March 17, 2024
Fifth Sunday of Lent, March 17, 2024 – Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrews 5:7-9; John 12:20-33
Okay, let’s see who is paying attention. When those two people came to Andrew and Philip, what did they ask them to do? We want to what? Huh? We want to see Jesus. Simple request. Hmm? It’s like wanting to see Taylor Swift. Get on line for three days. We want to see Jesus. Seeing can mean lots of stuff. For example, one of you guys in religious education, tell me what this is. What is it? A magnifying glass. When you look through a magnifying glass what happens? You see things much bigger, that’s right. Hold on to this for me for a second. Now, suppose you look through a set of these things and you look around like this. What are you seeing? Huh? You see things far away. Right. What is that called? Does anybody know what this is called? Binoculars, right. They are called binoculars. There is another kind of binoculars that you do this way. What is that called do you know? A spy glass that’s right. That’s an old-fashioned word, holy cow. Spy glass, right. You’re reading too many pirate novels, aren’t you? Arrgghh! Okay, what happens when you look through a microscope? Anybody know what a microscope is? Yes, what? You see smaller things. How small? What kinds of things? Microscopic. Yeah, that’s why we call it a microscope. But what kinds of things? A whole bunch of them on your hands right now even though you don’t know it. Yes, tiny bugs and ticks and even smaller than that. Germs. We see germs under a microscope and see that they actually have legs and everything else. Eww!
Okay, so there are different ways of seeing. And Jesus talks this morning about several different ways of seeing. They don’t sound like ways of seeing, but they are. The very first thing he says after he gets the request that people want to see him is, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains only a grain of wheat. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Everybody around here knows that because most everybody has a garden, and lots of people have a little tiny farms. There are big farms around here, too, that grow acres and acres of corn. Little tiny seeds. They die in the ground. The outside skin breaks open and the inside is exposed to the soil and the snow and the rain. And the next thing you know, a brand new plant starts to grow up. Right after that he said, “Those people who want to hold on to their lives wind up losing them, but those people who let go for God’s sake, they save their life. They have a good life.”
Your parents and the other grownups in church understand very clearly what Jesus is talking about. Because growing up is hard. It’s hard work. And you have to die to lots of things. All of you in religious education have already died to stuff. Maybe you gave your teddy bear away finally to some little child, a poor child somewhere who needed a toy. And you finally said, “Okay, I can give this up.” And some of the games you played when you were four, you don’t play anymore. You play more interesting games now. And someday you’ll put those games away to play other games. One way of describing growing up is going from being self-centered (whoever holds on to his life), and other-directed (do what your parents and teachers tell you) to being self-directed (I do what I think is right) and other-centered (I do what I do for the sake of other people - my family, the other people at my work or at my school), I’m other centered. That’s what it means to grow up.
The other thing Jesus said was very, very interesting. He said, “The Son of Man must be lifted up and then all will see him.” The word lifted up in today’s Gospel comes from a Greek word that means two different things. It means something terrible, being hung on a cross, and it means something wonderful, being raised from the dead. In order to see Jesus, you have to see him through the cross and you have to see him through the mystery of the resurrection. To see only Jesus crucified is seeing only half the story. Seeing only Jesus risen from the dead is seeing only half the story.
So, now that I explained all of that to you. Do you think Jesus answered the people’s question or not? They said, “We want to see Jesus.” We want to see Jesus. He told them what? He told them…? (Children answering). Okay, so your conclusion is that he answered their question. He told them how you get to see Jesus. By growing up and believing in both Jesus crucified and Jesus risen from the dead.