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Sermons

Where Did the Greeks Go?

March 17, 2024
Rev. Douglas duCharme
5th Sunday in Lent
John 12:20-33

There were some Greeks in town who had come up to worship at the Feast.  They approached Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee: “Sir, we want to see Jesus.  Can you help us?”

Philip went and told Andrew.  Andrew and Philip together told Jesus.  Jesus answered, “Time’s up.  The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

“Listen carefully:  Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat.  But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over.  In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life.  But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.

“If any of you wants to serve me, then follow me.  Then you’ll be where I am, ready to serve at a moment’s notice.  The Father will honor and reward anyone who serves me.”

“Right now, I am shaken.  And what am I going to say? ‘Father, get me out of this’?  No, this is why I came in the first place.  I’ll say, ‘Father, put your glory on display.’”

A voice came out of the sky: “I have glorified it, and I’ll glorify it again.”

The listening crowd said, “Thunder!”

Others said, “An angel spoke to him!”

Jesus said, “The voice didn’t come for me but for you.  At this moment the world is in crisis.  Now this world’s ruler will be thrown out.  And I, as I am lifted up from the earth, will attract everyone to me and gather them around me.”  He put it this way to show how he was going to be put to death.

It’s an odd little detail in the set-up to a story that, otherwise, is familiar. So, it captures our attention.  Beginning with the polite, “Sir…”

It’s a question that the disciples probably fielded innumerable times during Jesus’ ministry.  People clamouring to get near, to talk to, to be healed by… Jesus.  “We wish to see Jesus.”

“Yeah, you and everybody else.”

It’s been a jam-packed few days.  We’re in the immediate aftermath of the raising of Lazarus, and of Jesus being anointed with expensive oil by Mary, and then Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem with people waving palms.

Just before the supper they will have together in the evening, when Jesus will wash their feet, we have this public scene in the crowded city, as some Greeks approach Philip (the one disciple with a Greek name) and ask, “We wish to see Jesus.”  The scene has an almost contemporary ring to it – it’s what we ask today.  It’s what people in our society often ask of us, of the church.  To see Jesus.  To find Jesus.

And I love the way Philip tells Andrew, and Andrew tells Jesus.  There’s something buried in that about how people communicate, and the nature of community, that crosses centuries – but I’m not sure what it tells us exactly!

Greeks, they are called – spiritual seekers as best we can tell, not unlike many, many people today.  A pilgrim group of non-Jews, but “God-fearing” it seems.  They arrive on the scene in Jerusalem to experience Passover.  They find Philip and ask if they might be taken to see Jesus.  And that’s the end of it.  We don’t hear from the Greeks again.  We don’t know what happened to them, or to their request.  Did they meet Jesus?  We don’t know.  But Jesus’ words that follow are, in part, a response to their request.

Today we’d probably describe the Greeks as among those who are “Spiritual but Not Religious.”  The increasingly large portion of our own society that is made up of people who are open to a sense of mystery, curious about the divine, wonder about God and the spiritual life… but have not found their quest met with interest or openness by many churches.  Like the Greeks, they don’t come asking for information about Jesus.  They don’t inquire about a new member’s class or ask to join a committee.  They don’t request a statement of beliefs.  They simply want to see Jesus.  To meet him, face-to-face.

Interestingly, they make this request on the way to a formal religious occasion:  Passover. But at the moment, what they’re intensely curious about is Jesus.

The question quickly becomes, of course, what will they see when they find him?  Or, as can often be the case, when we are found by him?

Well, if you wish to see Jesus, then – according to Jesus – this is what you will and must see.  “Listen carefully,” he says.  “Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat.  But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over.  In the same way, anyone who holds on to life, just as it is, destroys that life.  But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal… If any of you wants to serve me, then follow me.  Then you’ll be where I am, ready to serve at a moment’s notice.”

And, here is the buried tripwire, the constant paradox.  Because there was not a single one of Jesus’ disciples, friends, or family who wanted to “see” Jesus crucified.  To have him die to really live…

Did the Greeks find what they were seeking?  We don’t know, but I’d be willing to bet that, like pretty much everyone else who encountered Jesus in-person, they were likely taken aback by whatever they heard.  Left with more questions than answers.  But I’d like to believe they went away with something to think about – that suffering and loss, death and life, letting go and finding abundance, don’t appeal to most people, but no life exists without them, and they do lead to fuller, deeper living.

