Let Go and Rethink

Let Go and Rethink

Our Gospel lesson starts today with Greeks saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” So who were these Greeks, and why does John mention them? What is their significance?

It’s worth noting that, after they say, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus,” we never hear about them again. We don’t know if they ever did see Jesus.

The reading today is from John 12. If we look in John 11 to get the context for the reading, we find the narrative of the death of Lazarus. Lazarus was a friend of Jesus, and and Jesus knew that he was dying. Jesus was called by the sisters, but he arrived too late, and Lazarus had already died.

Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus came stumbling out of the tomb, encumbered with his grave clothes. Jesus said,”Unbind him, and let him go.”

You would think that anyone who had seen that would immediately become a believer, and many of the bystanders did exactly that. The word got out. Jesus became more of a threat to the system than he was before.

The Pharisees and chief priests didn’t want everyone to believe in Jesus. Jesus was a threat to their power and influence, and he was willing to do things like overturn the tables of the money changers. From their perspective, Jesus was a problem, and to make things worse, he was gaining momentum.

The Pharisees and priests decided they needed to get rid of the guy. This is all pretty abstract. They are just talking about how someone is going to need to do something. Then we have the Palm Sunday story, with Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem and the people shouting:

“Hosanna!

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”

Then we see the Pharisees once again–huddled together, trying to figure out what to do. They said:

“You see, you can do nothing.

LOOK, THE WORLD HAS GONE AFTER HIM.”

When John tells us this little story about the Greeks wanting to see Jesus, he is showing that it really was true. It was not just a few locals who were following Jesus. People from far away were looking for introductions.

I have wondered before why the Pharisees were so proactive here. Why weren’t the people in Germany as proactive when Hilter was amassing strength? How did Pol Pot or Stalin make it to be evil people of great power and influence? There were Pharisees eager to stop Jesus. Why didn’t Hitler have powerful groups of people like the Pharisees getting together to shut him down? I have a theory here, and it has to do with who the threat is and what is being threatened. Jesus had poor people of little influence following him. The threat was to the establishment. Hitler was intentionally gaining political power and looking for allies in the establishment.

Interestingly enough, the chief priests and Pharisees weren’t satisfied just to kill Jesus. They decided to kill Lazarus too, “since it was on account of (Lazarus) that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.” Lazarus was a walking, talking witness to Jesus and his God-given power.

The New Testament doesn’t tell us whether the chief priests and Pharisees carried out their plot to kill Lazarus. I don’t think they did. For one thing, if they had killed Lazarus, I would expect the Bible to mention it. For another thing, they didn’t need to kill Lazarus if they killed Jesus. That would be enough to eliminate the threat.

Jesus’ disciples told Jesus that the Greeks wanted to see him. Jesus responded with this odd statement:

“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.

Very truly, I tecross_with_wheatll 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.”

“The hour has come.” In this Gospel we hear three times that the time had not yet come

* At Cana, Jesus said to his mother, “My hour has not yet come.”

* In Jerusalem, “they tried to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him, because his hour had not yet come.”

* In the temple, “no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.”
Now we hear that the hour has arrived. Jesus says,”The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Then he says something cryptic about a grain of wheat.
That’s what happened, too. It didn’t happen immediately. People weren’t drawn to Jesus right after his death on the cross. His disciples were confused and afraid. They were confused, because they had invested so much faith in Jesus, and suddenly Jesus was dead. They were afraid that the authorities who killed Jesus would come after them next, so they went into hiding.

But then the resurrected Jesus appeared in their midst. They had watched him die, but now he was alive as anyone could be. The disciples became brave, and faithful and bold.

So Jesus talks about the grain that falls into the ground and dies so that it might bear much fruit. Then he says:

“Those who love their life lose it,

and those who hate their life in this world

will keep it for eternal life.”

If our primary focus is looking out for Number One, we will lose our eternal life.

If our lives are centered on what we can give rather than what we can get, our Heavenly Father will bless us with eternal life. The message is this: The road to glory is servanthood. We have choices to make. Do we live as servants of Jesus or do we take care of ourselves?

That grain of wheat has to be transformed before it can be what God intended it to be. It has to die to one thing to produce fruit. I was struck as I read this by the examples of this in the Bible. It is a common enough theme. Jonah hated the people of Ninevah and wanted them destroyed. He had to let that go to be the prophet God wanted him to be. The disciples wanted Jesus to be a military leader to defeat the Roman power. They had to let go of that hope and rethink what it meant to be disciples before they could really respond to God’s call.

I don’t know if anyone remembers Albert Schweitzer today, but we should.  He is in the Holy Women, Holy Men calendar of Saints, and so we get to read about him every year if we keep up with the calendar. Schweitzer studied both theology and music. He was the son of a Lutheran pastor. He soon became a famous musical scholar and organist. He enjoyed a comfortable life.

But at age thirty, wanting to do more, Schweitzer enrolled in a seven-year course of study to become a medical doctor. Upon graduation, instead of setting up practice in Paris, he raised his own support to serve as a medical missionary in Africa. He set up a medical clinic in a primitive area. He and his wife served thousands of Africans who would otherwise have never enjoyed any sort of medical care.

Schweitzer’s work was rewarding, but it was also frustrating. Too often, he found himself treating patients who would not follow the course of treatment that he prescribed. At one point, he threw himself into a chair and complained to his assistant,”What a blockhead I was to come out here to doctor savages like these!” Whereupon his assistant quietly remarked, “Yes, doctor, here on earth you are a great blockhead, but not in heaven.”

Schweitzer is a controversial person to have on the calendar of saints. He wrote a book in 1906 which does not contain the most orthodox theology. At that point in his life, Schweitzer was not going to find himself on the calendar. He was more of a debunker of the Bible than what we might call a believer. Schweitzer was that grain of wheat I think who died to one thing and produced fruit. We remember him for his years of service and not his writings. His work as a medical missionary was the fruit.

Jesus said,”Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.”

That’s the thought I would like to leave with you today. Jesus said,”Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.”And so he will.

I have said these words in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon preached by Fr. Tom at St. Thomas, Plymouth

March 22, 2015; The Fifth Sunday of Lent