Lent 5B, March 21, 2021. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
Hebrews 5:5-10. So also Christ did not glorify himself.
John 12:20-33. We wish to see Jesus.
O God of our help, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.
A season of time has passed since our reading from the Gospel of John last Sunday. Suddenly, we are only four days away from Jesus’ crucifixion. The context for our reading today is that Jesus has spent the last several years darting in and out of hiding, but has come into Jerusalem very publicly for the last time. Jesus has just ridden up to Jerusalem on a donkey, with huge crowds waving palm branches and shouting Hosanna (which means help, please or save, please). Some irritated and fearful colleagues of Jesus’ have muttered to one another about Jesus, “You see, you can do nothing. Look the world has gone over to him.”
The city was crowded with people from all over the place, who had come for the festival of Passover. To emphasize this, John adds that among the crowds were some Greeks, who had come to worship at the festival. Were they Hellenized Jews come into Jerusalem from the Diaspora? Or were they God-fearers, Gentiles who associated themselves with synagogues but were not members? We don’t know; what we know is that they told Philip they wished to see Jesus. Philip then told Andrew, and together Philip and Andrew told Jesus.
It’s not clear at all whether the Greeks got to see Jesus and hear what he had to say next, or if Jesus’ long response was another way of saying, “Look, I can’t see them because my time is up.” Then Jesus launched into a speech about glorification. The hour has come, he said; the time is now; the Son of Man will be glorified. What does that mean for the Son of Man to be glorified? The Son of Man in the Gospel of John means both mortal, a regular guy, and also expected savior sent directly from God; and Jesus is going to be revealed to all as just that. Jesus was creating a community of love, according to John, which will draw others to God, to Love. It’s what he lived for and what he was willing to die for. Glorify means to magnify, praise, and honor. It means to give importance or weight to, and in most of the Bible the focus of glory is the Holy One. Except in the Gospel of John, the Holy One glorifies Jesus in his life and death and in his triumph over death.
Death, Jesus says, is like a grain of wheat. A grain of wheat, a most common metaphor, remains a single seed unless it falls into the earth and dies to produce a plant, which bears many new seeds, some for eating and some for re-planting. It seems to me that this isn’t just about Jesus, but about anyone called to bear fruit, which is a biblical call extended to all of God’s children. The purpose of bearing fruit is to glorify the Holy One by loving one another. Jewish tradition emphasized the sanctification of the divine name (Kiddush ha-Shem) even if it resulted in death. A Rabbinic midrash on Psalm 68 says that just as doves do not struggle, the children of Israel do not struggle when they are killed for the hallowing of the Holy Name. [1]
According to the Gospel of John, the hour has come, and the time is now. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. For Jesus, is the ruler Satan; is the ruler Caesar; is there a difference? This is not just about Jesus and Jesus’ troubled heart and determination to bear fruit. John is reminding his community that the hour has come and the time is now. We use this text to remember that the hour has come, and the time is now for us. Because, as you heard me say last week, the question is not, “Did this really happen?” but “Is this really happening?” What hour has come for us, for what is the time now? And what within any of us – individually, as a parish, as a community–must fall to the ground and die in order to bear much fruit? Who among us has heard the voice of an angel, in Hebrew the bat qol, the daughter of a voice, or an echo of the glory of the Holy One, when others have just heard a rumble of thunder signaling a storm?
It makes me wonder what any of us is doing here today; whether here is at 15 Newbury Street, or here is another city or another time zone, wherever you are on your spiritual journey! That may sound like an unusual thing for me to say in a sermon; but really, why are you here; what are you hoping to see? What echo have you heard declaring God’s glory, which is to say, what echo of honoring Love have you heard? What are you doing here; what has led you to be present?
Here’s what I’m doing here. I wish to see Jesus, and I don’t mean a statue on a beautiful altar screen, although I do love that gesture of perpetual welcome to the table, to this sacred gathering place. I wish to see the real presence of the risen Lord. Maybe some of you do too. When we say we wish to see someone, we also mean we want to be seen by that someone. In ancient Greek as in modern English, to see means both to visually take in, as well as to recognize, accept, or understand. Wishing to see Jesus also means wishing that Jesus would see us.
