Seeing Jesus: A Sermon

Text: John 12: 20-33

I want to begin with two scenes, both taken from the twelfth chapter of John’s gospel. I invite you to imagine them with me, to try to feel what it would have been like to be there, to picture yourself within each of these scenes. Where do you find yourself in it? How does it feel to be there? Do any sights, smells, sounds, or emotions stand out to you as you experience each of these scenes with your imagination? 

Scene One:

It is just six days before the Passover festival, and Jesus is sitting down at a table in Bethany for a dinner in his honour. Surrounded by friends, Jesus and his disciples are enjoying a sumptuous feast—the aromas of favourite foods fill the warm night air, peals of laughter ring out, and the warm glow of lamplight gives everything a golden air. It’s the kind of night that all of us treasure—a night shared with our closest friends, enjoying the kinds of memories that don’t quickly fade. Sitting with them at the table is Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead—literally, Jesus had called him out of the tomb after he had been lying there in his grave clothes for four days. His presence there on this night, eating and laughing alongside the others, is a reminder that this is no ordinary celebration. Later, Mary will pour a pound of costly perfume over Jesus’ feet, washing them with her hair, the only way she can think of that even begins to express the magnitude of the gratitude she feels toward this man who has brought life where only days before there had been death and grief. It is a night that none of them will forget for a very long time.

………

Scene Two:

Six days later, and as today’s Gospel text begins we find ourselves with Jesus in Jerusalem at the beginning of the Passover festival. We can sense the crowds of people pressing in all around us. The population of Jerusalem has multiplied exponentially as visitors pour in to the holy city for the festival, as they do every year. But this year is different. This year, everyone is on high alert, and if you listen carefully you can almost sense the tension crackling in the air. What was cause for celebration only a few days ago—the raising of Lazarus from the dead—has now come to the attention of the religious authorities, who are alarmed at the crowds who now want to acclaim Jesus as King of the Jews. Now, rumour has it, they are seeking both Jesus and Lazarus, some even calling for their deaths—and the disciples and others close to Jesus worry about where all of this is leading. Danger seems to lurk in every shadow, every loud noise causes them to jump, and yet none of this will dissuade Jesus from showing up at the festival as planned. Everyone is on high alert.

……...

There is such a stark contrast between the two scenes that I’ve just described, isn’t there? One of the things that most strikes me about John 12 is how completely the tables have turned for Jesus and his followers in the space of one week! One moment, we are feasting, completely in awe of Jesus’ power to bring life where there was death and grief; the next, we are standing amidst the pressing crowds wondering with the disciples at what kinds of danger their presence at this Passover festival may bring, afraid for the life of this man who has the ability to do miracles that go beyond even their wildest expectations.

The first scene is compelling—many of us probably find ourselves instinctively wanting to linger there, to imagine ourselves as part of the celebration, breathing in the scents of fine foods and rich perfumes, hearing the echoes of laughter as friends linger around the table, reveling in amazement at being in the very presence in the miraculous.

The second scene might leave us wondering how things have gone so quickly from this mountaintop high to this anxious tension with danger seeming to lurk at every narrow alleyway, astonished at how suddenly celebration and pure goodness can turn into fear and distress. We may find ourselves wondering why Jesus insists on being at the festival, and doesn’t simply withdraw to a quiet place away from the current uproar, as he has done so many times before. We may find ourselves wishing that we could go back to the simpler pleasures of that first scene, and skip this second entirely.

And just as, for many of us, it is the first scene that we are drawn to, it is Jesus’ ability to do the miraculous, his ability to defeat even the powers of death themselves by restoring Lazarus to life, that has brought the great crowds wanting to experience a piece of this miracle for themselves that cause such a problem in the second scene. The crowds wanting to see Jesus are growing, as they come in droves hoping to see Lazarus with their own eyes, to get a firsthand sense of who this Jesus person actually is. They can’t help but wonder—if Jesus really did bring a man back from the dead, how does this change the world as they know it? What could that mean for a people living in Roman-occupied Palestine, struggling to eke out a living, living daily under the heavy burdens of foreign occupation, longing for someone powerful enough to bring real change to their daily reality? What could it mean for people who, like us, have known real grief, real loss, real fear for ourselves, our children, and those we love? If Jesus really did bring a man back from the dead once, surely he can do it again! Surely, he can do it for us too!

