blip : Being Lonely In Paradise :

I am preaching again this week on the lectionary text from John’s gospel: Jn. 12:20-30. It’s been a pretty difficult passage for me to wrestle with the past week. It’s one of those passages that defies attempts at a pleasant message, at least that’s what I found. Is there an easy way to preach about Jesus’ call for followers to die like he did?

Anyhow, I imagine somebody out there will stumble across this sermon as they prepare to preach this Sunday. A message to you: use whatever you want from my sermon—cut and paste, or preach the whole thing word for word. I don’t care. Just let me know how it goes.
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Isaac: “We Would Like to See Jesus” (John 12:20-33).

“We would like to see Jesus.” These Greeks come up to Philip and ask to see Jesus (v20).

We are standing with those Greeks, those outside the promises of Israel, part of the goyim, the nations…foreigners. And we hear strange stories about this Jesus who some people say is the Messiah of Israel. But he isn’t a Messiah like a lot of the Jews expect—there’s no exclusive nationalism in his message about the kingdom of his Father. And we want to see him—we hear that he associates with the pagans; we hear that his kingdom might just have room for those like us, those outside Abraham’s offspring.

We hear this and our bodies ache with longing, a possibility too good to be true. We’re hungry. We’re thirsty. We long for the bread of life—bread that truly satisfies. To see him. To see his face. Face to face. The intimacy of encounter—as our gaze meets his and we are draw into those refreshing waters, our eyes swimming in his. “Our hearts are restless until their find their rest in Thee”—that’s what Augustine prayed in his Confessions. We long for the embrace of Son, our participation in the eternal love of the Father, Son, and Spirit. We long for the Son of Man to come in all his glory.

So, there we are, with the Greeks, and we get up enough courage, the faith, to approach one of Jesus’ intimates: Philip. And we ask him, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” We would like to see Jesus. That’s us, right? We want to see him. We long for him. Ok, one question: Why? Think about it: why do you want to see him? Feel the weight of the question. Let it sink deep—passed all that abstract, surface religiosity. Not the typical evangelistic question: “Do you love Jesus?” or “Do you know Jesus?” But a question that unsettles us where we’re at: Why do you want to see him? Why?

If we follow John’s story up until this point, we can feel our desires forming, our expectations shaped. We find ourselves along side the characters in the story, as they experience the wonders of this Jesus. (1) At a wedding, Jesus changes water into really good wine. (2) And we watch as Jesus disturbs the oppressive system of exchange in the Temple courts. (3) Jesus associates with Samaritan women, outsiders, lowlifes. (4) He even transgresses the boundaries between friend and enemy when he heals the son of a powerful Roman official, a figurehead of foreign occupation, of oppression. (5) He heals a crippled man at the pools of Bethesda. (6) And he feeds the multitudes with 5 loaves and 2 fish. And, probably the most incredible event of all, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead!

Who is this man, this Jesus? Isn’t everyone saying that he might be the one Israel has been waiting for? Could he be the Messiah, the redeemer of the Jews? That’s the expectation that John keeps building as we come to our passage for this afternoon. We want to see him because he is the Messiah. He is the one who will set God’s people free from foreign dominion, free from the prince of this world, and lead the people into life without end, unceasing flourishing. This is the king, the Messiah, who will triumph over all the enemies.

And that’s what the people say in the preceding passage—the triumphal entry. Jesus is entering Jerusalem and the crowds run out to meet their redeemer, their liberator, the long-awaited Messianic king of Israel. Jerusalem will finally explode the iron grasp of Rome. They say, “Blessed is the King of Israel!” (12:13). And, in an aside, John explains Jesus’ donkey-riding with a passage from Zechariah: “Do not be afraid, O Daughter of Zion; see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt” (12:15).

Can you feel the expectation?... the anticipation? The time has come. It’s go time. Game time. And the people explode with excitement on the street that heads to Jerusalem—swarms of people shouting, waving things in the air… This is it The enemies of God’s people will be destroyed, and all the nations will stream into Jerusalem to sing their praises to the God of Israel. This will be the Messianic age, the eschatological age… heaven on earth.

