"We Want to See Jesus", March 17, 2024 — Santa Teresa Hills Presbyterian Church

“We Want to See Jesus”

A Sermon Based on John 12:20-33

Pastor Deb Troester, STHPC, March 17, 2024

“We want to see Jesus,” said the Greeks who approached one of Jesus’ disciples, Philip, that day in Jerusalem so long ago. Small wonder that people wanted to see Jesus! John recounts how Jesus had just fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fish, had walked on water, healed a man born blind, and raised Lazarus from the dead. Then he had ridden triumphantly into Jerusalem, greeted with acclaim by the crowd and palm branches laid at his feet. Some even wanted to make him king.

It was the Passover festival, a time when many people crowded into the Holy City. Not only native-born Jews, but Jewish converts from all over the world converged on the temple to remember how God had spared the lives of the first-born Hebrew children and had released their people from slavery in Egypt. Were these Greeks devout pilgrims, converts to the Jewish faith? Were they merely curious tourists? We do not know, but their request, “We want to see Jesus,” confirms the truth of the Pharisees’ complaint: “Look, the whole world is following him!”

In that day, as in this, some of the most unlikely people come seeking after Christ. The Greek way of life was foreign to Judaism. Greeks had many gods – Apollo, Zeus, and Aphrodite were not just quaint mythological figures, but were worshiped in temples, where animals were sacrificed to them. Greeks ate food that Jews considered “unclean,” - pork and such. Greek culture was decadent, according to Jewish law. Philip is the only disciple with a Greek name, and he was probably from that ethnic group originally, although it seems that he, or maybe his parents, had converted to Judaism.

Even so, he was unsure what to do when these Greeks asked to see Jesus. Would the master want to see them? Hadn’t he come to redeem the people of Israel, the descendants of Abraham – not the pagan Greeks, surely. The disciples hadn’t yet grasped that Jesus had come to be the Savior of the world – that he would draw all people to himself, not just the Jews.

According to an article by Presbyterian pastor Liza Hendricks, “The Greeks were the “the others,” the outsiders, asking to be included, welcomed, taught, healed, saved…The request was a challenge for the disciples. It had not occurred to them that their circle might be expanded in that way. They must have wondered what would happen if their community was opened up to all kinds of people? Wouldn’t the others want to do things differently?” Do we ever hesitate to admit people from a different culture or background to our inner circle? Do we worry that they will want to do things differently than we are accustomed to?

The Message, a modern paraphrase of the Bible, reads this way: “There were some Greeks in Town who had come up to worship at the Feast. They approached Philip, [saying]: “Sir, We want to see Jesus. Can you help us?” We meet dozens of people every day who are asking this question: “We want to see Jesus, can you help us?” They may not realize that what they are looking for is Jesus – they may call it peace or healing, or purpose. We live in a world desperate to see Jesus.

Just as in Jesus’ day, people are hungry – hungry for food and hungry for the bread of life. People need healing – physically, spiritually, and emotionally. People look in all the wrong places for help – drugs, alcohol, unhealthy relationships. Some people look for Jesus in more likely places: religious TV shows, self-help books. Some even look in church! But most of all, people look for Jesus in us, his modern day disciples. Do they find him? You might have heard the saying, “You may be the only Bible some people ever read.”

Back to our story. Strangely, we never find out if these Greeks ever got to see Jesus. Instead, he says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 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…Whoever serves me must follow me…” Perhaps he is cautioning those who seek him that following him means going to the cross. Following him means that in some sense, we die, in order to be born to eternal life.

As the Apostle Paul teaches in Romans 6.4: “Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.”

Think about a grain of wheat being planted – buried – in the ground. In dying, it bears much fruit. This is a foreshadowing of Jesus’ death and resurrection. But it also describes the Christian life. The grain of wheat speaks of transformation. Before it was buried, it was just a single grain of wheat. If we imagine that the wheat could talk, it might say something like, “I’m happy to be a grain of wheat, stored here in a bag of grain. I don’t know or understand how being put into the soil will help me.” Yet in the soil, the rain and sun work a transformation that causes the wheat to sprout and grow and bear fruit – some 30-fold, some 60-fold, some 100-fold, as Jesus said. We don’t always understand how God works in our lives, but if we allow ourselves to be transformed, we will grow and bear fruit. We will find that God can use us to accomplish His purposes on earth.

Transformation can happen through being attentive to God’s voice, through spiritual disciplines such as prayer and service to others, even through suffering, if we are open to what God has to teach us. Simply being open to what God wants to do in our lives will bring transformation. Transformation involves leaving our old life behind to become something new. We are still ourselves – the wheat is still wheat, as God created it to be – yet it has become more. Now it can fulfill its God-given purpose, to provide food for the hungry. Denying yourself doesn’t mean that you cease to exist; it means that you become more of what God intended you to be.

Next Sunday will be the 44th anniversary of the death of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. He had been named archbishop at the start of the Salvadoran Civil War, a time when farmers, workers, students, and others rallied for greater rights, only to be put down violently by the Salvadoran government and military, supported by the wealthy landowners who ran the government, and the U.S., on the pretext of fighting communism. Romero was known as a pious and relatively conservative bishop.

He seemed like the last person to challenge the status quo, but the assassination of his friend, Father Rutilio Grande, a defender of social justice for the poor, seemed to waken something in his soul. He became a voice for the voiceless, and in his weekly sermons chastised the government for allowing the extra-judicial killings and disappearances of their foes. The day before his death he appealed directly to members of the military, calling on them to refuse illegal orders to murder their fellow citizens. The next day, March 24, 1980, he was shot and killed while saying Mass, the first bishop to be slain at the altar since the twelfth century. Two weeks before his assassination, he said in an interview, “I have frequently been threatened with death. I must say that, as a Christian, I do not believe in death but in the resurrection.” His faith led him to lay down his life for his people, and his example inspired many.

Thankfully, most of us will never be called upon to literally give up our lives for what we believe. Yet, if we want to see Jesus, we must at some point gaze upon the cross.

That day in Jerusalem, people sought him. Jesus wanted to know, were they seeking him because of his miracles or his political prospects? Were they hoping he would do something for them? Jesus pointed them in a different direction: “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.” Even at the foot of the cross. Sometimes we have to be prepared to give up our own plans and dreams in order to follow the plans and dreams God has for us and for the world. But like the grain of wheat, we will find that God has better plans than ours.

The Greeks wanted to see Jesus. What about us? Do we want to see Jesus? As I mentioned, we don’t know whether or not they ever got to talk to him in person, but if they hung around for the events of that first Holy Week, they almost certainly saw him – in an unexpected form – the Man of Sorrows, beaten and bloodied, carrying his cross to the hill of execution.

Do we really want to see Jesus? The Jesus who welcomes everyone – Greek or Jew, even the leper, the prostitute, the undocumented immigrant, the unhoused, the Jesus who challenged the status quo, the Jesus who went to the cross, and who asks us to follow him there.

Do we want to see this Jesus? Because if we do, if we see him as he is, he will change our lives forever and transform us into who God created us to be. And this is good news. If we allow him, he will transform us. We don’t have to solve every problem in the world – Jesus has already overcome the world. We don’t have to walk this path alone – He is with us. We just need to be faithful to follow Him, step by step, wherever He may lead. Do you want to see Jesus?

“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 teach us to listen,

Open our eyes, Lord, we want to see Jesus.

Open our eyes, Lord, we want to see Jesus.”