Wait. We Wish to See Someone Else!

John 12:20-33
Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus." Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 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. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.
"Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say--'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name." Then a voice came from heaven,
"I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again." The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, "An angel has spoken to him." Jesus answered, "This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

Interesting, isn’t it? That we never hear about Jesus actually meeting the Greeks? Or, should we say, the Greeks seeing Jesus? In some way or another, the seeking is more interesting for the story, than the actual meeting. Perhaps it serves the story to leave that open, so that we might all place ourselves in there, and OUR meeting of Jesus. I can’t help but think that the Greeks - and you and I - would like to meet a Jesus a little less oriented toward the cross. Willimon has a nice opening in a sermon on this text. . .

“…I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” (John 12:32)
The latest ruckus to hit the house of God here at 435 Summit Drive was precipitated (as was the previous one) by the pastor. All I did was to suggest to an amateur woodcarver in the congregation that it would be nice if he turned his talents toward the carving of a processional cross for our church.
I had in mind something simple, modern and clean, something congruent with Northside Church’s minimalist architecture, something light enough for a white-robed adolescent to carry on Sundays. What we got on the first Sunday of Lent was a dramatic sort of cross, heavy, complete with a realistic, bleeding corpus, a hanging, crucified Christ, blood and everything.
. . . many were upset because it was “more Catholic than Methodist,” “gory and depressing,” or didn’t “go with our colors.”
What is a modern, progressive, slightly liberal, well-budgeted Methodist church to do with a bloody cross these days?
A few Lenten seasons ago, my friend Ed Covert put up three crosses draped in black on the front lawn of St. Stephen’s Episcopal and received a dozen calls complaining that the crosses made the neighborhood look bad.

What is ANY modern to do with a bloody cross these days?
Or, is the question to ask, "What will the cross do to us?" or "How do we proclaim this one whom the Greeks wished to see? Or, more accurately, the Jesus they didn't know they wished to see, rather than the Jesus they [probably I guess, but I suspect I'm right] thought they wished to see? "

WHAT TO DO, WHAT TO DO

John 3:14-21
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
17 Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20 For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21 But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God."

I wonder if - part of the problem of preaching on a text like this, is that we don’t know what the heck to do with it. . .
Yes, the text is to do it’s thing with us, THEN we do something with it.
But, texts this familiar are easy to keep at arms length. It is easy to skip the “text working on me” step altogether.
Another thing I wonder: Can ANYONE preach this text WITHOUT mentioning placards at ball games? (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)
I find myself thinking of a rich line by DJ Hall, in The Cross in Our Context, page 55. Concluding the opening of his chapter “Engaging the World” - Hall says,

Faith, if is faith in the God revealed in “Jesus Christ and him crucified,” is a journey toward the world; if it said that such a definition confuses God with God’s creation, confuses theo-centrism with geocentrism, one must answer, as a Christian, that that confusion seems to have been introduced by God himself, who will be loved only as one who loves the world.”

If like me, this leaves you confused, I suspect the confusion is worth engaging, and we might consider the “geocentrism” which Hall finds in Christ crucified. Makes one wonder at the disconnect, that this Word from John - which points to God’s great love for the world - that this Word has been appropriated in such a frighteningly individualistic - shall we say? - solipsistic manner.
For God so loved. . .
I have to quote more from this chapter (a bit earlier)

That suffering will accompany discipleship, that one will have to become a participant in the suffering of the crucified one - this is inevitable, in one form or another. Why, asks the writer of the first epistle general of Peter, should any Christian be surprised at the “fiery ordeal” that accompanies the companioning of the crucified? (1 Peter 4:12) All the same suffering is not the object of disipleship, only its consequence. The object is greater and ever greater solidarity with the creation that God loves and, in Jesus Christ, seeks to redeem from within. pg 55

While I have no idea what to do with that - I suspect there is the possibility that it might help our text do its thing to me, and then. . . .

