Walking Toward the Good I Seek

Sermon for March 17, 2024
Series: Igniting Your Spirit to Find Heaven on Earth, part 5
John 12:20-33

This isn’t the last Sunday of Lent – that will be next week, Palm Sunday – but this is the last installment in our Lenten preaching series. (There's no sermon next Sunday.) Along with the devotional guide we mailed you a few weeks ago, these sermons have been asking how we can ignite our spirits to find heaven on earth.  We’ve explored working with our spiritual wiring for relationships, scheduling to prioritize God’s purposes, living as our best selves, choosing our companions for the journey – and now, we’re asking, “How can I walk toward the good I seek?”  I hope all this has been helpful.  And, so you know what’s coming, we’ll begin a new preaching series the Sunday after Easter called “Walking the Way of Love.”  It’ll highlight seven actions you can take to experience the joy of resurrection.  More on that in next week’s Messenger. 

So, for today – how do we walk toward the good we seek?  I guess there’s an assumption there – that, deep down, we’re all seeking “the good.”  That seems right.  I mean, is anyone here working to make life worse for the people around you?  Good; no hands up in the air.  Otherwise, we’d probably need an intervention.

But if we’re all on the same page, why even bother with a sermon about this?  Well, because we all may want to find “the good,” but my hunch is that we aren’t all seeking it actively.  In fact, we may not even be able to say what it is.  Is “seeking the good” synonymous with altruism?  Does “seeking the good” necessarily mean working against my own interest?  I don’t think so.  I mean, ask yourself:  When does my life feel most filled with purpose?  When do I feel most fully alive?  I think it’s when our well-being and the world’s well-being intersect, right?  In the famous words of the writer Frederick Buechner, it’s “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”¹

OK, good enough – just go find that.  Bye; see you next week.

Well, not so fast.  If it were easy, we’d all be living joyful, purpose-filled lives.  If you’re not quite there, it’s probably worth asking, “Why not?”  What’s standing in the way of investing myself and my life in pursuing the good?  And how could I get there?

Maybe we can get some insight from this morning’s Gospel reading, specifically from some nameless characters in the story: “some Greeks.”  The reading begins, “Now, among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks” (John 12:20).  Let’s unpack that a bit.  First, it’s always good to know where we are in the bigger Gospel story, and here it’s at a crucial moment – Palm Sunday.  A huge crowd is gathered in Jerusalem for the Passover festival and to see Jesus, who just a few days earlier brought Lazarus back to life.  The crowd hears that Jesus is coming into the city, and they go outside the walls to meet him as he rides into Jerusalem in triumph, looking for all the world like their conquering king. 

So, we pick up the story today just after Jesus has ridden into town in royal splendor, at the pinnacle of success.  And among the adoring crowd are these “Greeks” – so, who are they?  Well, they’re non-Jews, people from the secular, Greek-speaking culture rather than from the people of Israel.  But, most likely, they’re also part of a distinctive subset of Greeks, a group of outsiders who were at the edge of being insiders in relation to the Jews.  In Jesus’ time, there were people known as “God-fearers,” which meant non-Jews who respected and worshiped Israel’s God, even though they hadn’t gone all in.  They didn’t necessarily follow Jewish law fully; the men among them hadn’t gone so far as being circumcised.  But these folks honored Yahweh, and went to synagogue, and tried to walk the path of loving God and neighbor. 

Maybe that sounds familiar.  Honestly, I think there are a lot of “Greeks” like this in and around our churches today.  On any given day, I might be one of them.  If faith were a football game, the Greeks would be the ones on the sidelines in street clothes – not ready to play but still cheering the team on.  Like I said, that might be familiar territory for some of us.

So, these Greeks come to one of the players who is dressed out – to Philip, one of the disciples – and they say to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus” (12:21).  Philip maybe isn’t quite sure about this – these Greeks aren’t fully committed, after all – so Philip checks with Andrew, who gives the OK.  And these Greeks find themselves standing before Jesus himself – the king-to-be, in all his anticipated glory.

