St.
Paul’s United Church Sunday,
April 2, 2006
Catching Sight of Jesus – Rev. David Mundy
Jeremiah 31:31-34
John 12:20-27
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Have you ever bumped into someone famous? By that I mean someone who is
readily recognized: a movie or television personality, or a musician, or an
athlete or even a politician.
I started to think about it and I’m a bit surprised at how often it has
happened to me. As a young man wandering the streets of London, England I was
suddenly face to face with Moshe Dayan, the great military leader of Israel.
His famous eye-patch and the bodyguards were the clues that I had the right
guy.
One Saturday afternoon a few years ago I popped out of my study in the
downtown church I served in Sudbury to grab a snack and there were four Bare
Naked Ladies walking toward me. I mean the Canadian music group of course!
We were all alone on the street and I wondered if I should whistle If I
Had a Million Dollars to prove that I knew who they were.
When we lived in Halifax, we regularly saw “personalities” including the
gang from the comedy/satire show This Hour Has Twenty Two Minutes. Kathy
Jones lived in our neighbourhood, so we would see her walking her little dog.
And one day at the gym I glanced beside me and there was Rick Mercer, now of
the Mercer Report, working out with the help of a personal trainer. I
suggested that he would be able to bench press twenty five percent more if he
didn’t wear plaid shorts, which I thought was funny, but I could tell from his
look that he felt I should leave the humour to him.
I was actually famous myself for about fifteen seconds, although it was
a case of mistaken identity. On one of my first trips to Israel I was walking
on a busy street in Jerusalem with my group and our guide. We passed a group of
teenagers speaking in an animated fashion in Hebrew. Our guide laughed and told
me that one of the boys had just informed his friends that I was So-And-So,
star of the Israeli national basketball team.
It has been said that we have a cult of celebrity in our time. We are thrilled
when we get a glimpse of our heroes, even if we know nothing about them or
enough to realize that they are anything but role-models.
Perhaps this has always been true. Through the ages, kings and emperors
have created spectacles so that their subjects would adore them. Wonder
workers, holy men and women, have attracted
crowds who wanted healing and hope. There were and
still are times when people are simply curious to know what the fuss is about
and join the crowds.
What would it have been like to be at the edge of the throngs that
followed and surged around Jesus? This morning we heard about some people,
Greeks in the land of the Jews, who must have heard about Jesus and wanted to
meet him. This story in chapter twelve of John’s gospel follows immediately
after the dramatic events of Palm Sunday when crowds lined the streets and
shouted his praise. Lots of pilgrims from around the ancient world would come
to Jerusalem for the Jewish festivals. Some of the religious leaders witnessed all
this and said: “you see, you can do nothing . . . look the world has gone
after him!” John 12:19. So it seems as though everyone knows about
Jesus.
These Greeks approach one of the disciples, Philip, and ask “Sir, we
would like to see Jesus.” For eleven years I saw that phrase every Sunday I
stood behind the pulpit in one church I served. It had been carved in the
pulpit where only the preachers could see it as a reminder of their purpose on
Sunday morning.
This is a curious story because even though it begins with these people
who say they want to see Jesus, they disappear almost as quickly. Maybe they
listened for a while and had no idea what Jesus was getting at. Perhaps they
tell Jesus that they love his work and get an autograph and go on their way.
Whatever the case, Jesus ends up speaking with his disciples, the same
old gang which has been with him for three years or so. He teaches them about
his death and resurrection, which he compares to a grain of wheat which
germinates after being pushed down into the earth. And he tells this small
group what we heard a few weeks ago in a very different context that if they
want to find their lives they will have to lose them. It’s hard to tell how much the disciples really got out of what Jesus said in the
moment, but they were there and they saw and they listened and in time they
began to understand.
Have you caught sight of Jesus lately? Strange
question really. Here you are in church, which is Jesus Central. And it
may be that all of us figure that if we are here often enough we will not only
see Jesus, we will hear him and understand his message.