Is this why you want to see him? Is that what you want to see? A Jesus ready for battle, armed and dangerous, prepared to vanquish the enemies of God. A Jesus that looks like Rambo or the Terminator or Che Guevera or a president in a flight suit on an aircraft-carrier. That’s what I want, if I’m honest with myself. Everyday I pick up the paper and see that this world is falling apart. More deaths in Baghdad. A bunch of rich, white kids from Duke rape a mom who took a de-humanizing job so she could provide for her two kids and pay for classes at NC Central. Or, I don’t even have to look in the paper. The other day I wanted to see this glorious Jesus do his thing when I went to the top floor of Duke Regional Hospital—that’s the psyche ward—and spent time with a friend, a fellow student who is suffocating under the dark clouds of depression.

I want to see Jesus. I want to see this Jesus ready for war against God’s enemies, that complex web of evil, the prince of this world, that squelching spirit of death. I’m tired of the captivity. I’m weary of oppression. The darkness overwhelms. Like the Psalmist says, “How long can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?” (Ps.137:4). And I’m only 26 years old. How much more tragedy? How much more pain? How much more suffering do I have to watch? When will it end? “Excuse me, Philip. I would like to see Jesus.”

And Jesus answers the cries of the people. He says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (Jn.12:23). The time is now. Here he is—ready to vanquish the reign of darkness with his glorious light. Towards the end of the passage Jesus says, “Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out” (v31). The people are ready to rise up and join the Messiah in a revolution. The people are buzzing with excitement. Wildfire. And I’m on the edge of my seat shedding tears at the thought of a victory over pain and death and suffering that is too wonderful for words.

And in the frenzy of ecstatic longing, Jesus says something that defies all expectation, all assumptions of victory… No one would ever think of this next turn, this abrupt halt in the triumphal march. He says,

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 person who loves his life will lose it, while the one who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me. (vv24-26)

And in case we are too dense to get the drift of what Jesus is talking about, John adds something at the end of our passage to make it crystal clear: “He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die” (v33). Is this the one we have come to see? Is this the Messiah? But why then is he talking about death? It’s not supposed to be like this.

And here’s the scandal of Jesus, the provocation of the gospel. Jesus comes to die at the hands of the enemies, and through this death he dismantles the dominion of darkness, the reign of evil. And through his resurrection, unceasing life is made available for all. But the victory passes through death—and that goes against all our expectations. Redemption passes through death. Christ is killed in Jerusalem. He isn’t crowned in a temple or palace after the so-called triumphal entry. No. He’s lead to Golgotha, outside the kingly splendor of Jerusalem. And dies. Nailed to the cross. Crown of thorns on his head, not gold. What sort of victory is this? How does this death reveal God’s glory? “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (v23).

When I come to see Jesus, I expect to see a bright shinning light, a wondrous beauty, magnificent splendor. A victorious king. And I come to Jesus to hear about his victory over evil and pain and suffering. I want to see a decisive victory. But the good news Jesus proclaims cuts against those expectations. And the cut runs deep, touching the very stability of my life, and sets me on a bewildering journey into the undiscovered country, as Hamlet put it as he contemplated death. I’m left unsettled.

We come to Jesus for an answer. We come to Jesus with our requests, with our desires for his decisive victory right now over the prince of this world who attempts to suffocate us with evil—bad news everyday. I would like to see Jesus so I can catch a glimpse of this conquering king and return home with my confidence restored, knowing that Jesus is taking his throne. But as I come, as we see this Jesus, we find that his throne is a cross. And if the shock of that sight is not enough, he tells us that we can’t go back to the way things were, to our armchair devotion—reading about the darkness outside our four walls and looking through our Bibles for the right answers to everyone’s problems, without ever leaving our controlled environment, our stable social lives: “The one who loves his life will lose it, while the one who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant will be” (v26).

As the Greeks said, “We want to see Jesus.” Do you want to see him? I know I want to. But we have to realize that seeing comes at a cost. It will cost us our lives. “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.” We come to see Jesus and his glorious kingdom as we walk down his path, a journey that ends with a cross. And as we give up our lives, the control of our direction, we may come to see that our path through this present darkness is actually a river of life flowing from that resurrected body of Jesus. But there is no way to know the hope of this eternal life other than to join those other followers out there who give up their dreams for life, their expectations of the good life, for the sake of Christ’s cross.