Where we are looking says a lot about what we’re looking for. If we took in all of the available data – all the sounds and sights and smells around us – we would be overwhelmed with the noisy blur around us. So we screen and select, sharpening our attention in particular ways. Sometimes this need to hone our attention goes awry: our fears can become amplified and we see threats in all directions… or we walk through life glimpsing everything around us as opportunities for personal gain, not as holy mysteries to be received.
Our gospel passage from John 12 comes at a time of sensory overload. People have flocked to Jerusalem to worship at the Passover Festival, to remember God’s liberation of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt and to celebrate the annual spring harvest when the heads of barley would be full of grain. Among these throngs of people who’ve come to Jerusalem are some Greeks – Gentiles who’ve come to worship the God of Israel. And some of them come to Jesus’ disciple Philip with a request – “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” They haven’t seen him yet, but their curiosity draws them to glimpse the love of God.
Their request is really a prayer – an orienting posture of expectation that will lead them to an encounter with the divine. “We wish to see Jesus,” they say. Their hope filters and focuses all the other noise around them. And during these final days of Lent, “We wish to see Jesus” is also our centering prayer.
But it’s unclear if they actually do get to see Jesus in our passage. Because Philip tells Andrew about this request and then Andrew and Phillip work up the courage to go together and tell Jesus. And Jesus does what Jesus does in the gospel of John – he launches into a long sermon about himself. The other gospels, especially Mark, are more like graphic novels – they’re punchy page-turners, fast-paced and full of action. But the gospel of John is more like an icon, a painting that shimmers with light and meaning and multi-layered theological truths.
And so when told that folks want to see him – Jesus starts preaching: “It is time for the True Human Being to be lifted up to his place of honor. I speak from my heart. If a seed is unplanted, it remains only one seed, but if it dies, falls to the earth, and enters the ground, it will then grow and become many seeds” (First Nations Version).
If we wish to see Jesus, then there are two directions we’ll have to look. Look up to see him lifted up in the heights of God’s glory. And look down, to the earth, to the soil, and even to the grave…and there we will see the depths of God’s love.
Looking up is usually the easy part. We lift our eyes to the mountains and gaze in wonder at stands of mighty trees. We look up in awe at the sky-scrapers of metropolises. There is the phenomenon of tall-people privilege – where taller people tend to get noticed and respected more often. The winner of the race gets their first place medal from the pinnacle of the podium. We tend to association height with glory.
The hour has come Jesus says, for me, the Son of Man to be lifted up, to be glorified.. “And when I am lifted up from the earth,” Jesus says “I will draw all people, all things, to myself.” But this lofty glory to which Jesus refers is not the grandeur of Roman architecture or that of a straight-backed military general riding aloft a horse in triumph. Jesus’ glory is not the self-exaltation of a violent victorious conqueror or the confidence of a self-made man. Jesus is referring to the kind of death that he’s going to die. He’ll be lifted up on a cross. This will be his glory.
There’s something ludicrious and even comical about this. Glory is supposed to be that high renown you’ve won after a remarkable achievement. Glory should be magnificently beautiful like a painting by a Renaissance master. Glory is something special and distinctive you’re proud of.
What about Jesus’ death is beautiful or remarkable or evokes pride in him or in us? Jesus died a death of torture on the cross that thousands of other living under Roman rule also died – a public humiliation, an excruciating monument to the power of imperial violence to keep a population under control.
But Jesus says that when he is lifted up from the earth he will draw all people, all things to him. The glory of the incarnation – where we celebrate that God became flesh in Christ and dwells among us – is also the glory of the cross – where God does not resort to violence but overcomes the powers of domination by the greater power of love. This glory is also the glory of the resurrection where God’s love triumphs over death and sin and evil. And this glory is also the glory of the ascension where Jesus is lifted up to heaven and remains present with us by the power of the Spirit.
So if we wish to see Jesus we will have to learn to look up where we will see God’s glory on display to all the world, offering us a vision of beauty, achievement and pride remarkably different than what the world affirms as excellent. In the life of Jesus we see that God’s glory is with those who suffer, God’s glory is the bringing of life out of death, flourishing out of destruction.
But if we wish to see Jesus we can’t only look up, we will also have to look down.
I imagine that the gardeners of this church are used to looking down. You stoop over and kneel down to plant seeds and transplant seedlings. You watch with anticipation the mulched soil where bulbs lay buried. And you kids, if you love to crawl and play with dolls and Legos and sticks and rocks on the ground, you are used to looking down, expecting to find beautiful things. But I bet for many of us we don’t often give much prayerful focused attention to our dusty floors, to the dirt, and to the earth.
Besides when passages like this one come around during Lent – I’m not going around thinking to myself very often – “Dang, I wonder what it means for me to be like a grain of wheat and fall down into the earth and die.” I don’t want to fall down in the dirt. I don’t want to die.
But in this passage Jesus calls us with hard words of discipleship – “those who love their life lose it, but those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am there will my servant be also.” When Jesus invites us on the journey of discipleship he calls us not only to follow him to the public spaces of worship and commerce where the good news must be preached… We follow Jesus not only to our homes and our workplaces we’re he invites us to a lifestyle of abundant hospitality. Jesus calls us not only kneel with him at the bedside of the sick and to sit down and eat with the hungry…Jesus calls us to all these places and so many more…
But he also calls us to accompany him on that long journey to the cross and that mysterious journey to the grave.
We go on this journey with Jesus not because we’re motivated by recklessness or an asceticism that denies the goodness of a life in these bodies or by a misguided martyr complex that seeks out suffering. Jesus loves life! In this passage – Jesus’ soul is troubled when he thinks about his own death and in the previous chapter in John – Jesus was greatly disturbed and moved and weeps over the death of his friend Lazarus.
Jesus invites us to look down at the earth and to look down at those places of death, to look at death itself, and to be faithful to God even there, to be faithful to God even in the places we feel are most forsaken by the divine.
When we follow Jesus we are able to live by the power of God’s fierce Love, knowing that death is never the end of the story. We look down at the ground because we are people who have faith that God’s love does not stop where the soil begins, but God’s love works even in darkness and decay and desolation. We look up at the cross to see the glory of a Love that can transform even the powers of violence and selfishness and fear into a harvest of love and life.
And when we hear that voice from calling out from heaven – “I have glorified it and I will glorify it again” – we can smile and maybe even laugh at the holy foolishness of God’s love. It’s not by our power that single grain of wheat after being buried can rise and grown and become a head heavy with many kernels. Only by the power of God’s love can death be vanquished. For it is by the light of Christ that we see the depths of God’s love and the heights of God’s glory.
Therefore let us live not in fear of death or clinging to power, but let us live joyfully as we join our lives to Jesus’ way of Love. For Jesus transforms the shame of the cross into an instrument of peace, embracing us and drawing all creation to himself by the power of God’s love.
Sir – we wish to see Jesus – they ask.
Hey – we wish to see Jesus – we ask.
Look down to the soil and the tomb. Look up at the cross. You will see Jesus and God’s glory when you follow him there.