It’s almost perhaps as if you were to go home from church today and turn on the radio, or switch on the tv, or pull up Facebook on your phone, or check your messages to find that everyone everywhere was talking about the same story—a cure for cancer had been found, one that would quickly and effectively treat every single one of the forms of cancer that we all know too well. Can you imagine what a game-changer that would be—the ability to cheat death in this way? Can you imagine the crowds of people who would flock to receive this new treatment? Can you imagine the hoardes of media who would be lined up waiting their chance to interview the researchers responsible for this game-changing discovery? Can you think of the people you know for whom this would be life-changing?

Unfortunately, that’s not likely to happen today, as much as we all wish it would. But  I can’t help but wonder if it isn’t this very same sort of desire to avoid death that brought the Greek inquirers to seek an audience with Jesus on that day in Jerusalem. It’s not really all that farfetched to wonder if the rumours of a dead man brought back to life might have reached these visitors to Jerusalem, whose Greek accents set them apart from the largely Aramaic-speaking local crowd who have sought Jesus thus far. Perhaps they’ve heard about this man who has demonstrated the ultimate power—power over death itself—and have come to learn more, to find out if this might somehow allow them to also avoid death’s ultimate defeat, or perhaps to beg Jesus to perform a similar miracle for someone they have also loved.

We’ll never actually know, because puzzlingly, in this text that begins with these Greek visitors approaching Philip with their request—“Sir, we wish to see Jesus”—we never actually find out if their requested audience with Jesus ever takes place.

Because when Philip, along with his fellow disciple Andrew, approaches Jesus to tell him of this latest group of curious visitors, Jesus’ response is, frankly, completely puzzling. Puzzling to Philip and Andrew, certainly; puzzling also to the crowds of people standing around them; and, to be honest, puzzling to me, even as I read his words with the benefit of being able to read them with not only hindsight but also degrees in theology on my side.

It’s a simple request, really: “We wish to see Jesus.”

A request that, one might think, would be met with one of two responses: Either “Yes, I’ll see them,” or “Sorry, not today.”

Instead, Jesus responds in a way that anyone who has written any multiple-choice tests will be familiar with: option c, none of the above. Instead of either of the expected responses, he answers Philip and Andrew with words that seem completely out of context for someone who has just demonstrated his own power to bring life to the dead.

While the Greek visitors have come seeking to see a man who has the power to overcome death, Jesus’ response invites those of us who seek to follow him to experience a deeper tension: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Jesus’ words that follow are filled with tension: tension between death and new life, between losing one’s life and keeping it, loving and hating, light and darkness.

As we draw closer to the end of this Lenten journey, it’s as if we can already feel Jesus slipping away, as he begins to speak about mysteries that we cannot yet fully understand. We want a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response; instead, we receive a series of puzzling paradoxes. We want to understand this man who is so compelling, whose teaching is so attractive, who has demonstrated the ability to perform miracles unlike any we have ever seen before.

Instead, he speaks in images and metaphors that we half understand. After all, here on the prairies, especially, the image of a grain of wheat falling to the earth in order to bear a new crop in its time makes sense to us—but wrapping our minds around the mysteries of how this relates to the Kingdom of God is another thing entirely.

And I wonder if our goal maybe isn’t, after all, to dissect these sayings of Jesus, to wrap our minds around them and keep tugging and unraveling until we can make them into neat, clean theological treatises that we can make logical sense out of and draw neat, clean applications from.

I wonder if, instead, these words of Jesus can become for us an invitation to see Jesus more truly, to allow ourselves to be drawn into the mysterious love of God that exceeds our understanding, to find ourselves held by a story that is greater than we can ever possibly have constructed on our own.

I wonder if there isn’t a spiritual discipline to the letting go, to admitting that there are times when we don’t understand it all, to letting the words of Jesus resound in our heads as we wonder if the thunder that we thought we heard might not actually be the voice of God Almighty after all.

Because we’re called not to cling to our life, but to let it go as we seek to follow in the ways of Jesus. We’re not the ones called to lift Jesus up—he has already been lifted up. Instead, we are invited to allow him to draw us to himself.

As this Lenten season draws to a close, and as Holy Week approaches, I wonder if there might be some merit to allowing ourselves to be held by the wonderful mystery of the love of a man who, though he had proven his ability to conquer death, still stretched out his arms and submitted to death on a cross, in order that he might be lifted up for all people to be drawn to himself. I wonder if we might find that when we let go of the hope of a cure for death, we might find that in the letting go we actually receive the even greater gift of eternal life.

