You Asked for It

John 12:20-33

Fifth Sunday of Lent

      There is an elephant in this room.  It may or may not be as obvious to you, but it’s staring me in the face.  For me, it has lumbered itself right into this Scripture reading. 

      To be fair, if you had asked me a couple of weeks ago what this reading was mainly about, I would have told you the same thing: I was drawn to this reading because it had to do with welcoming the outsider.  It contains the words of Jesus proclaiming the meaning of the Cross; but they are spoken to and because of outsiders.  We know precious little about these “Greeks,” as their called.  In a moment, we’ll mention what we know, but it isn’t much.  All we really know is that they are not supposed to be there.  They are outsiders; they are foreign to these disciples, to their faith history, and even to the Gospel story so far.  Outsiders. 

      And therein lies the elephant: I cannot think about welcoming outsiders without thinking about our friend Lou Ray.  As we are discovering and will discover, Lou Ray did a lot of things around here.  And as we will also discover, we will adapt to most of those things.  The Body of Christ is vastly more resilient than we give it credit.  People already have stepped forward to do things like help me proof and fold the bulletin and clean up around the sanctuary.  I will figure out new ways to remember to do things Lou Ray used to remind me to do.  We will elect a new treasurer.  Someone else will line up liturgists and greeters.  Although we feel today that we have lost a limb, we will be okay. 

      Except that, who now will have a heart for the outsider?  We will figure out ways to adjust to all the things she did around here, but who will have her heart? Which of us will learn to even recognize the religiously disenfranchised and invite them to come and meet the living Jesus?  Who among us will take up her heart to share God’s love to those who are not us? 

      I don’t specifically know the answer to that question, other than to say, “I will.”  I will and you will too.  We will together, by our love for her, listen to the Savior she loved.  We will together hear him call us “children of light” as we seek to lead other outsiders into the light of Jesus.  We will—by the power of our Risen Savior—grow more and more into the people we have been raised by him to be.  That elephant is not going anywhere; nor should it.

      So on to these “Greeks.”  As I said: although I see them as central to this story, we don’t know much about them.  In fact, we can speak more about what we don’t know than what we do.  We don’t know how many of them there were: two, five, one hundred; who knows?  We don’t know their make-up: men, women, children, elderly.  We’re told none of that; only that “some Greeks” came to see Jesus. 

      What we do know is based on who they weren’t: as Greeks, we know they weren’t Israelites.  That may seem redundant, but John also tells us they’ve come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover.  Were they gentile converts to Judaism?  John doesn’t really say, but that does seem to be the implication.  So these Greeks seem, at least, to have abandoned their own people’s pantheon of gods in favor of the One True God, revealed to Israel.  If that’s true (and again, I’m just spit-balling here), they have adopted the rigors of Jewish practices; they have come to Jerusalem (it seems) to sacrifice and celebrate Israel’s high, holy celebration of the Passover.  A celebration, I might add, that remembers someone else’s family history: the time when God delivered the children of Abraham from captivity and slavery in Egypt and brought them into the Promised Land. 

      Have you ever celebrated a major holiday in the home of someone outside of your family?  Easter is one of those celebrations, so maybe you are planning to do just that.  As a pastor, I can tell you that I have certainly done that.  As a pastor’s family, we are nearly always far from our extended family at major holidays.  At times, folks have taken notice and invited us into their family celebrations.  In turn, my family has started to take in friends in similar situations.  As one who has been on both sides of that table of hospitality, I can offer some advice: just go with it.  Just embrace whatever comes at you.  Whatever bizarre and foreign practices and traditions your host-family has, just go with it.  You will be tempted with the thought, “That’s not how my family used to do it;” but it won’t be your family.  Trust me, you will have much more fun if you just go with it; and the weirder the better.  If a wrestling match breaks out, fight your natural flight instincts, find the smallest person in the room, pin her, and make a name for yourself.  Just go with it. 

      These Greeks, at the very least, were outsiders.  Welcomed by the Jewish community, perhaps.  Tolerated, almost certainly; but they would always be from somewhere else.  They would always be from someone else’s family.  They would always be outsiders. 

