The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 17, 2024
In the name of God: Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. Amen.
A few years ago I had the great privilege to make a pilgrimage with a group of colleagues to Canterbury Cathedral in Southeast England, the see of the bishops of Canterbury, the place where Gregory I sent Augustin of Canterbury to Christianize the English—really re-Christianize—the gospel wasn’t entirely new to them in the 5th Century. It is the foundational location, the beacon light, of the English Church, just fifty miles from Calais by ferry or tunnel and a fast train ride to London. It’s a pastoral part of England, beautiful countryside and farm land, pastures and gardens, and it was a joy to be there for Ash Wednesday—to read the psalms at Morning Prayer and to hear the choir sing the canticles at Evensong, to celebrate the Eucharist daily in the crypt, and, on Ash Wednesday, to receive ashes in that sacred place—to worship as the Church has for two millennia, in a place where people have prayed for over fourteen hundred years. Justin Welby, whom we pray for each Sunday, is the Archbishop of that See, the 105th since Augustine. Robert Willis was at the time the dean, the priest in charge of the Cathedral, the Rector of the Cathedral if you will. Dean Willis had our group in for dinner one evening and then took us on a candlelight tour of the Cathedral, followed by drinks and coffee. One thing that he really wanted to discuss with us was the mission of the Cathedral. What is it for? What goes on there?
It seems like an easy enough question, doesn’t it? What goes on at a church? What goes on at Christ Church, for example? We have a list of things in our bulletin today and an electronic newsletter that comes out each week. We have a posted service schedule of Sunday and weekday services—every day except Saturday we pray in this place. We have a website and a livestream that seek to invite people into the life of this Christian community. The guilds and the staff work tirelessly to facilitate our offering of prayer and praise to God. All of these things are going on every day, every week, here at Broadway and Elm.
And then, like Canterbury, the doors are open, six days a week. Folks come in and pray. They come and visit. They come and rest, or pray, or argue with God. They light candles or read the prayer book or, sometimes, take a nap. All of them are coming for something. All looking for something.
Robert Willis was asked, “What is the purpose of the Cathedral at Canterbury? What do you do here?” His response was brief, short, clear. “What is the mission of Canterbury Cathedral? What do you do here, Dean Willis?” The dean’s response: “We show people Jesus.”
That’s what we’re doing as the Church, friends. We are being the Body of Christ. We show people Jesus. In a world where there is so much visual stimulation, where there is so much competing for our time and attention, where we can barely catch a breath much less manage to take an hour or two out of our busy lives even on a Sunday, what are we doing here? Could it be that we are looking for Jesus? Could it be that we are being invited to show people Jesus? Can it be that we are invited to see Jesus ourselves?
It’s so tempting to think that the people of first Century Palestine somehow enjoyed simpler, less sophisticated lives than we do—they had so much more time for everything than we busy New Englanders. I just don’t think that’s true at all. Jesus’s world was one of sophisticated political power and control—the Romans governed the land using a puppet government of Jewish kings, the Herods, and tolerated the Jewish religion alongside the cult of the Emperor. Everything was fine as long as the taxes got paid and the peace got kept. People traveled and knew something of the world around them—witness these Greek speaking visitors that have shown up in Jerusalem. Are they Jewish converts who have come to make ritual preparations, rites of purification and sacrifice, prior to the Passover? Or are they Jewish people from out in the diaspora, the far flung community of folks outside Jerusalem? Or are they god-fearers, gentiles interested in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Sarah, Rachel, Rebecca, and Leah—or are they just curious because they’ve heard the stories about this Jesus fellow—the crowd that greeted him with palm branches when he entered Jerusalem, the crowds that always seem to gather around him when he preaches, the promise of a new way of being in the world, a different set of values—something he talks about as the kingdom of God—and maybe they’ve even heard the fantastic stories of his friend Lazarus, who people said was dead but now is alive. Maybe they’ve even heard the rumors that Jesus will be taken into custody by the governmental authorities. The tension, the excitement around Jesus is so palpable—and so this Passover they’ve come to Jerusalem, and they seek out Jesus’s group of friends, they find Philip, and they say to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” The Greek idein implies more than just seeing, gazing upon—they want to see Jesus, to perceive him, to come to know him.[1] They want to get to know what it is that Jesus is about—what it is that Jesus is showing. They are seeking Jesus.
