We Would Like to See Jesus

John 12: 20-36, page 762
Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the Feast. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. “Sir,” they said, “we would like to see Jesus.”
Philip went to tell Andrew; Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus.
Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.
The one who loves his or her life will lose it, while the one who hates his or her life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant will also be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.
“Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!”
Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.
Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. But I , when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.
The crowd spoke up, “We have heard from the Law that the Christ will remain forever, so how can you say, “The Son of Man must be lifted up’? Who is this ‘Son of Man’?”
Then Jesus told them, “You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. The one who walks in the dark does not know where he or she is going. Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons and daughters of light.”
When he had finished speaking, Jesus left and hid himself from them.
Sermon
On more than one occasion, I must confess, I’ve made fun of the great 20th Century governor of Texas Miriam A. Ferguson. Though she was a college graduate in a time when so many women were left uneducated, was the second female governor in United States history and the first female governor of the great state of Texas, was by most accounts, a great leader, a populist, a fiscal conservative, and a great opponent of the Ku Klux Klan, is perhaps most famous for saying, “If English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for Texas schoolchildren.”
Jesus, you see, did not speak English. He spoke a language called Aramaic.
But seminary students, trained to read scripture, in the language scripture was first uttered in, learn to read, not Aramaic but Hebrew and Greek.
I knew why I was supposed to learn Hebrew, but on my first day of Greek class I had no idea why we were being forced to learn Greek and I couldn’t figure out why we weren’t learning Aramaic.
I was too embarrassed to ask anyone why we were learning Greek however, so I just went on learning it, not knowing why I was learning it, until one day I overheard a conversation on the subject: “Greek was the universal written language of Jesus’ world.” So the Gospels were not written in Aramaic as it was not a written language, not Hebrew as only Jews learned to read it, but Greek, the language of Asia Minor, Ethiopia, and Spain. It was at the time of Jesus, the written language of the Roman Empire, what Latin was to the world for much of the Common Era during the great expansions of the Roman Catholic Church, and what English is to the world today.
From Brookwood and Parkview to schools in Tokyo and Paris, even rock bands in Kabul, Afghanistan, English is the closest thing the world has today to a universal written language.
It is the language of the most powerful nation on earth. It is the language used in the most exciting movies anyone can see; it is the language of President Barak Obama, William Shakespeare, and Wall Street.
People who have something to say to the world today are saying it in English, just as people who had something that was worth saying in the ancient world wrote it in Greek. It was the language that people who were educated enough to be literate learned to read, it was the language of Homer and Plato, the language of democracy, power, empire, and influence.
So these Greeks go to Philip, we assume that something about living in Bethsaida in Galilee meant that he could understand their Greek or that they all could speak Hebrew, these Greeks go to Philip in the hope of seeing Jesus but it’s important to think about why.
They didn’t need Jesus the teacher – they were Greek and they had the greatest philosophers of the time – and as we still learn of them today you might argue that these Greeks had the best philosophers of any time. They had Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Diogenes who said that life was best lived impulsively, follow your desires he said – and should you take the opposite slant the Greeks also had the philosophy of the Stoics, suppressing passion, living life to the fullest by avoiding emotional investment.
Unlike so many I assume that these Greeks also did not need Jesus the healer to deliver a miraculous healing as they had Hippocrates and the most modern medicine available to help them avoid suffering, illness, and disease.
Nor did these Greeks need Jesus the Prince of Peace as they already had democracy, they trusted the voice of the people, and were able to avoid the tyranny of leaders too powerful through election.
They didn’t need any of the things that people often go to Jesus looking for, so maybe we should wonder why they went up saying, “We would like to see Jesus.”
As like the Greeks, you could say that we don’t need Jesus to teach us anything, anything worth knowing is already in English.
Like those Greeks who went to see him, you could say that we don’t need Jesus to heal common ailments necessarily, we have doctors and hospitals.
And you could say that we don’t need Jesus the Prince of Peace to deliver us from tyranny as we have the right to vote and can deliver ourselves from tyranny.
But maybe like us, this group of Greeks still knew that something was missing.
That despite all their wisdom there were still some questions left unanswered.
That despite all their medicine there was still something that plagued them.
That despite all their democracy there was still some power they still could not touch.
That despite all they had to enhance life something was wrong.
So Christ gives them death: “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.”
Everything in Greek culture, and possibly even more so in our culture, is focused, not on embracing this truth but on avoiding it – our literature celebrates life, our medicine extends it, our government’s purpose is to provide for the means of attaining life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – so what Jesus has to offer is not only foreign, it is completely different from anything else our culture has to offer.
The way of Christ is not the way of our culture, as Christ does not fear death!
What Christ offered those Greeks must have seemed foolishness then, but Paul would say, “the message of the cross is foolishness… but the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”
What we have in Christ is foolishness to much of the world – that life is to be lived, not by fearing suffering, hardship, and death, but that life is to be lived with all of these things in plain view for death is not to be feared as death is not the end but the pathway to the new beginning.
That what the world fears more than all else has been concurred for Christ has risen from the dead – out of the tomb has come life.
Out of hardship has come new life.
Out of shadow comes hope.
The Greeks came to see Jesus, and in him they found something they had not seen before.
In him may you find the truth, that out of hardship comes new life, and that hope bursts forth from shadow, and that life streams from the tomb.
May you see Jesus, the light, and become sons and daughters of the light.
Amen.