I wonder what would happen, in these last days of Lent, as we wait and watch, as we allow ourselves to feel the tensions of the events that are about to unfold, as we let ourselves wonder once again about the meaning of it all, I wonder what would happen if we entered into this season as those Greeks did so long ago, with one desire: “We wish to see Jesus.”

Maybe instead of trying to make sense of it all, some of us may want to consider making this our prayer for these final days of Lent: “Lord, we want to see Jesus.” What if we asked God to allow us to truly see Jesus with fresh eyes, as we head into Holy Week—less so that we might be able to wrap our minds around these things, and instead so that as we seek to experience these events anew, we might find ourselves being drawn into the greatest love that we have ever known.

Trusting that as we let go of what we think we know, as we let it fall to the ground, in doing so we are trusting ourselves to the One who is able to bring about much fruit—that in letting go of our grasp on the things of this life, we are in fact opening ourselves up to the mysteries of eternal life.

Lord, we want to see Jesus. We long for you to draw us to yourself, even as we find ourselves faced with the mysterious paradox that the path to eternal life must first pass through death; that to gain eternal life we must lose our life. For we remember and we trust that the same Jesus who spoke these words also proclaimed that it is out of Your great love for the world that you gave your Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. Hold us in the vastness of your love, that we might know our identity as your beloved children more and more. Amen.

Reflection on John 12: 20-33 for the Fifth Sunday in Lent

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

The words startled Philip, who had been lost in his own thoughts even in the midst of the pressing crowds who had come to Jerusalem to worship at the time of the Passover festival. They shouldn’t have startled him, really—“We wish to see Jesus” had become an increasingly familiar refrain that he heard many times a day these days. Word of Jesus’ teachings and miracles continued to spread like wildfire, and as the crowds of people continued to seek Jesus out, it was commonplace not just for Philip but for all of the disciples to be sought out like this. People wanting to see Jesus for themselves would approach one of the disciples, hoping that they might be persuaded to put in a good word, to be the advocate they needed to gain them a personal audience with Jesus.

These men weren’t like most of the crowds they’d all become accustomed to -- that was evident in their Greek accents. The accents set them apart from the mainly Aramaic speakers in the crowds. But other than the accents, nothing in particular stood out about them.

Philip wondered what it was that had brought these men to seek Jesus. Were they curious, hoping to see a miracle, like so many of those who had sought Jesus out? Were they among those who sought Jesus, desperate for one last shot at healing, either for them or for a loved one? Were they intellectuals or religious men, curious about Jesus’ teachings about the true nature of the faith? Or, because in recent days Philip and the other disciples had become increasingly aware of the gathering forces of people Jesus had angered with his radical positions, could they be seeking Jesus out in hopes of picking a fight or gathering evidence against him? So many people sought Jesus out for so many reasons. Philip took a closer look at these faces, trying to guess what their motives might be.

The variety of reasons that people sought Jesus fascinated Philip. He himself hadn’t come seeking Jesus at all—rather, it was Jesus who sought Philip, who found him in his hometown of Bethsaida and invited him to be his disciple with the simple invitation: “Follow me.”

The decision to accept that invitation—to impulsively leave behind his daily routine to become this man’s disciple, along with his friends Simon, Andrew, and Nathanael, had turned Philip’s life upside down in the past three years. He had witnessed the miraculous—from the wedding feast when, at Jesus’ word, jars of water had become the finest of wine, to more recently when Philip had seen with his own eyes as Jesus visited the tomb where Lazarus had been lying dead for four days and, with a word, called the dead man out, unbound him from the linens in which his body had been wrapped, and brought him back to life. Philip had hardly been able to believe what he had seen, but earlier this very week, he himself had sat down at table for a feast with both Jesus and Lazarus, and had seen the man eat, had heard his laughter, had even shook his hand. There was no way around it—the man had been very much dead, and he was now every bit as alive as ever. Philip could never have predicted any of this three years ago, and increasingly found himself trying to make sense of it all.

Of course, the tensions had also been mounting ever since the miracle of Lazarus, and more and more the rumour was that the religious leaders were looking to bring Jesus in for questioning, to arrest him—and not only that, but there were also threats against Lazarus, for being the man at the heart of all of the rising controversy. Now that Jesus was in Jerusalem for the Passover, concerns among the worried disciples were more numerous than ever. And Jesus’ increasing references to his own burial, and the crowds insisting on proclaiming Jesus the King of Israel, and Philip’s own questions about what it all meant, and what would happen next—all of these were weighing heavily on his mind. Until the Greek speakers arrived, startling Philip out of his own thoughts.

