This morning’s Gospel reading marks a pivotal moment in St John’s account of Jesus’ mission and ministry. But if we take this reading at face value, it probably seems anything but that. In fact, taken at face value, it seems a rather strange story. To recap. Some Greeks want to see Jesus but, instead of speaking directly to Jesus, as so many others had, they go to Philip and tell him they’d like to see Jesus. Then, rather than taking them to Jesus himself, Philip tells Andrew, and they both go to put the request to Jesus. But Jesus’ response is quite strange. There’s no record in the Gospel that he spoke to the Greeks, or that he even saw them, instead he starts talking about the hour of his glorification having come, about his death, about judgement being passed on the world and about drawing all people to himself when he is lifted up from the earth. So what’s going on here? What is Jesus saying here that’s so important, and what is St John trying to tell us through Jesus’ words?
One of the problems with the way we read the Scriptures in Church is that we chop them up into ‘bite-sized’ pieces so to speak. We do that so that the readings we have in Church aren’t excessively long, but in doing that, we very often make the readings more difficult to understand because we take them out of the context they’re set in, in the overall story. And that’s certainly the case with this morning’s Gospel.
Reading St John’s Gospel as a whole, we know that by this point in the story, the religious authorities had started to plot Jesus’ death. The part of the Gospel we heard this morning comes shortly after Jesus had attracted great crowds of people to himself by raising Lazarus from the dead, and it comes immediately after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on what we know as Palm Sunday. That attracted great crowds to Jesus too and the religious authorities were getting worried, they were very likely frightened too. We know that because, in the verse immediately before this morning’s Gospel starts, we read;
‘So the Pharisees said to one another, “You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him.”’
That’s the context in which we have to read this morning’s Gospel.
In the original Greek language the Gospel was written in, it’s clear that the Greeks who wanted to see Jesus were not Greek-speaking Jews but Greeks by birth. And so in the coming of these Greeks, gentiles who are looking for Jesus, symbolically at least, the whole world was indeed now going after him.
We also know from our general reading of the Scriptures that ‘to see’ very often means not simply to see with our eyes, but to see with our minds and hearts too: in other words, ‘to see’ means to know and understand. And so what these Greeks were really asking Philip is to know and understand Jesus; who, and possibly what, he really was. We also know that Jesus’ mission and ministry was to the Jews. As he himself said to the Canaanite woman who begged him to rid her daughter of a demon,
“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
We know that Jesus did help the Canaanite woman, and other non-Jews during his ministry. But that was on account of their faith and St John doesn’t say that these Greeks came to see Jesus ‘in faith’; they were simply enquiring about him. They were looking for understanding and they would need to be brought to faith. And that wasn’t Jesus’ mission and ministry, that was the mission and ministry that he was going to entrust to his disciples and to his Church. And we see that played out in this morning’s Gospel.
These Greeks, these non-Jews, wanted to see Jesus. They wanted to know and understand him. But they didn’t go directly to Jesus, instead they went to his disciples to enquire about him. And it was up to the disciples to bring them to Jesus. It was through the disciples that they’d ‘see’ Jesus, that they’d come to him and come to know and understand him. So what this short Gospel story is about and why it’s so pivotal in the Gospel as a whole, is that it marks the end of Jesus’ own earthly mission and ministry, the mission and ministry to the Jews, and the beginning of the Church’s mission and ministry to non-Jewish world. The disciples almost certainly didn’t recognise that at the time, but Jesus certainly did, and that’s why he answered the request in the way he did.
Earlier in St John’s Gospel, Jesus’ prophesied his own death when he spoke of himself as the ‘Good Shepherd’. He said,
“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”
And now, the sheep of another fold, symbolised by the Greeks, were coming to him. And so he knew the time to lay down his life had come. His ‘hour’ had come. The time for him to be glorified had come. The time for everyone to ‘see’ him, to know and understand who he really was, had come. And he knew that would happen when he was lifted from the earth because it would come through his death, through him being lifted up on the Cross. It would come through his Resurrection, through him being lifted up from the grave. And it would come through his Ascension, through him being lifted from the earth back to the Father from where he’d send the Holy Spirit on his disciples to empower his Church to go out into the world in his name, to draw all people to him.
If we look at Jesus’ words in this morning’s Gospel in this context, we can see how much sense they make and how important they are. We can see what Jesus means when he speaks about a single grain of wheat, failing to the ground and dying, so that it can yield a rich harvest because he was the single grain whose death yielded a worldwide faith and Church. We can see why Jesus says that earthly life is less important than eternal life because if he hadn’t laid down his earthly life, there would have been no Cross, no Resurrection and no Ascension. People wouldn’t have been drawn to him and there would have been no faith in him and so there would have been no hope of eternal life through him. And we can see what Jesus means when he said that where he is, his servant is too. Not only because he promised to be with his disciples always, but also because whenever and wherever his disciples bring someone to know and understand Jesus, that person ‘sees’ him.
This morning’s Gospel reading isn’t very long but, if we read it in the context of the Gospel as a whole, we can understand how important it is and why St John made it such a pivotal moment in his account of Jesus’ mission and ministry. If we read this Gospel story in it’s true context, we can find so much in so few words. And amongst the things we find in these words, is own place and role in the Gospel and in Jesus’ story.
We are Jesus’ disciples. We are his Church. Today, we are the ones entrusted with continuing Jesus’ mission and ministry to draw people to him in our own time and place. Today, we are the Philips and the Andrews because we are the ones people come to when they want to ‘see’ Jesus. Jesus promised to be with his disciples always, so we know that he is here to be seen. What we have to do is make sure that we are his disciples and servants so that wherever he is, we are too. And we need to do that so that, when people ask us to help them know and understand Jesus, we can see him well enough ourselves to help them find him and see him.
Amen.
The Propers for the 5th Sunday of Lent can be found here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 