Turning it Over in My Mind

John 2:13-22

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me." The Jews then said to him, "What sign can you show us for doing this?" Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." The Jews then said, "This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?" But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

I found a few folks who argued that Jesus is not acting violently here. That Jesus does not set aside his pacifistic ways here. I didn’t read the entire articles, but I think that later, they suggest that Jesus drove a Prius with a “save the Whales” bumper sticker next to their Obama Got Hope? sticker. Sorta like the article (linked in textweek last week) that said that in calling us to take up our cross, Jesus did not mean for us to be self sacrificing. That would be a fundamental misreading. It is the suffering of persecution - not suffering of self sacrifice - that is included in the call to take up your cross.
ok
I am not sure I like Jesus turning over the tables any more than the next person. Yet, I’m not sure that one can find Jesus the pacifist here. “He turned over tables, did not do violence to people” sorta thing. (Of course, if it was your table, you couldn’t exactly describe it as “an economic stimulus” either.)
I wonder.
It seems folks want to talk about this event in terms of systems. It was the “sacrificial system” Jesus went after. It was the systemic economic oppression of the common people.
yeah
Maybe he turned over the tables in the temple.
Maybe the questions to ask might be more about how Jesus turns the tables on us. . .
Perhaps the talk of systems and non-violence and such - seek to keep this story at a distance.

Jesus turns the tables, here in John, at the beginning of his ministry.
Rather than make apologies about Jesus. Rather than try to figure out a way to keep Jesus in the box we’ve placed him. . . I wonder if we might best wonder at how Jesus enters the temples we’ve constructed and turned things on their head.
Jesus turns over all our pretensions - all our self-righteousness - our selfishness - our certainties - our self-sufficiency - all.
Jesus turns over whatever we set as our center - our palaces (I meant to write place, accidentally added an a, and that looked strangely right) - the lives we construct and defend.
It is Lent. . . a season of repentance.
A season to re-center - on God.
A season to re-center on our mission to love.
Jesus turning over the tables shows how urgent and radical this is. It is time to throw off those things that separate us from God. Throw off, the self-absorption that blinds us to the needs of the poor. Throw off, the selfishness that makes us so uncharitable. Throw off, the violence we justify in the name of security. Throw off, perhaps even our religious answers to life, and to take on the way of the cross.
It crosses my mind that Jesus already did the throwing. Then he did the lifting.
Time to follow. . .

Not Much

Mark 8:31-38

Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."
He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."

It seems to me, that this is kinda a central text - and I have no idea what the heck to do with it.
Sorta disconcerting.
Perhaps part of the problem is that there is not much you CAN do with it.
It does something to you though. . .
We might well wonder together at the theology of the cross.
It is much easier to talk about what it is NOT, than what it is.
It is so dang elusive. The moment you start talking about it. . .
Like a lot of things in the Church.
I don't want to denigrate talk.
Words are our only tools. That's it.
Unless you're one of those "ministry of presence" types.
If your presence is as depressing as mine, you'd have set that aside a long time ago...
Here's a quote from Berntsen Cross-Shaped Leadership

For Luther, “true theology and recognition of God are in the crucified Christ” (Forde) God reveals God’s self not by lifting us out of this world, but by hiding in its midst, and exactly in the thick of things as they have been disfigured by human sin. In Christ, God does not bypass fallen human existence but enters into it as God’s dwelling. Our “vision” of God, therefore, shines forth from an unwelcome baby in a manger, a criminal on the cross, and a body in the grave. Knowing God in this way is a “knowing’ in the bliblical knowing: not a theory or even information, much less a blueprint, but rather God’s act of radical and intimate trust. We know only as we are known. Our knowing isn't’ something we do, but something we undergo. Our knowing is cruciform, partial and patiently awaiting the promise of its completion not in this life but in the next. So, too, any vision for mission is cruciform. We don’t “lift up” the vision; it call out from the depths of the assembly’s often tangled existence. True vision is always blurred and unfinished, and it emerges from below, not above. Visionary leaders are made - indeed, forged - by their solidarity with the Body’s suffering in the depths of its crucified Self. pg 72