We Want To See Jesus: A Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent

 

Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 17 March, 2024.

Texts for the Fifth Sunday of Lent (B): Jer 31:31-34; Ps 51:1-13 ; Heb 5:5-10; Jn 12:20-33

Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks.   They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”  (John 12:20)

We don’t know why these “Greeks” wanted to see Jesus.  Today’s story comes just after St. John describes the raising of Lazarus and the spreading fame of Jesus, so perhaps these Greeks had heard the news and were curious (Jn 11:45-48).   Maybe they had spiritual questions they wanted to ask.   John doesn’t tell us if they got an audience with Jesus, but their statement, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus” has a directness and an urgency that should get our attention.

Karoline Lewis, a John scholar, notes that this verse is often written or carved on pulpits because the preacher’s central task is to help God’s people to see Jesus.  

This sort of thing should be put in front of preachers.  I saw a photo of an English church where, carved on to the pulpit for all to see, were the words “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel”.

Preachers and people alike should want to see Jesus, and yet, we might well envy the Greeks in today’s reading because they could hope for an introduction and to come face to face with him.   How can we see Jesus?   Where is he that we can look at him?

Fortunately for us, in the language of John’s gospel, seeing Jesus is equated with spiritual understanding.  Lots of people in John see Jesus but didn’t know who he was or who don’t believe him, like the Pharisees in John 9 who are contrasted with the man born blind who receives his sight and says “Lord, I believe” (Jn 9:35-41).

There’s a lovely hymn by Robert Cull called “OpenOur Eyes, Lord”.  It’s not in our hymnal, sadly, but it goes like this.

Open our eyes, Lord,
we want to see Jesus,
to reach out and touch him,
and say that we love him.
Open our ears, Lord,
and help us to listen.
Open our eyes, Lord,
we want to see Jesus.

In my Easter letter to the parish, which you may have received by now, I said that we as Christians are people who look to Christ and to Christ’s light.   Jesus says in today’s gospel that “Whoever serves me must follow me”, but if we don’t look to Jesus, if we don’t see him, then we can’t follow him.  It’s like before GPS, when you needed directions and someone else in another car said “just follow me”.   Do you remember how anxious it got at stop lights, when you were afraid you would lose the person in front of you?   We need to keep Jesus in sight if we are going to follow him.

Today I want to take three cues from today’s gospel reading to suggest ways that we might spiritually see Jesus.  Here’s the first.

“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself”.  He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.”

As we move through Lent, we know that one of our final stops will be Good Friday and the cross.    All through this season we’ve heard the warnings and predictions, as we did back on the second Sunday of Lent, when Jesus told his friends “ that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering … and be killed” (Mk 8.31).   Peter didn’t want to hear that, and was sternly rebuked.   Some of us have been watching The Chosen, the dramatic series on Jesus, and we’ve talked about how the character of Jesus is so compelling and attractive that we can’t bear to think of him dying so cruelly.   Thus we come to better understand fierce, protective Peter.

Last Saturday was our final Après Ski service for this year, and our theme was the cross.   We spent some time standing or kneeling beside a large wooden cross laid on the floor, surrounded by candles.   It was a chance to approach the cross not with horror, but with love and adoration for the one that poured out his life and blood for us there.  Good Friday can be about love as well as sorrow, and the cross can be the sign of love that leads us closer to Jesus.

There is another way to see the cross which I also think leads us closer to Jesus, which is to see how the cross changes and transforms us.     Last Sunday we heard that difficult text from John’s Gospel, another passage where Jesus speaks about being “lifted up”:  “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (Jn 3.14).  We heard that gospel as well as the passage Jesus was thinking of, from the Hebrew Scriptures were God told Moses to make a bronze serpent on a staff, the sight of which could cure the Israelites bitten by the poisonous snakes sent by God.

It was a strange set of readings, and the story in Numbers is even a little horrific, but let’s think about the snakes for a moment.   In Genesis, it’s the serpent that tempts humanity out of relationship with God so that they can invent themselves as they see fit.   In the Moses story, the snakes embody the consequences of the Israelites’ frequent rebellions to God.  In comparing himself to the serpent on the pole, Jesus is predicting his becoming our sin, his taking the worst of humanity onto himself on the cross so that we might be healed from our sins.

