jesus to death (11.53). With Jesus’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem,
John’s gospel reports the crowd went to meet Jesus because he had done this
sign (12.18). Could it be that these Greek visitors were just part of
that throng of people waiting to witness the next miracle?
That’s a possibility, but then again...maybe Jesus’s priorities have
changed at this point in his ministry. Jesus’s declaration that “the hour
has come for the Son of man to be glorified” (12.23) surely marks a
significant moment in the life of our Lord. It’s the signpost declaring
the end of Jesus’s public ministry and his turn toward the cross. From
this point onward, Jesus’ focus seems to move from one of an outward
direction involved with teaching, preaching and healing the people in the
surrounding countryside, to one of a more inward focus---toward the
disciples and those closest to him, and finally to his own passion and
death on the cross. With the initial chapters of the public ministry
closed, these latecomers may just have to wait for the Lord to complete the
work He was sent to accomplish.
But doesn’t it seem like there should be some acknowledgment to the
request--- "Sir, we wish to see Jesus" ?
Perhaps the reason is that the Lord is distracted by the task that lies
ahead. The text in the gospel message records Jesus as saying, “Now is my
soul troubled.” Troubled may be a slightly anemic translation of the
Greek. The verb ("tapasso") literally means "to stir up, disturb, unsettle,
or throw into confusion". Jesus is self disclosing a state of incredible
personal duress. The psalmist poignantly captures a sense of such distress
in the lament of Psalm 6, which says in part:
Ps 6.2: Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing;
O Lord, heal me, for my bones are troubled.
6.3 My soul also is sorely troubled. But thou, O Lord---how long?
6.6 I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with
tears;
I drench my couch with my weeping.
6.7 My eye wastes away because of grief, it grows weak because of
all my foes.
If this psalm comes close to expressing the depth of Jesus’s stirrings,
its clear he’s in no position to entertain visitors at this moment.
So just why does it appear that Jesus ignores the request of the Greek
festival goers when they ask---"Sir, we wish to see Jesus"? It’s possible
that Jesus questioned the motives of the visitors. It’s possible that the
priorities of Jesus were adjusted when he made that turn from his public
ministry and focused on the cross. And, it’s possible that he was
distracted by his own deep stirrings associated with the Passion that was
to come.
A closer look at the passage, however, reveals that the answer may lie in
the text. Seeing Jesus, in John’s vocabulary, is closely related to
believing in Jesus. The key to the resolution may be in the last two
verses of the passage:
(32) "and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to
myself." (33) He said this to show by what death he was to die.
The Greeks receive the answer to their request, not at the time of their
asking, but with the subsequent death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Seeing and believing become possible---for the Greeks and all
humanity---because of the death Jesus was to die. This great mystery
which is to be accomplished once and for all, remains an ever renewing and
amazing present reality throughout every age.
Jesus alludes to this mystery earlier in the text using the imagery of the
wheat seed. Having fallen into the ground, the seed remains there
isolated in its aloneness. But in its dying----in its capacity to slough
off that which keeps the seed isolated---the seed springs forth in new
life.
Those of us who have had the opportunity to live and work in an area where
wheat production prevails, know from personal experience the power of this
imagery. It takes a bushel of wheat seed to plant an acre of land. During
a good year in Oklahoma, that bushel of seed wheat will yield 35 bushels or
more of grain.
Farmers will prepare their fields in late summer, sow those fields with
the wheat, and---given a year with adequate moisture---by November that
bare ground is transformed into lush, green grasslands. It’s a green that
is nearly beyond description providing a stark contrast to the native
grasses which have taken on the tawny, brown and gray colors of the winter
landscape.
Cattle graze on the wheat pasture. Wildlife graze on the wheat pasture.
Migrating waterfowl---traveling south on the great central flyway---rest
and browse on the wheat pasture.
The crop supports an entire local economy---from the banker who loans the
money, to the equipment dealer who sells the tractors, to the co-op who
markets the seed and fertilizer, to the custom harvester who cuts the crop
and to the grain elevator that stores the crop.
This is a crop that draws life to it and sustains life far beyond the
boundaries of the field. But such life only becomes possible after the
seed----having fallen into the ground, dies---and is raised up with the
fruitfulness and abundance of new life. New life is made possible through
the mystery of death and resurrection.
