"Are We Ready to See?"

Fifth Sunday of Lent

Sunday, March 29, 2009

"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.'"

We wish to see Jesus.

As today’s text opens, we join Jesus and his disciples in the city of Jerusalem.  The adoring crowds had gathered around him.  Hundreds, if not thousands of people who had come to Jerusalem for the Passover were paying attention to him. And then, a group of Greek believers came to a few of the disciples, and stated their desire to see Jesus.  Greeks – Gentile foreigners -- who had not been born into the covenant community, who were not a part of the chosen people, had begun to pay attention to him.

"Sir," they said to Philip, "we wish to see Jesus." 

They wanted to see him; they were ready.

Or so they thought.

As we pause to reflect on this desire, on the part of the Greek believers, to ‘see’ Jesus, we cannot help but realize that the passage gives very little information about what motivated those Greek seekers to want to see Jesus.

So why did they want to see him?

Perhaps it was because of his unusual reputation as a miracle worker of great power.  In John's Gospel, the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead is told shortly before today's reading. After weeping by the graveside of Lazarus, Jesus called him from the grave, thereby demonstrating his authority even over death itself.  The news of that event would undoubtedly have spread, and would have enhanced his already existing reputation as a powerful wonder-worker.  So was it the wonderworker that that Greeks had come to see?

Or was it because of the controversy that his teachings were stirring up in Jerusalem?  Already, John's Gospel has stated, in a number of different places, that Jesus' clashes with the religious authorities had led them to plot his death.  Jesus' statements on religious issues, as well as on various social, moral and legal concerns, had led to a strong level of animosity from the authorities of the day.  Perhaps the Greeks wanted to 'check out' this controversial young celebrity figure. 

Or perhaps it was simply because of the adoration of the crowds.  In the verses which lead up to today's reading, we are told of the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem, accompanied by the adoring cheers of the crowds. That level of popularity was recognized by the Pharisees in the passage immediately preceding today's text, as we read, "the Pharisees then said to one another, 'You see, you can do nothing.  Look, the world has gone after him!'"  Public interest in him was undeniable.  So was it Jesus' undeniable popularity that motivated the Greeks to want to come and see him?

Or were those Greek individuals simply and earnestly seeking to 'see' him, to become his followers, to learn from him?  The Gospel of John uses the image of 'seeing', in a number of different stories, as a metaphor for belief, for understanding, for spiritual knowledge.  In his presence, people’s sight had been restored; Jesus had commended those who can see; from the opening verses of this Gospel, Jesus had been described as the One who was the light, who could bring enlightenment to those who looked to him.  Perhaps the Greeks' desire to 'see' him was rooted in their own legitimate spiritual longings for enlightenment.

So many possible motivations may have been at the heart of the Greeks’ desire to see Jesus. As a worker of miracles; as a controversial critic of established religious and social norms; as a popular teacher and public figure; as a source of enlightenment – so many different reasons why those mysterious Greek individuals might have wanted to see Jesus.

We are given no real information about which of those motivations might have propelled them to come to his disciples with the stated desire to see him.  We must speculate.

And, in those speculations, we begin to realize that we are much like those ancient Greek seekers.  

Each one of us has come to this place, today, for many different reasons; and each one of us comes to faith with different motivations.  Some of us come with a desire to encounter the miracle worker, longing for that touch that will restore us to wholeness in body or in spirit.  Some of us come out of a desire to be stirred and inspired by the controversial religious figure whose words continue to challenge established structures of religious, political and social power in our world.  Some of us come out of a desire to learn more about this popular figure, whose following spans the globe, whose followers number in the hundreds of millions, and from whose birth we mark the passage of the years.  And still others of us come out of a desire to renew ourselves in our desire to follow him, and to make him the focus of our devotion and reverence, the focus of our lives.

For these, and many other reasons – and like those Greeks so long ago – we, too, wish to see Jesus.

Or so we think.

The complexity of this passage begins to emerge when we consider Jesus’ reaction to those Greek seekers. 

When the disciples brought the Greek’s desire to Jesus, he neither addressed those Greek seekers, nor their question, directly.  Instead, he started to speak about his life, and the lives of his followers, being like grains of wheat, which need to die in order for new growth and new life to occur.  "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." 

He started to speak about the importance of dying to self in order to find life, about the importance of giving up one's life. "Those who love their life lose it, and 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."

They were strange words.  And things got even stranger.  Our Gospel text tells us that the voice of God was heard as a thunderous noise, confirming Christ's identity and confirming what was about to happen to him.  And, in the aftermath of that voice, Jesus spoke strange words about the judgment of the world having arrived.

