I invite you to open the bibles that you’ve brought, or the bible app on your phone, or the pew bible in front of you, to John, the fourth gospel, chapter 12, verses 20-33. While you do so, listen to the middle section of Mary Oliver’s poem, Sometimes.
Sometimes, by Mary Oliver, segments 3&4
Later I was in a field full of sunflowers.
I was feeling the head of midsummer.
I was thinking of the sweet, electric
drowse of creation,
when it began to break.
In the west, clouds gathered.
Thunderheads.
In an hour the sky was filled with them.
In an hour the sky was filled
with the sweetness of rain and the blast of lightning.
Followed by the deep bells of thunder.
Water from the heavens! Electricity from the source!
Both of them mad to create something!
The lightning brighter than any flower.
The thunder without a drowsy bone in its body.
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
We miss so much in our day to day.
- We miss a pass of emotion on the face of a friend when we are half listening and half thinking of the at home to do list.
- We miss a moment to confess and seek forgiveness, when we are so consumed by our fear and our rightness.
- We miss the glory of a 2:00am thunderstorm when we are fast asleep. But who would trade the sleep?
- We miss how in a hymn an obscure measure several verses in often holds the mystical key to the presence of God in that moment of worship.
- We miss our own body’s signals that something is amiss, scoffing it off as heartburn, tummy ache, allergies.
We miss so many sacred simple moments.
The celtic Christian tradition of the British Isles has prayers for everything, so they can pay attention to the Sacred that is all around at all moments; prayers for the littlest of things, the most worrisome things.
For kindling the fire at days start,
and smooring it at days end.
For animal injury,
for cuts and scrapes,
for anger,
for those out on the sea,
for gathering storms,
for the milking of the cows,
for the nursing of the babies,
for labor,
for rest
For visitors.
Prayers for everything living in a purposeful sense of the many sacred simple moments.
Common things make up every minute of our days. So much is happening in our lives. We notice some things only in the backwards glance, or some future conversations, or when we realize in a nostalgic moment that what we thought was true was only part of the truth, and then when we hear more of the truth understanding wakes us like a bell of thunder.
We join the scripture today mid stream. Like when the potluck has already started, the family reunion is already at dessert, the basketball game is in the 3rd quarter and we’ve just arrived. So much is happening, so much has happened, so much yet to come.
Even though next week we will enter the Lenten timeline by entering into Jerusalem with Jesus on a donkey and palms waving, moving us toward the blackened midday sky of Good Friday……
today, we are already scripturally in Jerusalem.
The festival of Passover has already begun.
The crowd is thick, the throngs in their places with purpose, habit, and ritual.
Everything is happening. All at once. And Jesus has a lot to say. The gospel of John has 21 chapters, and we are at the peak of the story and its only chapter 12. Jesus has a lot to say. He has a lot to do. If you have a red letter bible, the next several chapters have a lot of red ink. Time was short. Significance is packed in, yet is so easily missed.
A lot happens, prior to our entry point today.
The scripture says “at first the disciples did not understand all of this.” Only later did they put 2 and 2 together to make sense of this impending doom energy, like clouds gathering in the west.
And now Jesus begins to predict his death in earnest. You know, I wish Jesus had just said, “I am going to be killed. Don’t get in the way. You won’t understand it yet. You’ll be sad. All will be well. You’ll see.” I wish Jesus had just said that. He knew the dense cloud that was seemingly always around his disciples and followers, shrouding understanding.
But you know, we are all like this when we stumble into something new, something we’ve never done before, a way of thinking or a problem we didn’t see coming, understanding what we’ve never contemplated before. Its hard. But what the disciples knew was how to work, how to do tasks, how to follow instructions, but they were walking with God incarnate and they just couldn’t get that. They couldn’t see it.
They missed it. Who can blame them.
Instead of straight talk, Jesus gave them Jesus talk: metaphor and allegory and images…..almost as if he wanted to cloud over what was happening.
Maybe we just aren’t meant to see the Sacred images, to hear the Sacred tones,
straight on.
Maybe we can’t handle the knowing until we can.
Maybe the astonishing a-ha moment is integral to the process of deeper knowledge.