Our worship, our faith community, is all about creating an experience of Jesus.  It really is that simple.  Not to be told about Jesus but the desire to encounter Jesus – through us.  Here.  There is no other way to do it.

Yet, after two millennia it’s not as simple as it was for our Greek friends. Today, when we ask to see Jesus, we need to clarify… which Jesus?  The miracle worker who turned water to wine and raised Lazarus from the dead?  The storyteller whose parables both revealed and obscured?  The provocateur who debated Roman taxes but ate with Roman tax collectors, who blessed peace makers and welcomed a Roman soldier?  The renegade rabbi who violated purity laws, broke the sabbath, embraced the sexually suspicious, ate with outsiders, and profaned Israel’s most sacred space, the temple?  The Jesus of our wishful thinking?  The Jesus created in our image, in the image of Euro-Christian culture?

Of course, Jesus’ words that follow the Greeks request go against all reason—that what simply falls to the ground, dead, could live again.  That letting go of control, our grip on life, could enable a much fuller life that’s given away.  There are times when holding on with fierce determination to life, to values, to deep commitments, is what we should do.  But there are times too when, to release our hold, allows new life to rise up within us and around us.

It’s the tension in Jesus’ words that still resonates so strongly.  The relationship between dying and rising, hiddenness and revelation, losing and finding, intention and surrender.  It’s a paradox, a mystery, and a way into the presence of the God who seeks us out, in the midst of it all.

In this fifth week of Lent, we ask – what is the God of paradox and mystery up to in my life, your life?  How do Jesus’ words about dying and living sit with us?  Is there something you, or we sense on this journey that we’re invited to let go of in order to enter more fully into God’s life, God’s way? What do we need for it to happen?

And then too, as faith communities, as Bloor Street and St. Matthew’s, Jesus words – and the paradox, the tension at the heart of them – lands squarely in our uncertainty about the future, our need to let go as churches – to drop to the ground as seed, and die, in order to live anew, and to give new life to others.

Which brings me to a difficult question, that I ask first of myself, and then of us all:  If those Greeks were to show up here today, would their question be heard, their search affirmed?  Would they see Jesus?  The question is not meant to criticize – I am in no position to do that! – but to stir us to look deeply at our core purpose, at what we choose to measure as an indication of our effectiveness.

Would we be willing to enter into a searching conversation with people who used to attend but don’t, or who we’d love to see come but haven’t, in order to ask what might make our worship gatherings more meaningful to them?  Would we be willing to change or adapt to make room?  Would we be willing to entrust worship planning to people with different visions for how to express spirituality today, yearning  that we might all come to see Jesus in and through our Sunday gatherings?

Admittedly, in our society nobody much seems to listen.  Politicians, economists, and social media are mostly about telling.  Deep listening is a rare skill that few have the patience for.  But the Greeks’ request is open-ended.  They want to see without specific outcomes or preconceived notions in mind.  The result is that Jesus speaks the truth that is his very self.  The truth we don’t really want to see.  The truth we wish we could un-see.  The truth about God and the truth about ourselves.  He says, ‘the hour has come.’

While John is not clear about what happens to the Greeks – where do they go, anyway?  John is very clear about the kind of Jesus they (and we) will see if we look.  Because Jesus immediately looks ahead to the cross.  He returns to it again and again.  If you want to live, really live, you have to learn to give your life away, have to learn how to die.  That there is a force more powerful than death, namely the love of God, and because of that—God’s love—there is always life, right in the middle of death.

Why did Jesus die?  He died to show us how to live.

Absorbing that and finding ways of living that way has taken me my whole life so far – and I am in no way there yet.  And the church has been at this for millennia.  We’re all still practicing how to live – really live.  Every now and then, though, there’s a turning point.  A time when, as Jesus says, “the hour has come.”  Amen.

 

Image credit: GreenForce Staffing – unsplash.com

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