Shaking off his own thoughts and questions, Philip nodded to the two men, and, after a brief word with Andrew, who was also standing nearby, the two of them went to tell Jesus of the men’s request. Having a concrete mission helped to take Philip’s mind off his worries.

At least, that was true until Jesus responded to their request.

Instead of offering a straightforward response to the men’s request to meet him, Jesus’ response puzzled Philip more than ever.

“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified,” Jesus began. Jesus had been talking about this “hour” ever since Philip could remember—but until very recently, it had been “my hour has not yet come.”

But just when Philip thought that the climax of the story was coming—that Jesus was going to liberate the people from the foreign powers controlling the land, teach them to walk in God’s ways once again, bring the healing and hope that the people so desperately needed—just as Philip’s pulse began to quicken at the thought of Jesus finally being glorified before all people, so that more people could see the miracles, receive healing, and be liberated from their sins—just then, Jesus continued to speak.

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

Philip was confused. These didn’t sound like the words of a man who had not long ago healed a dead man and restored him to life! These didn’t sound like the words of a man who had allowed a blind man to see, made a lame man walk again after thirty-eight years, restored the health of a dying little boy.

How could dying bear fruit? What on earth did death and being glorified have to do with one another? And how was any of this related to the Greek men who simply wanted to see Jesus for themselves?

Then, Jesus turned from speaking to Philip and Andrew to praying to his Heavenly Father, talking about his soul being troubled as “this hour” approached. “Father, glorify your name,” Jesus prayed earnestly as Philip and Andrew stood by uncertainly and the curious crowds of onlookers continued to press in.

Then came another one of those moments that Philip would remember until his dying day: An otherworldly voice filled the air, a voice that seemed to come from heaven itself: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”

The crowds looked to the sky, searching for the storm clouds from which the thunderous sound must have come, trying to gauge how soon they might have to run for cover. Some within the crowd insisted that it was no ordinary thunder—that there had been words within the booming noise, that it must have been a heavenly messenger speaking to Jesus.

Jesus alone seemed reassured after the noise receded. His words stirred the hopes of those looking for a new King to drive out the foreign powers in Israel: “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.”

It wouldn’t be until much later that Philip recalled Jesus’ words, and heard the truth that he hadn’t been able to grasp on that day. That he realized that Jesus wasn’t to be exalted in the way that the crowds, and even some of his disciples, had hoped he would be.

It wouldn’t be until later that Philip would recall Jesus’ words and understand that Jesus was to be lifted up in a way that nobody could have anticipated. Lifted high above the ground on a cross, to await his death. Several days later, lifted up out of the grave—restored to life. And still later, lifted up before their very eyes, ascending to heaven to return to the presence of the Father until his return.

It wouldn’t be until later that Philip would understand that the crowds who saw Jesus as a wonder-worker and interesting teacher weren’t really seeing Jesus at all. Not in full, at least.

_____________________________

* I'm preaching on this text this coming Sunday, and while I've decided this isn't the direction I want to take for the sermon, I thought I would share my imaginings of this text anyways, from the 'discard pile.'

Seeing and Being Seen

There's a healing story in the Bible that doesn't get enough attention.

In fact, it happens over and over and over again.

It's not as flashy as the paralytic who picked up his mat and walked, or the woman healed after twelve years of hemorrhaging, or the man born blind having his sight restored.

But I'm convinced that it was just as transformative.

It's the miracle of being seen.

It's the miracle that was given to Levi, the tax collector: "As he was walking along, Jesus saw Levi son of Alphas sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, 'Follow me.'" (Mark 2:14)

It's the miracle received by the woman known only by her past ("what kind of woman this is who is touching him--that she is a sinner"), until Jesus turned to toward her. "Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment." While the others saw only her past wrongdoings, Jesus commended her for her great love. (Luke 7: 36-50)

It's the miracle received by a Samaritan woman who found herself alone at the well at noon, avoiding the contempt-filled gazes of her peers who had long since come and gone from that place, avoiding the full heat of the midday sun--who would soon run back home from her encounter with Jesus shouting, "Come see a man who told me everything I have ever done!" (John 4:29)

And so many others.

I'd noticed how many times Jesus restored sight to the blind in his earthly ministry, but not how many times he'd given people the gift of being really and truly seen, until recently.