Lets not miss it.
Our scripture today begins with an odd moment. Greeks have traveled to Jerusalem to worship, they connect with Philip a disciple because they want to see Jesus, and Philip and Andrew bring them to Jesus who just starts speaking. Is he speaking to the Greeks or the disciples or the crowd?
Some folks who try to make sense of this say that the Greeks were converted Jews coming for Passover. But I think they are more likely holy-tourists, festival-tourists, Jesus-tourists coming to see what the fuss is about. And then they seemingly disappear from the story line, like individuals engulfed invisibly back into the crowd and there is no mention of them again.
To the reader, this little three verse section becomes inconsequential, and we might miss that it was ever there.
Jesus does several things, though, when the Greeks, or sometimes they are called Gentiles, are brought over.
(1) He teaches with quick sayings
24 I assure you that unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it can only be a single seed. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.
25 Those who love their lives will lose them, and those who hate their lives in this world will keep them forever.
26 Whoever serves me must follow me. Wherever I am, there my servant will also be. My Father will honor whoever serves me.
(2)He talks to God as a son to a Father
27 “Now I am deeply troubled.[b] What should I say? ‘Father, save me from this time’? No, for this is the reason I have come to this time. 28 Father, glorify your name!”Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”
(3) He corrects the dense lack of understanding of the crowd
29 The crowd standing there heard and said, “It’s thunder.” Others said, “An angel spoke to him.” 30 Jesus replied, “This voice wasn’t for my benefit but for yours.
(4) He speaks of the outcome of his death
31 Now is the time for judgment of this world. Now this world’s ruler will be thrown out. 32 When I am lifted up[c] from the earth, I will draw everyone to me.” (33 He said this to show how he was going to die.)
Jesus is responding and speaking to the Greek folks who have shown up and just want to see him. I hear a very weary Jesus in these sayings. The sayings seem compacted, a little convoluted, disconnected. And you know, not all of it makes sense to me. I wonder if it made sense to the Greek visitors?
I get the single grain of wheat dying to bear much fruit. Jesus is the single grain of wheat and is about to become salvificly abundant. I get it agriculturally. I love the images we see in fast motion cut-away videos where we see a planted seed in the dark soil, the sprout that bursts out of its hull and begins to grow, coming up from the earth and becoming a tree, or a stalk of wheat, or a tomato plant. Abundance out of the smallest particularlity.
But I have trouble understanding the loops of thinking about loving your life and losing it, hating your life and keeping it eternally. But it seems important here.
I needed to break it down. “Life” used here, that we might love is not about front porches with friends, dogs at our sides, children playing, a workplace that respects us, travels to mountains or ancient countries.
It is the Greek word (soo-kay) psyche which we would pronounce as psyche. The psyche refers to all of the elements of the human mind, conscious, unconscious and subconscious, sometimes it references a person’s emotional life.
By the way, The Greek goddess Psyche was born a mortal woman, her beauty inspired the love of Eros, god of desire.
Is it the “life” (hands spread wide) of us and our desires?
Is it the “life” (deep breath in) of us. It is the heart, soul, mind of us?
Both as a word play?
What are we suppose to love and what are we suppose to hate?
I wonder if Jesus is pointing to the transformation that he himself is about to undergo, a transformation from the earthy Son of Man back to the cosmic origination of God, the transformation from incarnate to spirit. A transformation out of the “fully human” half of our understanding of the nature of Jesus, reintegrating to the “fully divine” part.
I wonder if that fully human part of Jesus is just getting tired, yet still is very clever.
I wonder if Jesus may have meant to say to these gawking Greeks, “I’ve been waiting for you. Its time. Yet you have no idea what you are seeing, and what it means to serve me, to follow me. Put aside your own desires.”
I want to keep wondering on this. I probably will for weeks to come. I would welcome your ponderings, because we don’t want to miss it. There is a soft presence of almost-understanding within me, sort of out here yet still in my Amy space, of this looping convoluted love life and lose it, hate life and keep it….. its easy for me to dismiss because it is somewhat shrouded in a fog.
I think, to get it we have to pull on all we’ve learned from the parables, the healings, the lessons, the lived reality of Jesus witnessed in the Gospels.