During the January term this year I was privileged to have the opportunity
to participate in the chemical dependency treatment program at St. David’s
Hospital in Austin, TX. For twenty sessions, each lasting three hours, I
was a full participant in a group treatment program with some 20 other
people afflicted with chemical dependency. The drugs of choice included
alcohol, marijuana, crack cocaine, and a variety of prescription
medications. These were people who figuratively had fallen to the
ground---fallen from their families, fallen from their jobs, fallen from
the legal system---and landed in this 12 Step Program. The successful
participants described that fall as the one that takes them to the lowest
point in their lives.
Like our wheat seed, some languish alone in that low spot---clinging to
those lies and self deceptions that make one blind to the possibilities of
new life. The program refers to those lies and self deceptions as
“character defects.” Another context might call it sin.
But the individual who responds to treatment is the one who is able---by
the grace of God---to surrender those lies and abandon those deceits. New
life is made possible for all through the mystery of the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ.
So what is the message this day to this community at this time and place?
Let me offer that these forty days of Lent are a season in our year when
Christians are invited to renew the personal disciplines of prayer,
fasting, and penitent reflection. It’s a season characterized by a shift
in focus ---from one that is outward and communal in nature to one that is
more inward and personal in nature. Today’s message is an invitation to
personal reflection---to give pause during these remaining days of Lent
that we too might be deeply stirred to acknowledge, name and identify
those personal deceptions that blind us to the truth and distort and
compromise our relationships. The Good News in today’s message is that new
life is made possible for all through the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ. It is through the saving grace of our Lord and Savior that we are
drawn into the fullness of life with the same desire as the Greek festival
goers---We wish to see Jesus.
(JFC) A. AUDIENCE
Any congregation having pew sitters who think they have more answers than
questions about the faith could benefit from a sermon this text inspires. If parishioners need encouragement to be different, as was Jesus, then this sermon might give them some hope. Any auditors who are getting self-satisfied as Lent heads into the home stretch, might find some help in this declaration.
(JFC) B. GOALS
A sermon from this text could inform and encourage believers to orient, reorient
and/or sustain their lives in relation to God’s glory revealed in and by Jesus Christ. It might inspire hearers to identify with Jesus’ troubles in living a life of faith obedient to God’s call. It surely has the possibility of addressing some confusions humans might encounter in trying to figure out some of life’s mysteries. Just as likely, it promises to build confidence for any who assume reasonable definitions are required of most observations. Then, too, it might celebrate that there are several answers to faith dilemmas rather than just one. It could support them in attempts to live the questions and to enjoy processes that if the have to end, might end in eternity.
(JFC)C. ADDRESS
“Dare to be Different”
Introduction
Compared to great Christians, are we less than as good as we wish we were? Is there room for improvement in our attempts at serving God faithfully? Could we do better at exemplifying God’s love?
I. The Deity
God answers Jesus suggestion for more Self glorification, by informing him that
divine Self glorification has already been done and that it will be done again (and again?). God does not condemn Jesus for failing to notice that God has already done some Self glorification and for not realizing there is more of the same yet to come again.
Nor does Jesus censure the Greeks and/or other by standers for misinterpreting the identity of the voice from heaven recorded in verse 28. Rather, Jesus tells them that the voice came for their sake.
II. The Protagonists
We are like the Geeks, misfits in high school, like the Greeks in today’s lesson,
mistaken in Jerusalem in the first century, like Christians hardly appreciated today.
We seldom realize how mysterious are the tenets of the Christian faith, perhaps especially during Lent. We have questions we rarely ask. We hesitate to guess at what’s right. We might look for easiest answers, short term resolutions, paths of least resistance, a la the Hellenists, the Pharisees, the chief priests (John 12:9-11), etc.
III. The Resolution(s)
Jesus dies to free us to live fulfilling lives, lives of faithfulness and lives that
share in God’s glory. And, remember, Jesus dies for us and for all others
globally. What Jesus was doing according to part of last week's text (John
3:16) might be called "celebrating diversity". Recently at the Academy
Awards presentation, Hillary Swank got the Oscar for "Best Actress". She
played that part of a woman passing as a man in last year's film, "Boys
Don't Cry". In her acceptance speech she thanked the real-life inspiration
for her role. She said, "His legacy lives on through our movie. It reminds us always to be ourselves, to follow our hearts, never to conform."
Then, she concluded, "I pray for the day when we not only accept our
differences but we actually celebrate our diversity." If Hollywood can
make that kind of progress, so can even today's church and her members,
surely.
Jesus would free us to life following him and his example. Although, as a human being, Jesus, according to some of the Gospel accounts, lived and served imperfectly. Nevertheless, he sought to live perfectly obedient to God’s will. So could we, do so, too.
Conclusion
With God’s compassionate and understanding help, we can get better, do better, believe more and find more peace.
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