      We can make an educated guess why they came to Jerusalem; but what we know even less about is why they’ve come to see Jesus.  Perhaps, as they’ve come to Jerusalem and talked with the locals, they’ve heard the stories about Jesus and they wanted to find out for themselves.  I imagine they heard the story about Jesus clearing out the cattle and money-changers from the Court of the Gentiles—their designated place of worship—and they wanted to say, “Thank you.”  Maybe, as we will remember next Sunday, they have just witnessed the arrival of Jesus into Jerusalem with shouts of “hosanna,” and they want to see what this guy is about.  Again, John doesn’t say.  In fact, John doesn’t even say specifically that these Greeks even got to see Jesus. 

      All we know is what John describes: that these outsiders came to see Jesus; but knowing their outsider-place, they didn’t just go straight to Jesus.  They cannot just walk up to Jesus like a Pharisee, or a leper, or the possessed; they have to wait their turn.  So they first go to one of his disciples.  They first come to Philip, an insider to Jesus, but oddly an outsider in his own way.  John describes Philip as being from Bethsaida in Galilee.  Bethsaida, literally means “House of fishing.”  It was a small, fishing town in the backwoods part of Israel.  He was a “redneck,” there I said it.  I don’t know if these Greeks knew any of this, but as outsiders go, they went to the right disciple.  “Sir,” they say, “we wish to see Jesus.” 

      This is brilliant political maneuvering, by the way: in the Greek, the word we’re translating as “sir” is the same word we would translate as “lord.”  If you are an outsider, looking to get a comparative insider to do you a favor, you might want to at least be respectful.  But does it work?  Does Philip help them to see Jesus?  Certainly not at first.  Rather than taking them to see Jesus, Philip forms a committee.  Now, I’m a Presbyterian; no one loves a committee more than I do.  I’ll be going to Montrose tomorrow to be in one.  Committees are great, but there are some things that do not belong in committee.  Helping someone see Jesus, especially someone who asks you to show them Jesus, is a big one of those things.  Philip takes their request to his friend Andrew (a fellow redneck from Bethsaida), and together they go to Jesus; and we never hear from these Greeks again.  Or do we? 

      Once again, we’re back to all that we don’t know when it comes to this story.  There is a reading of it where what Jesus says next is meant mostly for Philip: that his new-found sense of importance as the Jesus gate-keeper has gone to his head (one person calls him “lord” and he puts himself in charge of Jesus’ appointments).  That reading, in itself, is certainly a useful lesson; the followers of Jesus do well to remember our calling is not to be “gatekeeper.”  Our calling is to show people Jesus: if nothing else, our call is to keep that gate opened wide; but more importantly, to show him throughout our lives; to give these lives over to his service, that his fruit might be born through us. 

      But there is also the distinct possibility that these Greeks actually do get to see Jesus.  There is the possibility that, when Philip and Andrew go to tell Jesus, those Greeks followed right along.  There is the distinct possibility that what Jesus says next is the very answer to their request: they wish to see Jesus, and the real Jesus is exactly what they get. 

      I like this interpretation.  I like the idea that outsiders, who come to see Jesus, get what they came for.  I especially like the implications this interpretation has for the church.  They come to see Jesus and he presents himself in all of his “glory,” as Jesus puts it: the glory of a seed that falls to the earth, seemingly dies, and then rises again to new life to bear fruit and countless other seeds.  They come to see Jesus and Jesus doesn’t play around: they asked for it and they got it.  He tells them that those who truly see him—those who would follow him—are those who carry on his same spirit.  They come to see Jesus, and whereas Philip and Andrew are reluctant, Jesus seems to open wide the gate so that they might see it all.  And then, to add an exclamation point to it all, the voice of heaven proclaims, “I have glorified [My Name], and I will glorify it again.”  They come to see Jesus and he shows them that who he is, is the one who draws all people (even Greeks) to God through himself.  They asked for it, they asked to see Jesus, and they got it. 

            As we draw nearer and nearer to that wondrous day of Easter, we are drawn to consider the Jesus we seek.  We too, once, were outsiders from the Kingdom of God, but we have seen Jesus.  We who have seen our Savior’s faithfulness through his Cross, are called to help others see him too.  As we continue to seek Jesus, may we help those around us every day to see him still, through our words and throughout our lives.