And what does Jesus say to them?
“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” (Jn 12.24-25) Part of what the Johannine writer is saying here is pointing us to the inevitable death of Jesus in just a few days on the cross. These words of Jesus prefigure his own death, his own murder, his own crucifixion.
But, if the Greeks made it to see him, and he is speaking to them in this discourse, and I think the implication is that he is speaking to them, then the words have some meaning for them as well beyond the predictive foreshadowing, the veiled prophecy. The words have implication for the Greeks—and for us as well.
If we look carefully at the text the Greek word for “life”—the life we wish either to save or to lose--is psuché, or soul, or self—the thing that makes us a distinct person, our will, the way we live in the world. And the Greek word for world, kosmo, implies the ordering of the universe—more than just the created natural order, it is the way we live in that order—the rules and systems we exist within. And finally, the second usage of “life,” the “eternal life” that Jesus refers to, is the word “zóé”—a different word implying both physical and spiritual living.[2] Jesus is not just being puzzling or difficult to understand; he is giving—and the Johannine writer is transmitting—particular nuance in this strange verse to the Greek visitors: Something about Jesus’s answer to those Greeks tells us something about how we are to live as resurrected people. “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” If we take some liberties with the English and try and flesh out the nuance of the Greek—after all, our visitors are Greek speakers, aren’t they!—I find myself convicted by what our Lord says to them.
This is what I hear Jesus saying to those Greek visitors to Jerusalem: Be attentive! I will die, and my death and resurrection will change the world. But your life—the way you live your life every day, the way you order it, your will, your actions, your relationships—if you keep living the same way, will be as death to you. But if your soul, your will, your way of being—if the way you participate in the systems of this existence changes because of me, you will have a whole new reality, a whole new spiritual life, a whole new physical reality. The way you live is about to change. The kingdom of God is here.
The Jews of the exile—the ones in Babylon and the ones that escaped to Egypt, like our Jeremiah, whom we’ve been reading in the daily Lenten devotionals, those folks longed for a new way of being in the world. They longed for God’s promise to be fulfilled. The covenant was broken, it seemed. But God promised through Jeremiah the prophet a new covenant: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people…they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:33b, 34b)
God promises in Christ that we will know him, that we will know his kingdom in a different way. That our wills, that our lives, by his grace, will be changed. That there is a different reality than the chaos of the world that we know. That we can see Jesus.
Jean Vanier[3], the late founder of the L’Arch communities, told a story of a friend who had completed his PhD and just gotten a promising job when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The operation that saved his life also impacted his brain functioning; he was no longer able to read. It took several years of anger and several years of processing this new way of being, but eventually his friend found that he had another gift—being with people—listening to them—and he became a counselor. Vanier writes, “Instead of books and ideas, he began to discover the beauty of people. His life was transformed as he entered into a new life of openness to others.”[4]
What needs to die in your life today? What is holding you back from being the full creature that God in Christ intends? What feels stuck, restrictive, separating you from God and one another?
To ask the question another way, what are you looking for today? What are you longing for? What are you seeking? Are you willing to take a chance on a different life, a different will, a different set of priorities? Are you willing to walk with Jesus in the shadow of the cross? Are you willing to see Jesus?
Everything in the world will tell you how to live—what’s important—what matters. But our Lord offers us something radically different—a different way of living, of being, of existing in the world, in relationship with one another, in covenant with God. A life redeemed, restored, whole. It looks different from the life that the systems of this world promise. And it is beautiful.
Sir, we would see Jesus.
He is there, on the cross.
He is there, in the resurrection.
He is there, in his Holy Spirit.
He gives himself to you.
Give him your life.
Give him your love.
Give him your all.
Come and see Jesus.
Portions of this material were used in sermons at Grace Church in New York on March 22, 2015, and at Christ Church New Haven on March 21, 2021.
[1] Jean Vanier, Drawn Into the Mystery of Jesus Through the Gospel of John: Paulist Press, 2004, pp 210-212.
[2] Ibid 211.
[3] In quoting Vanier’s insights into theology and the message of the gospel of John, I also must acknowledge his problematic and damaging behavior as a person who abused pastoral relationships and sexually assaulted and otherwise caused damage to fellow Christians who walked alongside him in the mission and ministry of L’Arche. Kyrie eleison.
[4] Ibid 211-212.