John 12: 20-33

Sisters & brothers, grace to you and peace from the Triune God: Source, Savior, and Spirit.  Amen.

We are nearly through the season of Lent.

Four weeks ago this morning, as we gathered on the First Sunday in Lent, we sang the first stanza of the old spiritual “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me,” inviting Jesus to walk with us on this Lenten journey to the cross.   Today, as we stand on the threshold between Lent and Holy Week, I invite you to turn once again to Hymn No.  325, and join in singing the second & third stanzas as this 40-day journey with Jesus approaches its destination, and as his words to us today get us ready for the looming days ahead.  We sing stanzas two & three…

As we hear Jesus’ words this day from St. John’s Gospel, we begin to get the picture.  The road ahead isn’t going to be a pleasure trip.  There is an ominous undercurrent of trouble brewing.  The destination is Jerusalem and Jesus’ hour has now come.

In real time, today’s text happens immediately after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, an event we will commemorate next Sunday with palms and procession.  And as we will experience, there is an initial outcry of glory. The word on everyone’s lips is Hosanna.  But Jesus scarcely makes it into the city and the murmurings begin.

In our Gospel text for today, the Greek visitors to the celebration of Passover in Jerusalem wanted to see Jesus.  Approaching Philip, one of Jesus’ twelve insiders, these Gentile observer-outsiders make their request. They were seekers. They were peripherally-interested in getting more information, a face-to-face encounter if possible.  And so, they sought out this Palestinian itinerant preacher and miracle-worker who seemed to be the talk of the whole Greco-Roman world. Philip takes the request to Andrew, and together Philip and Andrew tell Jesus about the inquiring Greeks.

The word on the street was that this one who had entered the city with such triumph and fanfare earlier in the day might well be the long-awaited Messiah, the one who would establish his kingdom and assert his power and might over the occupying Romans. The universality of Jesus’ mission is foreshadowed in this brief encounter with the Greeks, as all people — both Jews and Gentiles – begin to be drawn into this unfolding divine drama. And the expectation level — among the Jewish insiders - and now even these Gentile outsiders - was high.

Jesus knew what kind of messianic expectations they had. The disciples had hopes that he would be the new ruler in Israel, and thus the whole Palm Sunday thing begins next week with this expectation that perhaps worldly glory and earthly power is possible with Jesus. But all-too-quickly we learn that it isn’t — as jubilant cries of acclamation in one breath segue into snarling demands for crucifixion in the next breath.

It’s the whole reason for next week’s Palm Sunday celebration — and it is indeed a solemn celebration — for its purpose is to reveal our utter two-facedness about Jesus. Like the Greeks in today’s Gospel, we too want to see Jesus, but we want to see the Jesus WE want to see: the one who is triumphant and glorious, the one who is powerful and mighty, the one who it pays to know. We all have his glory on our minds but the truth of the matter is we all have his blood on our hands. We all shout “Hosanna!” one moment, and “Crucify!” the next. Like the throngs who lined the Jerusalem streets and waved their palm branches, we too can turn on a dime when Jesus is no longer a crowd-pleaser rather than a cross-goer.

Jesus knew the Greeks wanted to see him for the same reason everyone else wanted to:  curiosity, intrigue, human interest, human need, and perhaps most of all, proximity to perceived power.  And so Jesus begins a final overview, not unlike the final lecture at the end of a course, reviewing all the material of the term gone by, getting all those who have taken the course ready to take the final test, preparing them for what is just ahead, for the hour that has come.

“Very truly, I tell you,” he begins, “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.”

With these words, Jesus sums up both his destiny and that of anyone who would follow him. ”Those who love their life lose it,” he continues, “and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” That’s not what we want to hear.  We bristle at the hearing of such words: losing life, hating life.  Upon hearing such verbiage, we say with Jesus, “Now my soul is troubled.” Jesus is teaching about death and resurrection one last time before laying down his life and being lifted up on a cross.  One last time, one last lesson before dying and rising.

Sisters and brothers, today’s Gospel text drives us right back to the font of our salvation: the death-defying and life-giving waters of our baptism into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  For the bath of baptism was the place and time when you were not just washed, but drowned in the bathtub of God’s grace which always seeks to bring forth new life from the old Adam and the old Eve of our sin, and which always makes saints out of sinners.

It’s not by accident, then, that our Lenten journey brings us right back to the font and right back to Jesus, who at our baptism promised to walk with us through every twist and turn of life.  For after we have come through the arduous journey of these 40 days, after the exuberant outburst and excruciating outcry of Palm Sunday; after we have washed one another’s feet and shared in the supper one last time next Thursday; after we stare down death and behold the beauty of our redemption in the cross of Christ on Good Friday; then we will finally make our way to the empty tomb where Jesus promises us that nothing in all creation – not even death – can ever separate us from God’s covenant of love: to always be the God who is for us and never against us.

When I was ordained into the ministry of Word and Sacrament 20 years ago this summer, my home pastor who was a bit of a poet penned some words which have remained with me as a pastor and as a follower of this one who calls us to die and rise with him.  He wrote:

He asks not for our success,
nor our power.
He looks not for great achievements,
nor victory.
He seeks not our fine ideas,
nor our wisdom.
He bids us follow him, and then turns — face set –
and goes to Jerusalem.

Sisters and brothers, on your journey to Jerusalem, you are not alone. There will be plenteous grace for your dying, and there will be plenteous grace for your rising.

Amen.