Gospel Text

John 12:20-33

SERMON TEXT

3/17/24, John 12:20-33

Fifth Sunday in Lent, St Patrick’s Day, Faith Lutheran Church. Pastor Shaun O’Reilly

I love that today’s gospel reading has these visceral descriptions about interacting with the savior. First, the visiting Greeks say: We wish to see Jesus. And then, later in the passage, there’s the moment when Jesus says, I, when I am lifted up, will draw all people to myself.

It’s these descriptions of connection: through seeing; and through being absorbed or drawn in. “We wish to see Jesus… When I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself.” 

These phrases are so rich and vivid, I want to share with you an artistic description of longing and sight and revelation that is close to my heart. This depiction comes from Eugene O’Neill’s Long days journey tonight. He was a New York playwright of Irish descent. In 1957 he won the Pulitzer Prize, after his death, for this play,. And in it, in Act four, this character Edmund, has a heartfelt conversation with his father, telling him of divine moments when he’s been at sea and his dreams have been visualized, kind of like “we wish to see.”

Edmund says:

“Several times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I have had the experience. Became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint’s vision of beatitude. Like a veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see — and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again.”

Now, how absolutely spiritual does all of that sound? The lifting back of the veil, a glimpse of revelation. Where you see something, and you become something. 

I love that these greeks say this, and I wonder why they came to the disciples saying this: We wish to see Jesus. 

I wonder, did they want an autograph? Like waiting for T Swift after a concert? Did they want to see him because they had a problem with something they had heard we wish to see Jesus and we want to talk to him about all the trouble he’s starting?

Well, in context Jesus had just had his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, they probably wanted to see what it is what all about. But I wonder today if it is for you if it is like it is for me. Their longing stirs up my longing.

“We wish to see Jesus!”     Yes, Yes I do too! 

I’ve seen before, but hearing you long for it, I long for it again.

Do you long for it?

I wonder if it stirred up the longing of the disciples. 

In biblical greek, the word for disciples means “learner.” And you all know what it’s like to learn and be instructed, sometimes it becomes rote, and tiresome, and systematized. Did it wake the disciples up to have these foreign visitors coming in, hearts full of longing of what could become, and saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

Fun fact, I was walking my dog this week, and I was dictating back to my phone parts of my sermon as a draft, and at one point when I said “Sir we wish to see Jesus” Siri chimed in from my iPhone saying “sorry I didn’t get that!”

Ha. I know. Siri. But this is my wish. 

If you turn to the Lutherans saying, “We wish to see Jesus” – which I hope you do – you’re going to get back a theology I love. And that I think is true. 

It is that Seeing Jesus and Experiencing God is not some quest for heaven or the realms above. It is the God of flesh that has come right close to us and met us. The divine gives us our daily bread, and walks with us in our days. 

So much so that it is said that when someone asked Martin Luther what he would do if he knew the world was ending tomorrow, he responded, I would go out in my garden and plant a tree. 

Like, I would not be staring at the sky waiting for a sign, but I would be here and now, with the things of this earth, like God is, and doing the good work. 

This is, too, our sacramental theology, our sacred connection. The water of baptism. The grain and grapes of our communion. We meet God in these earthy elements that we taste and see and feel and experience together, and it is not some other worldly longing, it is a gift come right down to be with us where we are. 

Which is what Jesus answers to the crowds and the disciples wanting to see. 

 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. ³²And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” ³³He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

It’s happening now, he says. You and I delivered from evil, re-created to be agents of mercy. “And when I am lifted up” – his lifting on the cross – “I will draw all people to myself.”  

Friends in Christ, if we wish to see and experience and live in Jesus the divine, it is Cross-high.

Meaning, it’s right here.

In fact, it’s right here in all of our suffering and pain and longing too. 

We do not look to distant days of the future, we do not look beyond our cosmos,  look to your Lord on the cross, here today, loving you by giving Godself, shared among us as we say “body of Christ for you.”

Look to your God loving you from the cross and be drawn in. 

“When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.”

Do you know the true story of St Patrick? He wasn’t Irish first, God forbid. He was from Great Britain, and was taken by Irish raiders into slavery and servitude in Ireland for six years. 

He was a shepherd there, and became devout in his faith. The legend is that he was longing and praying for the people to come to know Jesus Christ there. 

After six years he escaped his enslavement and found a way back to Britain. There, though, he had a revelation. A saint’s vision, Eugene O’Neill might say.

He was to go join the Christian mission that existed for Ireland and groups that were going back to encourage the small group of Christians there and to spread the word, to tell the story. 

Patrick’s story is one of a man, taken into bondage, as good as dead. Brought back to life and society and hope. Only then to receive the call to go and serve his enslavers with a bondage-breaking message: Turn to Christ, restorer of the broken! 

Could it be that this faithful one becomes so revered in that land because his God-given vision was for what was there, and for the people, and as a shepherd, caring for what is right before you, and his vision was cross-high

?

He loved like Christ loved, self-sacrificing, returning to his oppressors. And proclaiming the message of our savior, who by his cross draws all people to himself. 

Today, do not hesitate to be drawn again. To taste and see the love of God for you. 

At the beginning of our Lenten journey we drew ashes on each other’s foreheads. We drew the shape of the cross. Saying: “this is the road we walk.” Not just seeing Jesus, but going, and to go with Jesus means the cross, and our giving up, and our inevitable death. Our Lord says, “unless a grain falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

Be drawn in again today to the story, life, death, life again. This is the story of the love of God for the world.