Scripture: John 12:20-36
A couple of weeks ago I remember saying that the Bible passage I had chosen to deal with that morning was in fact the lectionary scripture, one of the recommended passages for that Sunday, and that the reason I was dealing with it was that by coincidence it was a passage that I probably would have chosen anyway because it fit in so well with what I wanted to say. This morning our scripture passage is again from the lectionary, but this time it is not, it is definitely not, a passage that I would have chosen anyway.
I don’t often do this, choose to preach on the lectionary just because it’s the assigned scripture for the day. Most often I have something on my mind that I want to say, or at least some topic that I want to talk about, and I go looking for a scripture not that just supports what I want to say but that seems to have something to do with it, that might shed some light on the topic, or offer a way of thinking about it, or that might open up some conversation with the scriptures. I rarely, since I have been at Sojourners anyway, have just taken a lectionary scripture and asked myself what it might have to say to me or what I have to say about it with no preconceptions as to what I want to talk about and for no particular reason other than that it is the lectionary scripture for the day. But sometimes I think it’s good to do that—just engage with a scripture passage, say a lectionary passage, for no particular reason and with as few preconceptions as possible, and see where it takes you. Sometimes, not necessarily too often but sometimes, it’s good to do that. Today is one of those sometimes.
But when you do this, you quickly realize that you’re never starting from scratch. Even if you’re not approaching a passage from scripture with a sermon topic already in your mind, you are approaching it with something, with your own thoughts and life experiences that affect how you read the scripture, cause you to read it in a certain way. And that’s a good thing, that we bring ourselves to be engaged with the scripture, not simply pretend that we’re a blank slate that the scripture is supposed to write something on.
So I begin to read the passage. “Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks…” OK let me get my bearings here. The festival referred to is Passover. We’re talking about an event in the last week of Jesus’ life. Palm Sunday has already occurred in this story, though it’s not till next week for us. Jesus has arrived at Jerusalem during Passover when a whole lot of people came to Jerusalem and among them are some Greeks. It says they came for the festival so they’re Jewish apparently, but Greek speaking Jews, from the hinterlands, foreigners, outsiders, if you will, people who are a bit on the margins of things. OK so Passover, Jesus in Jerusalem, lots of people, lots of commotion, things getting tense, some people called Greeks arrive on the scene, find a few disciples who look like them, Philip and Andrew, also Greeks, and they say, according to the story, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.”
A simple request, but the verse causes me to stop reading. They’re me. These Greeks, whoever they are, they’re me. Me many years ago as I was finding my way into Christianity, me feeling very much the outsider, not at all ready to sign up for being a Christian, not sure what that was all about, not sure what I would be saying yes to if I decided to become a follower, but nevertheless attracted to Jesus, curious about Jesus, fascinated by Jesus, wondering not in some abstract, theoretical way but in a very direct and personal way who this Jesus is. “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” I hear in that simple request tucked away in the pages of the Bible an echo of a former self, standing at the edge of the Christian circle looking in, wondering whether I’m ready to step tentatively inside that circle.
But not just a former self either. I never really stop asking. Even though I made some decisions, became a minister, lived and made a living inside the church, I never really stopped asking to see Jesus. Because of course being inside the church doesn’t guarantee you the best seat in the house from which to see Jesus or guarantee that you will meet him. Immersed in the life of the church, I never really felt like that desire had been satisfied. “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Me too, I think I hear myself saying looking back, never stopped wishing. Never stopped feeling like an outsider either. I would gather with colleagues and people would talk shop. In my neck of the woods in Chicago the ministers I met seemed pretty at home in the church, many of them sons, some of them increasingly now daughters of ministers. In my neck of the woods in Chicago church members too felt pretty at home in the church. Many had lived in the neighborhood all their lives, been born at home, the church was a second home for them. Not for me. I continued to feel newly arrived, still exploring my faith while ministering and trying to live it at the same time, still looking for someone I could turn to and say, “Sir, I wish to see Jesus.”
Let me skip ahead for a moment to the end of the passage, in fact a bit beyond where the lectionary says that the passage is supposed to end. I extended it a few verses to include a verse I found interesting—don’t know whether you caught it. Words can go by pretty fast. Verse 36: “After Jesus had said this (about being lifted up and about not letting the darkness overcome you and about being children of light) he departed from them and he hid from them.”
Now I know there’s probably a simple meaning for those words. Jesus was tired of talking, tired of fielding questions and being “on”, tired of being all extroverted, just plain tired, so he had to go hide, just to protect his privacy and his sanity. OK. But I can’t help but read that and also reflect on how Jesus is hidden from us in a deeper sense, not so much maybe because he has gone into hiding but because we have sent him into hiding and in fact have done a pretty good job of covering him over with our layers of dogma, with our churchiness, with all the trappings of church life, with our worship even, with our words, even words that seem to be about him end up doing more to hide him than to reveal him. We cover Jesus over with all the ways in which we make him in our own image, the way we can do with God, we imagine him the way we wish he were, the way we want him to be, the way that best suits our purpose.