That doesn’t always happen does it? And
honestly we aren’t always sure which Jesus we are talking about. Is it rabbi Jesus? Jesus prophet and teacher?
Jesus the healer. Jesus the victor
over sin and death. At times it is both confusing and challenging to
focus on Jesus in a way that leads us toward him rather than away from him.
And at times we aren’t sure we want to be disciples who actually see and
hear the one who is master and friend because losing our lives to find them
doesn’t sound all that positive. I hope we can agree that our encounters with
Jesus are meant to be more than the occasional celebrity sighting. We would
like to see Jesus, not just at a distance or in passing but as the one who will
teach us and whose life and death and resurrection changes us. That is always
much more challenging. Remember a few years ago when the late pope, John Paul
II was at Downsview with hundreds of thousands in
attendance, just to get a glimpse of this spiritual leader? While the crowds
may have felt a spiritual uplift from being surrounded by other Christians, most only saw the
pontiff from a distance. We can always wonder whether there is a lasting effect
from these events.
What should be clear from our gospel reading is that our faith as
Christians is not a celebrity sighting. When we come and claim “we would like
to see Jesus,” we will sit down with him to listen and to learn.
Which Jesus do we want to see and to meet and to experience? It is, it seems to me, the Jesus who saw others so clearly and
was able to touch their lives so often. The Jesus who as he made his way to
Jerusalem saw Zaccheus up in the tree, or the Jesus
who healed the nameless woman who reached out of the crowd to touch his
robe, or the Jesus who found a boy whose
picnic lunch became enough to feed thousands. Each one of these and so many
more know that they were accepted and loved and healed in Jesus who was the
Christ.
The theologian Luke Timothy Johnson reminds us that the way Jesus is
seen is complex and that it changes through history and even in our own
personal perception through a lifetime. But he encourages us to look on Jesus not just a historical figure trapped in the
past, to be studied like Napoleon or Michelangelo, but as the living presence
who continues to be with us as our teacher and friend and saviour.
Our promise is that if we spend enough time with Jesus and are willing
to be his disciples our hearts will be changed. This is the last Sunday where
we will hear a passage from the Old Testament that speaks of the covenants or
promises of God which we have symbolized with the rainbow. We were given the
promise that the way and the law of God will not only be inscribed on tablets
of stone, they will be in our hearts. For the people who first heard this
hopeful, gospel message from the prophet Jeremiah the heart was the place where
emotions and intellect and will and responsibility all came together.
As Christians Jesus is the new covenant quite literally embodied –
incarnate as we are inclined to say in our Christian faith.
Next Sunday we will actually go backward in the story of Jesus; last
days and listen to the adulation and praise of the crowds on the Palm Sunday
road. We will also be part of the angry mob which yells “Crucify him!”
For today we will see Jesus, human and divine, who calls us to a life of
discipleship and commitment.
If you accept that you are a disciple of Jesus you might ask how clearly
you see him in your life these days and how your heart, your place of emotion
and intellect and will and responsibility is being transformed in relationship
with Christ. This may be even be the moment when you move from the edge of the
crowd to open your heart to Jesus in a new way.
Luke Johnson uses the language of the heart to describe our
apprenticeship with Jesus:
We shall not have the strength or
purity of heart to engage the world in this fashion if we do no in the name of
Jesus spend time in silent prayer and meditation on the mysteries of his life
and death and resurrection. We shall not have the courage to open our hearts
and homes unless we practice the sharing of our possessions in a disciplined
and discerning fashion.
Some of you are old enough to remember the Sixties and the musical Godspell, which included the song Day
by Day. The chorus goes like this:
Day by
day, dear Lord,
Three
things I pray . . .
To see thee more clearly To love thee more dearly To follow thee more nearly
This song is actually an adaption of a much older prayer written by Saint Richard of
Chichester, who died in 1255, ends with the words
O most
merciful Friend, Brother, and Redeemer; may I know
thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, and follow thee more nearly.
We can all catch sight of Jesus this
morning and we will take up our crosses and follow.