We have to take in this moment here in Jerusalem, as he walks to his death knowing the powers-that-be are plotting to kill him.
We have to take in our own lived experience of loving neighbor, stranger, enemy, self, caring for the sick, visiting those imprisoned, feeding the hungry….
We have to take into consideration that he was addressing, even if it was just obliquely, these Greek tourists, that we’ve already forgotten.
Could he be simply saying If we love our individuality and all that we desire, we miss an important point. If we dissolve our own boundaries of self, the particularity of me, we get to the eternal all…the oneness….the intereconnection of one to another?
Those plotting his death were protecting themselves, their own power, and the structure of control. This is humans loving their desirous lives. And it goes on today, revealed in every news broadcast, is often seen in churches where the pastor is larger than life, and in every home where there is domestic violence.
This is the time of judgment, the detailing of right from wrong.
And if we don’t miss it, we live in the salvation of sacred connection. We are with God, which is a wondrous point.
Not the denying of our own sacred design, the you of you, which is beautiful and wonderful, but expanding to the love of the life-of-all,
knowing you and I and all of us
are a far more beautiful mural when all the pieces of creation are together.
Jesus’ knows that death dissolves the particular into the everything.
//
As though taking a deep grief filled breath, our weary Jesus says 27 “Now I am deeply troubled, agitated, stirred up, I’ve got a lot of commotion going on inside. What should I say? ‘Father, save me from this time’? No, for this is the reason I have come to this time. And then he says emphatically, “Father, glorify your name! ”
Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”
Two parts of the one, in conversation. The earth and the heavens surely rocked all of creation in this moment, for those paying attention.
Like Mary Oliver’s words: Water from the heavens! Electricity from the source!
Both of them mad to create something!
Hearing the sacred voice, the hum of heaven, the vibration of the Source of Life…the people surely are paying attention and in their astonishment try to make sense of it and say “is it thunder?” “Is it angels speaking to him?”
because the truth of God, the presence of God,
is just too much and we have to turn our eyes away,
by turning our understanding away,
by creating distance that still allows us to see.
//
The recorded comments in the verses that follow are to implore their belief if they can believe.
And to know that he came to save the world.
And this brings us back to our Greek travelers.
Just 3 short verses at the beginning, set into a very dramatic sequence of such importance. Easy to overlook. Easy to miss. Jesus says in response to their presence: “The time has come for the Human One to be glorified.” The Greeks come, and he says the time has come. The Greeks are a key to what comes next in this tumultuous drama in Jerusalem.
The words Greek, or Helenists, or Gentiles speak of two things:
-someone from Greece, so a geographic identifier.
-or as an identifier of otherness: anyone from anywhere else,
to identify anyone from another culture outside of the Jewish Jerusalem culture at the time,
to identify anyone who does not belong to this particularity.
The importance of this whole scene seems to be Jesus’ declaration that his time has come to dissolve the boundaries that keep some in and keep some out.
That the whole world that God so loved, received an incarnate iteration of the Divine, the only begotten son, sent into this world, not to condemn, but to save.
The whole world.
Not just the presumed particular, but now time to include everyone
The particular into the everything.
It is the moment of the Cosmic Christ, who is more than Mary’s son, is more than an itinerate rabbi, is more than a friend to outcasts, fishermen, children and women and those who repent.
The time has come, the hour has come
that now all can see and believe if they can,
that at the heart of the Gospel is inclusion.
Maybe the astonished a-ha moment of each one of us, is integral to the process of deeper understanding.
//
The cusp of the transformation of earthy Jesus into the cosmic Christ transforms the parables and teachings from a small interpretation of shoulds, like new chains and bindings of behavior in order to be saved,
into
understandings of inclusion, service, hospitality….
forgiveness, connection, care, compassion
for one another, for those we don’t want to, for ourselves even, because we are all one.
A judgement that comes not to punish or condemn
but to hold us close, like a parent with a child on their lap,
so we can finally finally pay attention and see
what is wrong and what is right
to be astonished,
then be freed from the chains of chasing our own importance and control,
…casting them off for the salvation of everything.