At the end of those strange words, he then spoke these words.  "And I, when I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself."

When I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself.  And suddenly, we as readers are brought back to the Greek's stated desire to see Jesus.  When he was lifted up, he would draw all people to himself.  Jews and Greeks, the chosen people and the Gentile world, slaves and free, male and female, the joyous and the suffering, those who sought him in the midst of crisis, and those who sought him as a focus of their devotion – regardless of their motivations, all would be drawn towards him. 

All those who, like the Greek seekers, wished to see Jesus would see him -- when he was lifted up.  

And how was he going to be lifted up?

On a cross. 

Those who wished to see him would see him, all right; but it would not be the popular, prestigious, wonderworking, crowd pleasing public figure that they would see; rather, they would see him as a broken, humiliated, dying man hanging on a cross.

So were they ready to see Jesus?

Are we?

Do we even want to see Jesus?

On September 29, 2006, in the village of Khairlanji, India, a 44 year old woman named Surekha Bhotmange was preparing dinner.  Surekha and her family were dalits, untouchables, outcaste people, whose only provocation had been that a member of her family had been involved in challenging a caste-based act of discrimination.  In response, an angry mob dragged Surekha, her 18 year old daughter Priyanka, her 23 year old son Roshan and her her 21 year-old son Sudhir from their home.  Surekha and her daughter Priyanka were stripped naked, dragged by their hair to the village center about 500 meters away, humiliated, beaten, gang-raped in full public view for an hour before they were hacked to death.  Their attackers desecrated their dead bodies.  The two sons Roshan and Sudhir were kicked and stabbed repeatedly before they, too, died.  The bodies were left in the village square for hours after that atrocity.

It is unlikely that this crime would even have been investigated had it not been for the public outcry of other outcastes, other dalits, other untouchables in surrounding villages and towns.  When it was, there were a number of further police atrocities committed, but eventually a number of the perpetrators were caught.  And they were hung.  Justice, perhaps; but in reality, capital punishment simply means that the cycle of violence will continue.

And the example of the Bhotmange family is not unique.  Rather, it is only one of the unimaginable horrors that occur each and every day in this world.

Do such stories offend us and make us uncomfortable?  Do they anger us?  Do we find them a little bit too distasteful to hear spoken about in a nice church setting? 

Perhaps.  But please, for the love of God, let us be more offended, let us be more angry, let us be more outraged that these things take place in our world than we are offended and angered than that such outrages are named in church.

Because if we cannot face these realities, if we cannot see the horror in the way that so many of God’s beloved children are being treated, if we cannot find the courage to confront the dark abyss of human suffering – and if we cannot be outraged by it – even today, then we might honestly ask ourselves whether we are truly ready to see Jesus. 

We may tell ourselves, like those Greek seekers did so long ago, that we wish to see Jesus.  We may convince ourselves that we are ready to see him.  But are we ready?

Because there is another story that should make us squirm, that should make us uncomfortable, that we should we find distasteful to have named in a nice church service.

It is the story of a young man from a rural area who went, one year, with a group of his friends, to a big city to participate in a festival.  He was not very old, but had already started to get a growing ‘reputation’ as a rabble-rouser, an agitator.

And he got into trouble with the authorities in that big city.  So they took him, and beat him.  They stripped him and mocked him.  They whipped him. They crushed thorns into his scalp.

And then, after a night of beatings, they forced him to carry a heavy piece of wood across his shoulders -- shoulders that had been brutally lacerated by their whips.  And then, after he had dragged that heavy piece of wood outside of the city walls, they laid him down, drove nails into his hands, and into his feet, and propped him up on another piece of wood that they stuck into the ground.  And there he was left to hang until he died. 

His own mother endured the excruciating torment of standing there and seeing her son brutalized.  And then, after hours of torment, and because he wasn’t dying quite fast enough, his tormentors prepared to break his legs, only to realize, after jamming a spear into his lifeless body, that he was already dead.

Does that story offend us?

It should.

But if it does – if we want to look away, to pretend that such things do not happen, to prefer not to confront such realities -- then we must ask ourselves a very difficult question. 

If we find it unpleasant to look into the dark abyss of human suffering – whether that suffering took place on a cross two thousand years ago, or whether it takes place today -- are we ready to see Jesus?

And if we cannot bear to look -- to see -- and to be outraged and horrified in the face of such horrific human suffering, then how shall we ever hope to see the resurrection?