“We wish to see Jesus.” Today some Greeks make a request bigger than they know. Perhaps all of us do the same. Coming to church, week in and week out, making our way to this altar, we state with our actions if not always with our words: “We wish to see Jesus.” This morning, I want to ask you: Do you wish to see Jesus? How does that desire change us? Do we understand that seeing Jesus, really seeing Jesus might ask more of us than we’re ready to offer?
Before I get too much further in this sermon, I do want to reassure you. If you look on the front of the bulletin, you will see the word “Episcopal” before the word church. You haven’t stumbled into a tent revival this morning. There’s no sawdust in the aisle. I am not going to ask you to make your way down to the front, to profess your faith before the congregation. We’re Episcopalians after all. We don’t do altar calls.
Or is that true? Don’t we invite you to the altar each and every week? Part of being a sacramental Christian is to know that we come down this aisle again and again. Every week is an altar call, and the “yes” we say to Jesus is cumulative. Each week we make our way down that dusty track. Each week, each day, each moment, we are invited to say yes. God invites us to be a part of a movement working to bring health, justice, and wholeness. God wants us to bring love into our weary world. God earnestly desires that we know we are loved that we participate in this movement of love. But we have to say yes. Consent matters to God.
The church has sometimes portrayed the choice, “yes” or “no” to Jesus, as something you can say once, and be done. But that kind of “yes,” the quick, the momentary, I don’t believe is the fullness of the “yes” God desires, the “yes” Jesus invites us to make. The “yes” we are invited to is deeper, it is more sustained. It is coming to the altar not once, but again and again. The yes is cumulative. God wants not less than everything, not less than our whole self, our whole life.
There is a story of the desert monastics, the early saints of the first centuries after Jesus. In the story, a young monk came to the desert to see Abba Joseph, a wizened old teacher,
and said to him, ‘Abba as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?’ Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, ‘If you will, you can become all flame.’
I love that Abba Joseph says “you can become all flame” when only his fingers are on fire. The most accomplished mystic teachers know, there is always room to grow. There is always a deeper “yes.”
Did you notice in today’s story, we’re not actually sure whether the Greeks ever got to see Jesus. Philip and Andrew play their game of telephone, but if these seekers ever got to see Jesus, John didn’t record the story. The story is about the request. The story is about the desire. Who they are matters. We know they are Greeks. We know they aren’t who we’d expect. The Gospel is always, always moving out beyond our human boundaries. But this story sets Jesus up to say something powerful, more powerful than our translation today may let on.
I’m going to do something a little controversial now. I’m going to ask you to change the translation of the Bible. Take a look at the bulletin and take out a pen or pencil. In the the second to last sentence, I want you to find the word “people” and cross it out. The word does not appear in the Greek original of John’s Gospel, and the word caries a great deal of meaning here.
If Jesus is saying that on the cross, when his is lifted up, he will draw all “people” to himself than the statement is pretty clear. Christ is concerned with the salvation of each and every last person on earth. While I believe that is true, I think Jesus has something even more radical in mind. “Pantas” the word in Greek has a bigger sense than the “total number of people.” I want us to imagine that all here simply means all, the whole, the entirety.
“When I am lifted up, I will draw all to myself.” All. No qualifier. All. On the cross Jesus offers all of himself. On the cross, God offers all of God-self. All. And in that offering God draws the whole world, the whole cosmos, into the saving embrace of those outstretched arms.
How often in life do we hold a little of ourselves back?
How often do we keep some part hidden, tucked away? How often do we say, “if people knew this about me, they wouldn’t respect me, they might not love me?”
Church can be a particularly difficult spot because, even at a church like this one, we tend to wear a veneer of “presentability.” Even in a church where most of us don’t worry about putting on heels and pearls, sport coats or ties, in a space where we say we worry less about “wearing our Sunday best” maybe we still watch our behavior. At least some of us swear a little less here than in other places, maybe. I say that to make you laugh, but also because church can be, has been, a fraught place, where we suppose we need to make ourselves presentable.
Let me say, God has no interest in your presentable self. God doesn’t care about the version of you that looks like you have your life together. Jesus says, “when I am lifted up from the earth, [I] will draw ALL to myself.” All. No part of you gets to stay hidden. As the collect for purity we often say has it, “to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.” God knows it all. And God invites your whole self into the arms of mercy. I said earlier, God wants you to say yes. God wants you to be part of a movement of love, but first you must know, in every moment God looks at you, at your life, your whole life, and says “yes.”
No bit of you is irredeemable. All of what brought you to this day matters, has shaped you, and all, all, all will help you to follow Jesus. That is the power of God’s yes. Wishing to see Jesus is also about being seen by Jesus. Seen and deeply loved. Your weaknesses, your vulnerabilities, even the times you’ve gotten it wrong, they matter, they are included. No part of your story needs to be left out for God’s sake.
I wish the church better proclaimed this about Jesus: Jesus is God’s deep yes to humanity. Too often the church is busy saying “no.” Too often the church says, “you need to leave this part of you behind.” Too often the church has said, to whole groups of people, “you are are unworthy.” Women, LGBTQ+ people, people of different languages, immigration statuses, abilities, too often the church has made us to feel less than perfect, less than whole, less than loved. For that, I am deeply sorry.
Jesus invites all of who you are. God blesses all of who you are. The work of the church must be to more and more fully mirror God’s inclusive love. Anything less is not the Gospel.
Our world is so quick to say “no.” Our world is so quick to negate, to tear down, to disrespect. Our world is so good at “no.”
The “yes” God wants from us, is a deep “yes” to who we are. Saying, “We wish to see Jesus” naming that desire, is about learning to seek Jesus in each and every moment, in each and every one of our neighbors.
We heard this again here yesterday at a meeting of our immigration ministries. For many of us, yes, the justice concerns matter. We do this work, because we care about the needs of our neighbors, the rights of immigrants. But as stories were shared, we also heard: we do this work because of our faith. The church is not a social service agency, not primarily. When we engage our neighbors, we do so seeking to love. We do so because of a sense we share that God has a call for us. We do justice work because it helps us to see Jesus. Sometimes the work isn’t easy. Sometimes we feel, as St Paul says, like we’re looking in a dim mirror. But deep down it is this desire, the desire for God, that motivates us to keep moving forward. As your priest let me say, it was so good to hear the desire not to lose faith named by so many in the room. Especially just before Holy Week.
We find ourselves today just a week from Palm Sunday. We are on our way to Calvary. In the days to come we will have the opportunity to march together through the streets, to dance with palm branches. We will wash feet, contemplate the hard wood of the cross. Together we will hear again the Easter proclamation: “Christ is risen.” We will come to this altar again, and again.
As we begin this journey together, as we tell the story of Jesus’ last days again, will you make the request of these Greeks your own. Can we quiet the busyness, the chaotic din of our days name the desire for ourselves? Do we have the boldness to ask in our prayers, in our work for justice, and every time we come to this altar: “we wish to see Jesus?”
Mike Angell 