I saw a wonderful expression of this idea recently.  St Mark’s, an Anglican church in Austin, Texas, had a processional cross designed for them by a skilled blacksmith.  The cross is a simple shape in silver, and coiled around it are the loops of a bronze serpent, a complex shape that suggests the knots of Celtic art.   The Rector of St. Mark’s, the Rev. ZacCoons, writes that he wanted this new cross to be a sign of our hope.  The snake cross, he writes, is a way not only of coming to terms with our sin in the Lenten spirit of penitence and self examination so that we can look “directly at the serpents in our lives, the snakes lurking in our hearts and imaginations”. 

At the same time, Rev Coons writes, the snake cross reminds us that in seeing our sins, we also see our healing:  “through Christ, God can take any sin, any mistake, and through the cross, work it into my salvation … [so that] God can mold our mistakes into something holy, even beautiful”.   

Could we dare see in the cross the love of God in Christ that heals us and makes us beautiful,  so that we might be the true people that God dreamed of when he created us?   Our processional cross has no snakes.  It is very traditional, very ornate, made of heavy engraved brass.    I wonder, though, the next time you watch it go by you in our worship, could you regard that cross and see in its beauty something of the beauty that happened on that cross in Golgotha, when Christ had the courage to become our sins for us so that we might be ransomed and renewed, restored to what God always wanted us to be?  That would be another way to see Jesus.

 

Here's the second cue from today’s gospel that might help us to spiritually see Jesus.

Very truly, I tell you, 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. (Jn 12.24)

At this time of year, some of you will notice me wandering around the grounds of the rectory, head bowed and staring intently at the ground.   Gardeners will know what I’m doing.   I’m looking for those green shoots that show the plants coming back to life – at least, the bulbs that the squirrels didn’t get.   Each day offers the chance of a new discover, the promise of spring and of the renewal of the earth.

If we look at nature in springtime, we can see something of the renewal of life that Jesus predicts and promises.   Jesus is not just talking about his own resurrection, but about the renewal of life in general – in the earth, in the church, in his followers, and in the world, which will see a new creation, a new heaven and a new earth.    So we can see something of Jesus and his promise of abundant life in all the signs of springtime, and we can see in those signs the hope and promise of our renewal and remaking as Christ’s followers.    After all, if a humble bulb can come back to life, what more glorious things can we hope for?

 

Here's the third cue from today’s gospel that might help us to spiritually see Jesus.

²⁶Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor. (Jn 21.6)

We know that the words “servant” and “service” in the gospels are key.    In John’s gospel, shortly after this episode, Jesus will set aside his titles as Teacher and Lord to become a servant and wash his friends’ feet “to set [them] an example, that you should do as I have done to you” (Jn 13.14).   Elesewhere Jesus says that he did not come “to be served but to serve” (Mk 10.45; Mt 20.28), and likewise he says that whoever serves and helps another has seen and served Jesus (Mt 25.31-46).

Service to others can also be a way in which we spiritually see Jesus.   We reenact this opportunity to serve others during the footwashing part of our Maundy Thursday liturgy, but our church offers many ways to serve friends, parishioners, and strangers.   I invite you to see your volunteer activities and your interactions with others, both within and outside All Saints, as opportunities to spiritually see Jesus in acts of service.

These are three ways that we might focus on seeing Jesus spiritually.   There are others.  As we get to Easter Sunday and onwards, you might spend time contemplating the magnificent windows about the altar depicting Jesus’ Ascension.  It’s a glorious image and it shows another side of Jesus, who trusted his Father and who shares his glory, and yet would love and serve us.   

There are many ways to see Jesus spiritually, and I think they all begin from cultivating a heart that is open to his love and friendship, which we all need.

 

Open our eyes, Lord,
we want to see Jesus,
to reach out and touch him,
and say that we love him.
Open our ears, Lord,
and help us to listen.
Open our eyes, Lord,
we want to see Jesus.