Lent 5B, March 25, 2012

O God of surprises, 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.

In my experience, Gospel lessons usually raise more questions than they answer. I do like that. I’m much more interested in questions than I am in answers. Still, the gap between questions and answers seems especially pronounced in today’s Gospel lesson. At our vestry meeting this past Tuesday as we were doing a Bible study on this Gospel reading, someone observed that this reads like a speech in which some of the speaker’s index cards have been inadvertently dropped!

The context for our reading from the Gospel of John is that Jesus has just ridden into Jerusalem on a donkey, with huge crowds waving palm branches and shouting Hosanna (which means help please or save please); and some irritated colleagues of Jesus’ have muttered to one another about Jesus, “you see, you can do nothing. Look the world has gone over to him.” John explains that the city was crowded with people from all over the place who had come for the festival of Passover. As if 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 wished to see Jesus. They told Philip, and Philip told Andrew and together Philip and Andrew told Jesus.

But 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 John’s 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? I think in the Gospel of John, The Son of Man means both “mortal” – a regular guy and also expected savior sent directly from God,[1] — and Jesus is going to be revealed to all as just that. According to John, Jesus was creating a community of love which will draw others to God – it’s what he lived for and what he was willing to die for.[2] To glorify means to magnify and praise and honor.

It’s interesting to me, though, that what comes next is a most common metaphor of a grain of wheat which, Jesus says, 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 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 Creator by loving one another. Jewish tradition emphasized the sanctification of the divine name (Kiddush ha-Shem) even if it resulted in death. There’s a Rabbinic midrash on Psalm 68 which says that just as doves do not struggle, the children of Israel do not struggle when they are killed for the hallowing of the Name.[3] 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. It’s not just about Jesus and Jesus’ troubled heart and determination to bear fruit. It’s about reminding John’s community that the hour has come and the time is now. And it’s about reminding us that the hour has come and the time is now.

As you’ve heard me say before, the question I’m most interested in 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, 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?

It makes me wonder what any of us is doing here today. That may sound like an unusual thing for me to say in a sermon. But really, why are you here? Besides the obvious, because you love the music, why are you here? What are you hoping to see? What echo have you heard declaring God’s glory? What are you doing here? (Let me just say right now, that in spite of how it might sound, I’m thrilled that you are here – for whatever reason.)

Here’s what I’m doing here – what I’m hoping to see. I wish to see Jesus – and I don’t mean a statue on a beautiful altar screen. I wish to see the real presence of the risen Lord. Maybe some of you do too. You know, in ancient Greek and in modern English, to see means both to visually comprehend and also to accept, to understand. Wishing to see Jesus, for me, means wishing to see what difference Jesus makes. Wishing to see Jesus also means wishing that Jesus would see me or see us. And I know that if I wish to see Jesus in this way, I may be looking in the wrong place. My chances of seeing Jesus and of Jesus seeing me or us, are actually much higher in prison, in a soup kitchen or a food pantry, in a hospital emergency room, among unruly children, or on a park bench in Boston Common, much higher in those places than inside of a church.

What things get in the way of my seeing Jesus? Well, all kinds of things – often I’m just not paying attention. Sometimes I’m too busy or too tired or too cranky or too proud or too self-protected. 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 Jesus.  So perhaps I come here to learn how any of us can better see and help others to see Jesus.

Maybe you are here for some time out – a break from the rest of your routines. Perhaps this sanctuary is a place of refuge, of shelter, a place of safety for you. Maybe you are here to get your batteries recharged and your senses re-calibrated, your vision re-focused, so that you can go back out there and see Jesus where Jesus 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 miracles, 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.”[4] 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, the pain of the cross, the pain of the suffering of others.  To be drawn to Jesus is to have your heart broken open. 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 4^th rector of Emmanuel Church described himself as “practical mystic.”  That’s what I’m talking about!

There are so many forces in the world that keep us from engaging more and more deeply with the Holy and conspire to make us numb. Sometimes (maybe even often) church actively gets in the way of the experience of God, and sometimes church just seems irrelevant to the experience of God. Nevertheless, I believe so strongly that Christianity cannot be practiced apart from community. Community is perhaps the most essential ingredient of Christianity, the and more odd the community the better. 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’ve had a funny experience this Lent. For those of you who were for the Ash Wednesday evening service, you heard me reflect on couple of practices that I hoped to engage in during Lent. It was an intimate gathering and so it felt relatively safe to share some of my personal struggles and my desires to feel closer to the Holy One, and particularly to Jesus. It never dawned on me then that the discipline I thought would be the hardest – even impossible, would make me laugh so much.  It’s the discipline of taking personally and literally Jesus’ Gospel commandment to give to everyone who asks you (or to everyone who begs from you). I thought it would be hard and maybe even impossible because I had the feeling of walking around this city almost every day being bombarded by requests for spare change or a dollar. I wondered how much it would cost and how quickly I would run out if I kept $1 bills in my pocket to give away to anyone who asked. I was more than a little afraid of the foolishness of the idea. Apparently others have been afraid for me too – because some people keep putting ones in MY pocket so I have enough to give to other people.

The most surprising and funny thing, though, has been how few people have actually asked me. I thought it was so many, but some days, no one has asked. Other days, maybe as many as three. A couple of times, I’ve emptied my pocket into the hands of someone who asked because I felt a little weighed down by my fistful of ones that no-one had asked for. Turns out to be a complete non-issue for me when it comes to money, and a huge issue when it comes to my own spiritual well-being. It’s been so liberating, I decided not to wait until next Lent to recommend that practice to you, whether what you are able to put in your pocket to give away is nickels and dimes, or ones, or fives, or twenty dollar bills. 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 can feel it or not, whether you believe it or not, your presence increases the measure of hopefulness in this place. You know, together we add up to more than the sum of our individual parts. I am more aware of the healing power of God because of your presence here this morning. The presence of each one of you makes a difference. So please keep coming back, as they say in AA, it really works.