Lent 5

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Lent 5
PROPER: B
PLACE: St. John’s Episcopal Church, Kingsville
DATE: April 6, 2003


TEXT: John 12:20-33 – “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

ISSUE: Gentiles come seeking Jesus. Their initiation into his presence is the statements related to having to die in order to fully live. The passage is calling for the separation from the world as we know it into a deeper relationship with God through Jesus Christ. In the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ lifted up on the cross, we all see the glory of God and his love.
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All human beings go through very difficult moments in our lives when life can see very out of control. Many of us Americans, and people of western civilization hate that feeling. We like things to be vividly clear and predictable but life rarely obliges that need. We need something beyond our perfectly understandable realities.
This passage from the Gospel of John seems to be to be surreal, or dream like. It has a strange quality to it. Stranger gentiles come in search of Jesus, and enter into a situation where there is the thundering voice of God revealing some strange meaning about the glorification of God and Jesus. We Americans find such passages in the Bible difficult, because we tend to be steeped in scientific realism. Fuzzy spiritual like things are suspicious or without much meaning to them. Our American thinking is actually quite different from many other cultures in the world. Dreams, visions, spiritual strange events in other cultures are more common and seem to have meaning to them.
What seems to be at the heart of this vision like passage the tells of the coming of Gentiles looking for Jesus, is the fulfillment of John’s earlier statement in the first chapter (John 1:11) of the Gospel, “{God, The Word, Jesus} He came to his own country, but his own people did not receive him. Some, however, did receive him and believed in him; so he gave them the right to become God’s children.” Some Gentiles come ‘to see’ Jesus. They make their request to the disciple Philip. Philip is a Greek name. Philip takes them to Andrew as he is apparently concerned over why Greeks want ‘to see’ Jesus. What is important here is that the verb ‘to see’ does not mean merely that they want to lay eyes on Jesus. It means that they want to know him more closely, more intimately, or that they more specifically want ‘to believe in him.’ Remember that in the Gospel of John, the key emphasis to his community is a strong belief in Jesus Christ as Lord. They really want a more spiritual relationship with Jesus. Out of their search, Jesus begins to reveal the essence of his life as a Son of God, and what that will mean for them as well.
Assuming the Gentile seekers have been brought to him, Jesus tells the parable of the grain of wheat. Unless the grain of wheat, the seed, falls into the ground and dies, it remains just a single useless grain. The seed is only useful when it falls to the ground and is buried and in the process is re-born, it then bears a greater abundance of seed. Whoever follows Jesus into his way of life of self-giving sacrifice will be truly glorified or honored by God. Jesus himself finds the concept troubling: What should I say, “Father, save me from this hour?” To be a truly honorable and glorified follower of Jesus, to know and appreciate him, is to follow in his difficult way. “No, Father, glorify or honor your name.” Jesus himself accepts the fact that he must die and be buried in order to reveal the glory of God in and through his resurrection to new life. Out of this revelation and commitment of himself comes the voice of God in the thunder, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify or honor it again.”
For the people of this period, they believed in the voice of God speaking in the thunder. That was not a problem for them, and even in Psalm 29:3, “The voice of the Lord is heard on the seas; they glorious God thunders and his voice echoes over the ocean.” The voice of God spoke at other significant points in Jesus’ life: At the Baptism, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” And at his Transfiguration, “This is my own dear Son, with whom I am pleased. Listen to him.” These were dramatic and special moments in the life of Jesus, the beginning of his ministry, and the beginning of his turning toward Jerusalem, and now at the proximity of his crucifixion. He is proclaimed Son of God, and with that goes the entire honor from God that the world refused to give him. Now he is at the gateway of his death crucifixion. Jesus had been raised up out of the water of baptism and proclaimed the honorable title of Son of God. He has been lifted up on a mountain top and transfigured appearing with Moses and Elijah, the greatest of the prophets, and honored. Now he will be raised up on a cross to he honored by a seeking searching world that seeks a closer relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Jesus was honored by God and is to be honored once again. His dutiful crucifixion as the greatest sacrifice the world has ever known will reveal the great glory of God, who raises up by his grace all that has fallen.
In the crucifixion of Jesus what all people see is the innocence of Jesus Christ in the midst of the hateful attitudes of human beings who resist the change that leaves the teachings of the world behind and grasps a new understanding of the spirit of God. Revenge, hatred, malice, prejudice, evil is revealed as powerless and horrible, when it is confronted by the patient suffering of Jesus Christ bleeding and dying on the cross. He bruises no one, and does not blow out a dimly burning wick. He silently and patiently accepts his suffering so that the world may see the abundant love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. He is the sacrifice that God provides. He is the perfect offering that is offered, the new high priest for the human heart. He glorifies God in his patient obedient sacrifice, and God honors and glorifies him in his resurrection.
The strangers, Gentiles, are initiated and are allowed to enter into the essence of the meaning of Jesus Christ, his life of teaching and healing, his revelation of the God of love, and the meaning of servant sacrifice demanded of his followers to reveal to the world the glory and the honorableness of God’s redeeming love.
As we all approach the Holy Week season, it is our time, strangers though we all may be at times in our relationship to God, to seek what it means to know Jesus Christ, and to love God. It is a time of re-entry into the spirit of the Christian Faith.
When the strangers the Gentiles come to Philip and Andrew, it is as if they are folk throughout the ages have expressed curiosity, and human need for the presence of God. At times these strangers are a symbol of ourselves, when our lives become meaningless, or empty, or threatened, or terrified. There are times when we feel a sense of guilt, a for what we have done, or left undone, when those burdens seem intolerable. At such times there may certainly be a great need ‘to see’ Jesus, to reclaim him, to know him again for the first time, to be refreshed in meaning and purpose for our lives. I think that this story reveals and acknowledges that nearly every human being at one time or another needs to feel that presence of Jesus Christ, that proximity of his forgiveness and help, that wonderful direction that helps us to serve him, and to be the disciples that will lead others into his presence. I think that all of us at times need to have a spiritual alternate consciousness experience through prayer, through recognition of our needs to change, a vision of the world, which is often in crisis that needs the embracing image of the God of love surrounding it. In the midst of the present world and this time of war, evil is expressed and dramatized; it brings to mind in the sufferings of our own and the enemy, the painful suffering of our Lord dying on a cross that pleads for a new way of negotiation and love. We need the new vision of the human condition raised up and renewed. We need the Father, the Son of God, the Spirit of God to embrace us, and our world in a new and intimate way.
Jeremiah the prophet knew well that law of God was written on tablets and given to Moses. Jeremiah was also well aware that humans needed more than tablets. He taught and looked for a new covenant relationship with God, when the law of God would be written on the human heart: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people . . . . . . for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
What are the crises of each of our own lives: Alcoholism in the family; serious illness, cancer, family members in the Armed Forces, a divorce, a strained marital relationship, financial strain and stress, the stress of aging and our human confrontation with our mortality? All of these kinds of stresses in our lives can make us feel alone and out of control. Often they make us realize our greater need for God in our suffering and stress. Look at the Lord Jesus Christ, he knows it all and has endured it all, and understands. Turn to him, see him, get to know him, and enter into him, and let his way and love, forgiveness and hope be written on your hearts, that we may know his glory and receive his hope.