April 4, 2003
Jeremiah 31:313-34 + Hebrews 5:7-9 + John 12:20-31
They wanted to “see” Jesus all right, just like the apostles on the mountain top saw him in glory. They wanted to “see” this rabbi/preacher who was such a sensation. They wanted to see this one who out talked the Pharisees and humbled the Scribes. And what might they have said after they heard him that talk of falling to the ground and being lifted up? “Whoa, we just want to see Jesus, not get all involved in this stuff.” “We just want to see Jesus, not get mixed up in this service and forgiveness, this turn the other cheek, this repentance, this losing one’s life, this talk of suffering…..Let’s see some glory here, some real Power!” What they get is “thunder”: another voice from heaven.
Then the final words: talk of being executed, which is what “being lifted up means to them.” I imagine those Greeks were halfway back to Athens before the end of that thunder roll.
Of course, this isn’t history here, and by the time John writes this Gospel, plenty of Greeks and other gentiles had come through the apostles and their witness to “see” Jesus; but not with their eyes. For the “seeing” of Jesus means “understanding” much as when something has been explained to us we say, “Oh, I see.” With that understanding comes then the decision to look and watch or follow and participate. Do these Greeks, you and me who are Gentiles drawn by the witness of the Apostles, want to look or do we want to go further? This Gospel calls us to distinguish between admiring Jesus and following him. It looks at whether or not we just keep our distance or actually step in and become what we admire.
In John’s Gospel there are twenty-six references to “the hour”, by which Jesus means not a time of day, but the beginning of the reason for which he has come among us: the redemption of sinners and his return of them to God. It is as though we have been stolen or sold into slavery,
and now someone has come to set us free and return us to the One with whom we rightly belong. This the nature of a Covenant – an agreement that ends slavery and binds the one freed to the one who sets free. With Moses, the covenant marked the end of Egypt’s slavery and the beginning of Israel’s freedom to become God’s people.
With Jesus, the new Moses, a greater covenant is struck that sets free those enslaved to sin. This is our Redemption. We have come now in Lent to the “hour”, the hour when we shall determine who is here to see and who is here to understand: who is here to look at Jesus, and who is here to become “Christos” (anointed). In another week we shall begin through ancient prayer and ritual our celebration of the Covenant that has set us free and marks forever our status as God’s own people restored to friendship with God by the redeeming action of Jesus Christ. It is our “hour” too – when all that he has done for us is claimed, remembered, and celebrated.
The week we call “Holy” is just that. Time set aside for God alone. The three days of that week mark the “hour” of our redemption. The rituals of those days are really simply one great prayer of remembrance and thanksgiving. What begins on Thursday, ends with Easter’s dawn when we keep the Great Vigil. From the washing of feet; to the Passion’s Proclamation and Cross’s Veneration; to the Light and the Water we drawn. There is no place for followers of Jesus other than their churches at those hours. Like disciples who sleep through his prayer in the Garden, some will declare “it is too long”, they are “too tired”, “three days of prayer in one week is too much.” But I say to you what Jesus says to those who would follow him: “Stay here and watch with me. The hour has come.” Those who must work those evenings to care for their families already share in prayer and life of Jesus Christ out of love and service. Those who are ill also share in the suffering remembered and celebrated here; but those of us who have the gift of time and want to see Jesus more than just look at him will make the week truly “holy”.
To take communion week after week and be absent from the celebration that recalls and renews the giving of that gift is puzzling. To make the sign of the cross and fail to be here to kiss the cross is curious at best. To recite the Creed and take our place among the Baptized week after week and then ignore the great vigil from which our faith springs like light in the darkness calls into question the communal faith the elect have come seeking here. With one week to prepare and deepen our Lenten resolves, we set our faces toward Jerusalem and our sights on Jesus Christ. We follow in his footsteps with the assurance that he will be faithful to his promise: “Where I am, there will my servant be.”