First preached as sermon at Guildford
Cathedral on the Fifth Sunday of Lent, Passion Sunday, 2018.
Gospel reading: John 12.20-33
‘Sir,
we wish to see Jesus’ (John 12.21).
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| 'What do you see?' |
Many
people are familiar with a trip to the optician. Famously on the wall there are
letters of ever decreasing sizes to test your sight. But we know that sight
does not always equate to vision and seeing things on a deep level.
Seeing,
recognising and believing are constant themes throughout St John’s gospel.
The
climax of the Prologue to St John’s Gospel, speaks of the Word being made flesh,
Jesus Christ, who dwelt among us ‘and we have seen his glory’. John continues ‘No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is
close to the Father who has made him known’. (John 1.14, 18).
John
also deals in signs, visual pointers to the profound truth of Jesus Christ’s
mission and purpose. Famously he records seven signs – a perfect number – and
says there were many more: water changed into wine (John 2.1-11) showing the coming hour of transformation in Jesus
Christ; the healings of the royal official's son in Capernaum (John 4:46-54) and the paralysed man at
Bethesda (John 5:1-15); the
multiplication of loaves and fishes to feed the five thousand (John 6:5-14); Jesus walking on water (John 6:16-24); and the raising of
Lazarus (John 11:1-45). All signs to
be seen to point to Jesus’ divine power. They ask us, ‘now do you see?’
The
remaining sign is of the man born blind whose sight is restored such that he
can see who Jesus really is (John 9:1-7).
The story culminates in Jesus speaking to the man whose sight has been restored
saying,
‘Do you believe in the Son of
Man? He answered, ‘And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.’
Jesus said to him, ‘You have seen
him, and the one speaking with you is he.’ He said, ‘Lord, I believe.’ And he
worshipped him. (cf John 9.35b-41)
Seeing
in John’s Gospel is far more than a visual reception of data and a function of
the retina; this seeing is seeing with the eye of the heart. What I coin deep-sightedness.
It is
this sort of seeing that Mary Magdalene has when at first she fails to
recognise Jesus through her tears on the Day of Resurrection but on hearing
Christ speaks her name she sees, as says ‘Rabbouni, teacher’ (John 20.1-18). And Mary Magdalene the
first missionary, the Apostle to the Apostles, proclaimed, ‘I have seen the
Lord’ (John 20.18).
The
apostle Thomas sees with his eyes but not with his heart, and he seeks visual
evidence of Jesus’ resurrection: but then a moment of recognition comes and he
says ‘My Lord and my God’ (John 20.24-29).
***
So,
those Greeks appear saying to Philip, ‘Sir we would see Jesus’. Well, what have
they come to see? What do we see in Jesus? What does their question demand of
us if we place ourselves in the shoes of Philip the disciple when someone else
says to you, ‘I want to see Jesus? There is a missional edge to their request.
Quite
what the Greeks made of their seeing Jesus, history does not relate. It is in
St Mark’s gospel that the centurion gazes at the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, on
the cross and declares, ‘Truly this is God’s son’. Many did see and believed;
many saw Jesus and saw nothing beyond.
‘Sir,
we wish to see Jesus’. This notion of seeing is important. The Greeks arrive to
see Jesus, and their own mother tongue, Greek, has a variety of words that mean
‘to see’.
Their
request to see could be from scorpion from
which we get the word ‘scope’, as in telescope and microscope. Were they
scoping Jesus? Getting the measure of him? Assessing what it would mean to
follow him?
‘Sir,
we wish to see Jesus’. It could be, that far from be intrigued and seeing Jesus
to get the measure of him, that there was a different edge. Their request ‘to
see’ could be another Greek word sképtesthai
from which we get the word ‘sceptic’. It was true then, as it is now, that
there are sceptics about who Jesus Christ is. They may want to be entertained
or to dismiss, as in Herod’s request to see
Jesus (Luke 9.9). Sometimes, though,
even scepticism can lead people on the journey of encounter with him; that’s
true even today of people who come to see Jesus sceptically and find their
lives turned around by him. When Jesus encounters two of John the Baptist’s slightly
sceptical disciples he says, ‘Come and see’ (John 1.39)
‘Sir,
we wish to see Jesus’. The word John’s gospel actually uses is idein which means ‘to see’, in the sense
of ‘to visit’ or ‘to meet with’. But it can also mean, in the context of John’s
gospel, ‘to believe in’. ‘Sir’, they could be saying to Philip, ‘we wish to
believe in Jesus’.
In
meeting them Jesus he doesn’t say, “well, here I am have a good look”. Rather
he unveils what is hinted at in the Prologue to John – and we have seen his
glory –as Jesus declares that now his hour has come. And what will be seen is
his glorification, the glorification of the cross, when he is lifted up from
the earth.
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| Window in Guildford Cathedral - South Aisle |
In the
wilderness the Israelites who were being infested by poisonous serpents could
be cured by looking at a pole erected by Moses (it features in the window on
the south side of the Cathedral nave). Therein lay their healing and
restoration. The cross is the new sign to be gazed upon for salvation. That is
the image Jesus is drawing upon as he speaks of the Son of Man lifted up. (cf also John 3.14-21)
This
takes us to Good Friday and the Proclamation of the Cross and we hear the haunting
verse of Lamentations, ‘Is it nothing to you all you who pass by. Look and see if there is any sorrow like my
sorrow’ (Lamentations 1.12a). We hear
that as we gaze upon the stark wood of the cross. Not just a bit of carpentry but
the sign of our hope and salvation.
It is
this deep-sightedness that enables St
John Chrysostom to say of Jesus on the cross: ‘I see him crucified; I call him
King’.
***
Today
is Passion Sunday. It is the day in the Church’s year, before the intensity and
drama of Holy Week, on which we begin to contemplate more intensely what we see
in the glorification of Jesus Christ and ‘behold
the wood of the cross, whereon was hung the Saviour of the world’, as the Good
Friday liturgy puts it.
As the
time of his Passion draws near may we consider how we see Jesus Christ, and
behold God in all people, moments and things. Passion Sunday is a spiritual
optician’s check-up (from another Greek word optikos "of or having to do with sight and seeing’).
My
prayer is that believer and enquirer alike may cry out to the Lord: ‘I wish to
see Jesus: show me things I’ve never seen before’. Amen.
©
Andrew Bishop, 2018
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