And according to the Christian calendar, we are eagerly awaiting next week’s pageantry, with Jesus triumphantly entering Jerusalem to shouts of Hosanna and declarations of his rightful claim to be the Messiah, the anointed one appointed by God to liberate the captives. Jesus will ride triumphantly into Jerusalem in the name of liberation during the festival which celebrates the liberation of the people of Israel from bondage. That’s often what we ourselves are called to remember. Jesus didn’t come to support the status quo, but to proclaim the power of God—a God who reveals Godself through the life of Jesus.
But there were two processions parading through the streets of Jerusalem at that moment we will celebrate and re-enact next Sunday. As Jesus and his band of followers come in from the east, a much more impressive procession would be entering from the west. The Roman governor would himself put together a huge military display and ride through the streets of Jerusalem with rows of infantry and a powerful show of force of cavalry.
But those Romans aren’t the Gentiles we hear about in today’s gospel. The Gentiles who approach Philip with their homely request are probably “God-fearers,” and they attempt to contact Jesus through the two disciples whose names are Greek. But who ARE these two strangers? What significance do they have at the time in this story? They show up, and then they disappear. One of my Bible-study compatriots asked me that this week, and I didn’t have a good answer for them.
“Sir,’ they say as they approach Philip, ‘we want to see Jesus.”
Don’t we all? How many of us resonate with that request? We want to see Jesus, too.
Maybe their appearance is a throw-away detail in the story at the time. And yet, I keep coming back to these two Gentiles who screw their courage up and approach these two disciples who also have “Greek names” and ask to see the infamous wandering rabbi. Do they get to see him? Or do they get turned away in the hustle and bustle of the festival and all the demands upon the disciples’ and Jesus’s time and attention.
I am haunted by these two unnamed seekers, because I wonder how many times someone has approached us, and asked US to help them see Jesus. Oh, I am not talking about directly asking us—that would be too easy. But what about all the people who look upon us as we are going about our days—acquaintances or strangers. They may be able to tell that we claim the identity of Christian. Maybe they see a cross hanging around our neck. Maybe they saw you with an ash cross on your forehead on Ash Wednesday. Maybe they see the pet-blessing sticker saying “My pet was blessed at St. Martin’s” that I keep hoping eventually all y’all will place on the bumpers of your cars—even those Corvettes and Lexuses that you polish with an old baby diaper like Cameron’s dad in Ferris’s Bueller’s Day Off. But maybe you didn’t even notice them. Maybe they didn’t ask out loud.
Maybe they were the person who was having a bad day near you last week. Maybe they were angry, or close to tears. Maybe it was a dad in a grocery store with a screaming three year old who is screaming because dad didn’t let him eat the strawberries out of the carton before they were washed. Maybe it was the kid with the lip piercing and neck tattoo who made you a smoothie, who had been awakened that morning by having a parent call them ugly and lazy and flick a lighted cigarette at their head and demand they get up and fix step-mom breakfast before a full day of school and work. Maybe they are an ex-convict hoping to get a second chance, not be sneered at for their past.
But the thing is, we brush up against people all throughout each day who may not be able to put it into words, and may not even be aware of it, but who are hungry to see Jesus. The Jesus-on-a-cross thing possibly scares them, or confuses them, and makes no sense, so that’s not the Jesus they are ready for right now.
No, they are looking for the Jesus in us. They are looking for the flash of recognition—for each of us to look at them, to see them as an individual despite our differences. They are looking for a smile, a small kindness, a dropping of pretenses and aloofness and a demonstration of compassion and really seeing people for who they are: beloved children of God, made in God’s very image.
The topic being circled about oh so delicately here in our gospel today is Jesus’s coming crucifixion. When discussing the cross, John’s gospel is different from the other gospels. Jesus’ suffering on the cross is downplayed, in favor of the concept of the cross being a means of glorifying God— witness the “lifted up” reference from last week’s gospel passage from John 3:4-11. All through this gospel, Jesus is a heavenly figure who comes to us to reveal to humanity the true way of faith, and hope, and love, and then will ascend -- be lifted up-- bringing glory to God. In this gospel, Jesus is very clear about his divine origins, so he doesn’t engage in a lot of tap-dancing around his status as the Messiah. This view of Jesus is of one who is in charge.
And now—NOW--Jesus is going to be exalted—lifted up—on the cross and beyond the cross, held up to bring all of the world to see—to see so that the world can not just see, but come to KNOW the amazing healing power of Jesus and his message of hope, healing, community, and redemption. Jesus makes this clear when he says: “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself”. In the gospel of John, this is the point where Jesus moves from his ministry toward his exaltation-- when we come to Jesus. Victory can push through to us at the darkest of times. For John, the crucifixion brings victory, because the cross brings the world to God. We don’t usually think of it this way, but the metaphor of the grain of wheat helps us remember this too. Jesus speaks again in paradox. In order to live we must die. Those who die to themselves will finally have a full life.
And that image is one that often gets all the attention. We can all relate to it if we have ever planted any seeds of watched them sprout—heck, even if we’ve left a bag of potatoes or an onion around for too long out on the counter, we have seen the tendency of plant matter to drive toward regeneration and new life, no matter how removed we are from farming or gardening we ourselves are.
But what I also see being emphasized is the idea of Jesus being made visible throughout this passage, appoint that has been building in our readings steadily in the last few weeks. What I also being insisted upon is that Jesus was never meant to be a “personal savior” only. Too often, having a “personal relationship” with Jesus ends up being just that—a solitary, individualist pursuit, in which the focus ends up on the individual rather than on the community. We see that being addressed her as well in this passage. What Jesus actually says about that single grain of wheat is not that it remains a single grain—that’s our translation choices again running beneath what we ourselves see and hear. No, in the original text we have handed down to us, Jesus says that unless the grain in planted and tended it “remains alone.” Jesus calls us to move beyond our own self-centered ways and embrace our unity with those around us, calling us to be willing to love each other in deed and embrace each other as kindred despite our differences.
As we head toward the passion story of Christ in the next two weeks, we need to open our ears to the multiple meanings of the words in front of us. Because despite Mel Gibson’s incredibly bloody retelling of Jesus’s tortured last week on earth being one meaning of passion, there is another meaning for passion, as theologians Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan point out in their own book on the last week of Jesus’s earthly ministry. They remind us that “passion” is a term for suffering in Christian theology, yes. And especially in some branches of the Christian faith, that suffering is emphasized intensively. But if Jesus’s suffering for us becomes the core of Jesus’s message, the gospel message he embodied the other 32 years and 51 weeks of his earthly ministry to us itself gets overlooked. That’s why we have to remember the multiple meaning of the word “passion,” and remember the energy and the joy that passion can give to all life.(1)
Jesus’s passion was in healing those who were sick or isolated, in looking for those he could help, in confronting injustice and oppressing, of which there was plenty, just like there is now. Jesus’s passion was drawing disciples to himself who would themselves share in that work and not be miserly or reluctant about it. Jesus’s passion was that the abundant love of God would be made visible to the entire world—a world awash in suffering, fear, and cruelty already.
We want to see Jesus. And Jesus calls us to make him visible. Jesus asks us to lift him up each and every day. That’s what we are here to do. We are here to show that Jesus is OUR passion, our center, our model, our teacher, our guide.
Let us live our lives so that we DO see Jesus, every day, in ourselves, and in each other.
Amen.
Preached at the 10:30 online worship from St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Ellisville, MO.
Readings:
Citations:
1) Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem, preface.
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