Hour
John 12:20-33
Click here to view the full sermon video for March 21st, entitled "Hour."
Recently, the Disney company began adding content warnings at the beginning of six classic animated films that are available on its streaming platform, Disney+. Content warnings are nothing new. Since 1968, the Motion Picture Association of America has used a rating system to signal a film’s content. So much so that it has entered the common lexicon that people use to describe language and behavior off-screen as either G, PG, or R. But the Disney disclaimers are different. Rather than warning viewers about language, violence, or sexual content, they inform potential viewers that, “This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now.” Some have argued that this is an exercise in over-reaching political correctness, while others applaud the move as a necessary step in repairing the damage such cultural stereotypes have done to the people depicted. If anything, it can be helpful to know ahead of time what you’re getting into, particularly when you think you’re sitting down to a children’s movie that turns out to be a vehicle for a form of racism.
In what will be the final week of his earthly life, Jesus arrives in Jerusalem for the Passover festival. “Now among those who went up to the festival,” John tells us, “were some Greeks.” Okay, that’s to be expected. Passover is a major religious holiday that naturally drew folks to the Jerusalem temple from all over the Mediterranean region. But if these particular visitors were simply Jews like Jesus who had traveled for the festival, even if they had traveled all the way from say Greece, John wouldn’t have called them ‘Greeks.’ In the parlance of the first century, “Greeks,” is code for “not one of us.” Greek was synonymous with Gentile, not Jewish. Which is sort of the point. Up until this point in John’s Gospel, Jesus is mostly a local sensation. The signs and conversations throughout have taken place close to home: Galilee, Samaria, Judea. But when they arrive in Jerusalem for the Passover feast, a couple not just from out of town but from outside the camp come looking for him. Word has spread. He has broken through and for the first time has the attention of a wider world. What happens next will be more than a local concern. What happens next will be carried far beyond the fold of the Jewish community of the surrounding region. It’s at this point, though, that I wonder if it wouldn’t have been advisable to have a content warning for these unsuspecting Greeks.
“Sir,” they say to Philip, one of the twelve. “Sir, we would see Jesus.” I wasn’t the most biblically literate person the first time I saw those words on a woodcut in the pulpit of our church in Denver. I mean I figured they were from the bible. Why else would they be so permanently affixed to the pulpit? I just didn’t know from where in the bible. It was my first lesson in preaching, long before I ever became a preacher. Because the only person who saw those words was the person standing in the pulpit to preach. It’s a quote directed at a man, but women have been preaching and pointing to Jesus since that Samaritan woman went to tell her neighbors to come and see him for themselves. “We would see Jesus.” That’s the hope, isn’t it? When I got an invitation to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, that was my hope. I wanted to see Jesus. Only, as it turned out, I got my best glimpse of him in the seat next to mine on a connecting flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta. Go figure. Sometimes he has to find us and sometimes we go looking for him. But either way, the person we encounter is rarely what we expect.
The content warning for Jesus wouldn’t just be that he’s likely to defy our expectations. It’s the way in which he’s likely to defy them. I don’t know, maybe those Greeks at the festival had heard the buzz about Lazarus. Jesus has just raised him from the dead over in Bethany and it caused quite a stir. What were they looking for, then, a miracle worker perhaps, someone who could raise the dead? That is a pretty impressive feat. Of course, they were Greeks, and Paul will later write that Greeks desire wisdom, so maybe these Greeks were looking for something else. Maybe they were looking for wisdom, eloquent words and a philosophy for living a good life. Seven sure steps for a heavenly existence.
Philip didn’t know. Andrew didn’t know. None of them knew what was in store for everyone who wants to see Jesus. They didn’t know that that the request to see him might need some kind of content warning. This miracle worker and sage that you’re looking for, it might read, includes friends who will betray him and followers who will abandon him. This teacher and prophet will be subject to graphic amounts of violent and profane mockery. He will fail to be everything that the people who looked for him and followed him hoped he would be. His anointing won’t save him. His wisdom won’t save him. His friends most certainly will not save him. He won’t even save himself when he has the chance. Like so many before him, the person you want to see will come up against the powers that be in this world and he. Will. Lose. In fact, he will die. It was wrong then, and it is wrong now.
And what does the man himself have to say about all of it? What does Jesus say when Philip and Andrew come to him to tell him about the Greeks who want to see him? He says, “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” You can forgive Philip and Andrew for failing to offer up a warning. Glorified sounds good. Then he goes on to talk about how a single grain will remain as it is, will never transform into something that bears fruit, unless it is planted in the ground. Only he doesn’t say planted. He says a single grain must die to bear any kind of fruit. The metaphor gets extended. A single life that loves only itself, that exists only for itself is lost. But a life like that that it is rejected, hated for the sake of something far bigger than just itself, that’s a life worth keeping. That is a life caught up in something that is eternal.
Who knows what those Greeks were looking for when they came to see Jesus. Maybe they were simply curious to see the cool rabbi they had heard about who could raise the dead, and who some people even said could turn water into wine; the non-conformist who talked to the wrong people and touched the wrong people and ate with the wrong people and drove the respectable ones crazy. What they were about to witness was how uncool things were going to get for Jesus.
One of the best movie scenes in the last twenty years takes place between the young, would-be rock and roll writer William Miller and his older, wiser mentor, Lester Banks in the film Almost Famous. William has been touring with the band Stillwater in order to write a piece about them for Rolling Stone magazine. In the process, William got close to the guys in the band, even thought they might be friends. It made him feel cool. Only none of it was true. “Hey,” Lester tells his protégé when he calls from the road, “I met you. You are not cool.” “I know,” William replies, “even when I thought I was, I knew I wasn’t.” “Listen,” Lester tells William, “the only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone when we’re uncool.”
When Jesus talks about being lifted up from the earth and drawing all people to him, John wants to make sure that we understand what he’s talking about. He’s talking about how he’s going to die. He’s talking about his crucifixion. It doesn’t get any less cool than that. The power of the cross that we are making our way toward in Lent is the power of the only true currency in this bankrupt world. If we would see Jesus, truly see him, we must see that. Not so that we can feel guilty, or horrified. So that we can see something of ourselves, the part that scares us more than anything else. See for ourselves the pain and rejection we fear and avoid at all costs in order to be cool, in order to be accepted, in order to belong. Because even when we like to think we are, we know we’re not. It turns out that what draws us to Jesus, what draws the world to him, is what he shares with us when he is uncool, and when we are too. To see him like that also means being seen by him, and being set free from having to be something that we’re not so that we can be who we really are. So that we can put to death everything we’re not, and bear the kind of fruit that will last for eternity.