After ten years of fighting for legitimacy, for recognition, for a place at the table, I made the decision to move on from the church body that had become home for me. The decision wasn't one that I made lightly, and it's taken me some time to be ready to think about what might come next, especially when the closing of the particular ministry I was working for brought grief upon grief.

But then one day, something miraculous happened. As I started to talk with a few folks about what my next steps might be, and tentatively took a few steps in that direction, I found that people were taking me seriously. Really listening to my story, all of it--the grief and the struggle, but also the things that give me deep joy and delight. They gave me the gift of reflecting my strengths back to me. They invited me to consider finding a place among them.

They saw gifts in me, and reflected those gifts back to me so that I might see them too.

And I realized the power of being seen, really and truly seen, for the first time in a very long time.

It has made all the difference.

And now I find myself wondering how it was that I had somehow come to believe that the only way to find my place in the church was to avoid being seen, to hide behind other (mostly male) leaders, in order to find a place at the table.

And I grieve for all those who are seen first of all by the church as issues to be discussed, whether because of gender or sexuality or ability or age or any of a number of other categories that fail to see the beautiful, beloved child of God underlying all of it.

And I pray that we might do better--that I might do better. I pray that God will give me the eyes to see, and the ability to convey to others that they are seen, that they are beloved, that they too are children of God, created in God's image, just as they are.

In Defense of Evangelism

When did "evangelism" become a bad word?

To be clear, I'm not questioning how "evangelism" might have become a bad word among many who do not claim Christian faith. I have vivid memories of my own of a particular preacher I heard in my teenage years who gave a pulpit-pounding message about hell that left a particularly bad taste in my mouth that I can still remember to this day. I'm sorry, if that's been your experience. Really, truly sorry.

Instead, I'm talking about how "evangelism" has become such a bad word among those who are committed to Christian faith.

I'm wondering how it was that one of the few times that I can remember biting my tongue and choosing not to speak up for my viewpoint in one of my undergraduate Christian spirituality classes was the day that I chose not to speak up and discuss how it came to be that I identified as an evangelical Christian. I remember the professor looking directly at me when not one person in that forty-some student class would admit to identifying with the evangelical stream of Christianity, and then saying to the class that he understood why it would be a difficult position to publicly identify with at our Mennonite institution.

And now, as I journey away from the evangelical tradition within which so much of my faith was formed, I notice how well the Canadian church does with engaging issues of social justice, and how little we talk about evangelism.

And as much as I have wrestled with my evangelical tradition over the way it sometimes tends to see people as 'inside' or 'outside' in a very black-and-white way, or how it can tend to instrumentalize relationships as a tool for evangelism, still a little voice inside of me whispers that there has to be a better way, that surely the gospel is still 'good news.'

You see, my faith is one of the things that is most precious to me, and it was thanks to friends who cared enough to answer my questions and to invite me to explore what it meant to me to be a Christian that I have this faith today in the first place. It was thanks to the friend who welcomed my questions and doubts, who stayed up with me well past midnight to explain the 'four spiritual laws,' who invited me to try actually reading the Bible to see if it might hold answers to some of my questions, who patiently taught me how to pray at (very) early Friday morning prayer meetings, who invited me to attend chapel services with them, that I am who I am today.

I am a product of evangelism.

And none of it was gross, or forced, or pressured in any way.

It was rooted in pointing me toward God, in gently and respectfully answering my questions, in inviting me to consider new perspectives, and in insistently suggesting that a Christian faith could be a living source of strength and direction.

Walter Brueggemann wrote a book called Biblical Perspectives on Evangelism: Living in a Three-Storied Universe, in which he calls evangelism the act of inviting people to experience the biblical narrative for themselves, and to choose this story as the definitional story of their lives. He suggests that evangelism isn't only about inviting outsiders to become insiders within the community of faith, but also about inviting insiders who have grown complacent to be reincorporated into the vitality of faith, and inviting the children of believers to become "belief-ful" adults. I love his well-rounded perspective on evangelism, and why it's important on so many levels. I love how he does so without talking about techniques, numbers, or growth models.

I think I'll always carry with me the deep belief that I was given by my evangelical tradition that there is good news in the Christian faith that's worth sharing, wherever the journey may lead from here, and I worry that there will be pressure as I move into new traditions to hide those beliefs. I worry that if I express that evangelism has value, people will label me with all kinds of images that just aren't
consistent with what I believe evangelism is all about.

But just because we haven't always gotten it right--have often gotten it wrong, in fact--doesn't mean that we should throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Does it?