I also know that if we wish to see Jesus in this way, and we wish Jesus to see us, we may be looking in the wrong place. Our chances of seeing Jesus and of Jesus seeing us are actually much higher in prison, the parish hall when BostonWarm is open, a 12-step meeting, a hospital emergency room, or an accupuncturist’s treatment room, among unruly children or on a park bench in Boston Common–much higher in those places than inside a church or my house; although, when I’m quiet and paying attention, Jesus shows up at church and at home, too.
What things get in the way of my seeing Jesus? Well, all kinds of things; often I’m just not paying attention; sometimes I am slow to perceive. Sometimes I’m too busy, tired, cranky, proud, self-protected, or defensive. When I am any of those things, my inability to see can get in the way of others seeing Jesus too, since I’m a priest, and folks watch and listen to me to point to signs of him. So perhaps I come here to learn how any of us can better see and help others to see Jesus, or to elicit stories of seeing him at work.
Maybe you are here for some time out, a break from the rest of your routines. Perhaps this sanctuary is a place of refuge, shelter, or safety for you. Maybe this livestreamed worship service grounds you and connects you with others and with the Divine. Maybe you are here to get your batteries recharged and your senses re-calibrated, your vision re-focused, or your spectacles adjusted, so that you can go back out there and see Jesus where he is. Experienced this way, church is a place to envision and to practice. Here we are practicing religion, practicing Christianity, envisioning a more-perfect world so that we can work to leave it better than when we found it.
I will tell you that I do feel quite drawn to portraits of Jesus painted by the Gospels. In this Gospel passage we hear Jesus’ hope that after he has been raised up, he will draw all people to himself. Perhaps some of you are here because you too feel drawn to Jesus, drawn to his teachings, perhaps his healings, feedings, and free-ings, perhaps to what a colleague of mine calls his “revolution against riches,” his “mutiny against self-righteousness,” and his “treason against military and political might.” [2] Perhaps you feel drawn to Jesus’ demonstrated belief in the dignity and value of every human being, his willingness to risk and ultimately lose his life for the sake of the justice and truth of the grace of God.
For me, to be drawn to Jesus is to feel hope and to feel healing power. But one cannot be drawn to Jesus without eventually feeling pain – the pain of sinfulness and betrayal, the pain of the cross, the pain of the suffering of others. To be drawn to Jesus is to have your heart broken open, cracked open like a seed so that it can produce fruit – some fruit for eating, for giving away, and for sowing. Your heart is where the Holy One has inscribed the Law of Love (capital L, capital L) according to Jeremiah. Your heart knows without having to be taught. When you know love, you know it by heart, not by thinking about it. To be drawn to Jesus in anything other than a superficial way is to engage more and more deeply with the mystery of the Holy. My esteemed predecessor, Elwood Worcester, the 4th rector of Emmanuel Church, who founded the Emmanuel Movement, described himself as a “practical mystic.” That’s what I’m talking about!
As Worcester showed with the Emmanuel Movement, Christianity cannot be practiced apart from community. Community is perhaps the most essential ingredient of Christianity. The more odd the community, the better, when it comes to following Jesus. Seeing Jesus requires looking at others in community, especially those on the edges, those who are in the margins, for that is where the risen Lord is to be found. Being drawn to the risen Lord requires feeling both the pain that seems inherent in our world and spreading the hope and the healing power of God. And so I wonder, what are the things that conspire to keep you from feeling hope and feeling the healing power of God? Perhaps we are here so that we can be with others who feel drawn to Jesus and want to feel Jesus’ love more deeply instead of living unfeeling, insensitive, deadened lives.
I have to tell you that I think the hour has come and the time is now, and you are here for whatever the reason. Thank you for coming here. I, for one, love to be with you, whether you are physically present at your computer or physically present in the pews. Whether you can feel it or not, whether you believe it or not, your presence increases the measure of hopefulness in this place and in our hearts. You know, together we add up to more than the sum of our individual parts. The presence of each one of you makes a difference. So please keep coming back, as they say in AA; it really works.