We cover Jesus over in all sorts of ways that may result in his being hidden from us, and not all of them are bad. Certainly the trappings of church life are not meant to obscure Jesus; they just do sometimes. And we can hardly help but try our best to imagine him, even though we know that the way we imagine him is inevitably tainted with our own agendas and interests. So I’m not trying to be hard on myself or on the church here, offer some ringing critique of the ways we avoid and misrepresent Jesus in our church life, though we do. What I do want to say more though is that there needs to be room in the soul of the church and in the soul of people wanting to be Christian, there has got to be room for us to say, “We want to see Jesus.” Because our vision is not perfect, and because our dogmas don’t begin to capture him, and because we don’t own the truth about him, even if we think we do sometimes, maybe especially when we think we do, we don’t own the truth about him, we don’t have him all neatly packaged, because he eludes our creeds and our ideologies, because we don’t know all about who he is, or what it would mean to follow. There has got to be room in our souls for us to keep on asking to see Jesus. And there needs to be a sense too, an ongoing sense that we are in a way outsiders to the Christian faith, just beginners, taking that first tentative step into the Christian community, not so sure what it will involve or where it will lead us. I read about some Greeks coming to Philip and saying, “Sir, we want to see Jesus,” and it not only brings back an echo of the past for me, it touches a part of who I am in the present, a person still wanting to see Jesus, and still part of me standing on the margins of this thing called Christianity, and frankly glad to be there, knowing inside that it’s important to be there. No matter how involved in the life of the church a person may be, no matter how confirmed a person may be in thinking of himself or herself as a Christian, it is good to have part of our spirits be in that place where we are still an outsider, as though we were just beginning that Christian part of our journey, because of course in a very real sense we are—just beginning and always beginning again.
So back to the scripture…Philip and Andrew go and tell Jesus that there are these people who are asking to see him, and he replies, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain, but if it dies it brings forth much fruit…” And he goes on a bit in this vein about losing your life and being glorified and the manner of his death. Sort of a strange reply, don’t you think? I don’t know for sure why Jesus responded this way. My own reading would be that he’s saying something like, “Well, these folks want to see me, but they may be disappointed. They may be looking for something other than what they’re going to find. Do you think, Philip, that they’re coming looking to find some image of success? Do you think they expect some charismatic spiritual leader who will inspire them? ‘Cause what they’re going to get is someone who’s about to be arrested and executed. The hour has come for the messiah to be glorified.” That’s how I read his words.
I don’t know about you, but I have a bit of trouble with the word glory. If I’m right about the tone of what Jesus is saying here, he is actually speaking of glory somewhat ironically. The hour has come for the messiah to be glorified, if you want to call it glory—that sort of thing. But I realize I may be reading into the words because I am troubled when Christian’s treat Jesus’ death as something glorious, a heroic act that accomplishes salvation. Any glorification of suffering troubles me, even if it is Jesus’, and I think sometimes the theological glorification of Christ’s suffering has led Christians to take less seriously and sometimes to even justify other kinds of human suffering. So I have trouble when Jesus, or anyone, speaks of Jesus being glorified through suffering.
And another thought goes along with this. Sometimes it seems if all the attention is focused on this great, heroic, sacrificial act of Jesus that the assumption is that this is what Christ’s followers are called to do as well, perform extraordinary acts of heroic sacrifice. But you and I know that’s not real. It may be that sometimes courageous acts are called for from Christians, but mostly I think they will not seem so exceptionally brave to those who are involved in them because they are simply the next steps in a journey that the person is already engaged in and from which there is no turning back. But for the most part our journeys of faith and our attempts to love other human beings are not very heroic and don’t have much about them that are glorious. Our efforts to be faithful and loving, even our acts of sacrifice such as they are, are embedded in our everyday lives and they consist mostly of such non-glorious acts as a prayer stammered out in the middle of a busy day, a smile or the touch of a hand, a word of concern, a word spoken on behalf of justice on behalf of a cause or a person, a phone call, even maybe an email. Nothing very glorious at all. And we are misled if we think that the Christian life has very much at all to do with glory.
That’s where this scripture has left me this week, thinking, in spite of all the words about glory in the scripture, thinking about the very un-glorious, everyday ways faith needs to be lived out, the very un-glorious, everyday ways my faith needs to be lived out. These very ordinary, everyday elements on the table before us—bread and grape juice—symbolize less Christ’s heroic sacrifice and more his presence amid the everydayness of my life and our life together. That’s where I come looking for him and where I will expect to see him if I see him at all. Amen.
Jim Bundy
April 2, 2006