So, what’d they say?  Don’t you wonder?  If you’re a would-be disciple, and you get the chance to talk to Jesus directly, what would you say?  Well, John’s Gospel doesn’t tell us what they said, so maybe we’re invited to fill in that blank ourselves.  Maybe they’re looking for what we’re all looking for: purpose.  Maybe they want to make a difference; maybe they want to leave the world better than they found it; maybe they want to feel fully alive.  In the presence of this king who raises people from the dead, being fully alive suddenly feels gloriously possible. 

But the response they get from Jesus must have shocked them.  It seems like just the opposite of being fully alive.  In fact, he implies, he’ll be dead.  The time has come for this king to be glorified, he says.  But that will happen not by the crowds making him king but by Jesus choosing to give himself up for them.  And when he does that, when he dies, that act will bear much fruit, Jesus says.  It’s like burying a seed:  “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” (John 12:24).  What kind of fruit is that?  The kind that transforms your life.  Jesus’ death will bring salvation itself, not just to the Jews but to anyone who seeks it – the healing of our lives and the chance to walk in heaven’s love, now and always.

Then, I imagine Jesus looking these slack-jawed Greeks in the eye and raising the stakes for them considerably.  You want meaning and purpose?  You want to feel truly alive?  Here you go, he says.  I’ll change your heart so you can change the world, but it comes with an expectation:  The folks on the sidelines need to suit up and get in the game.  I’m not just going to die and take you to heaven, Jesus says.  I’m setting a pattern: that “whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there my servant will be also” (John 12:26).  Walk in my steps of love, Jesus says.  Wash somebody’s feet.  Slake somebody’s thirst.  Show somebody a transformed future.  New life comes when we give ourselves away for the well-being of one another.

And what’s more, Jesus tells the Greeks, the crucial time is nearly here – the time that will reveal who’s aligned with God and who’s aligned with the world.  In fact, he calls what’s coming the time of “judgment,” the time when “the ruler of this world will be driven out” (12:31).  And how will that happen?  Well, if you follow me, you’ll have the eyes to see it, Jesus says.  He’ll vanquish the ruler of this world – not just Caesar, not just the chief priests, but evil itself – the power of sin and death, the power that truly afflicts us.  And he’ll do that not with heavenly armies but with heavenly love, being “lifted up from the earth” on a cross to draw all people away from sin and death and to himself instead (12:32).

That’s the last we see of those Greeks.  What do you suppose became of them?  Maybe we’ll find out if we look in the mirror.

Here’s the call I hear from Jesus to all us Greeks on the sidelines: Create your own adventure.  This life we long for, this life of meaning and purpose, this life where our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet – it’s there, waiting for us.  It’s a life that will cost us something; Jesus is clear about that.  As a seminary professor of mine liked to say, the symbol of our faith is a cross, not an easy chair.  We find meaning and purpose when we find what we need to lose – the baubles of worldly happiness, the success of playing small.  When we lose those idols that bring us empty comfort, we make space for the love that changes lives.

So, how do we begin the adventure into which Jesus invites us?  Here’s a way to take one step, or maybe a few steps, with Jesus right by our side.  Next Sunday, we’ll begin Holy Week.  It’s a pilgrimage, a journey we take knowing the destination but not knowing what we’ll experience on the way.  It starts with Palm Sunday, greeting Jesus in triumphant joy and leaving baffled as he hangs on the cross.  It continues on Maundy Thursday, as he pours himself out in love for the friends about to abandon him.  It continues on Good Friday, as we linger at the cross, marveling that it’s him up there suffering, not us.  And it continues on to the Easter Vigil, as Jesus’ light vanquishes the darkness. 

I invite you to join him in that Holy Week pilgrimage, one step at a time, and let the journey speak to you.  Experience the power, the depth, the meaning that comes to us when we die to the rule of this world so we can bear the fruit of eternal life.

1.       Buechner, Frederick. Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC (Revised and Expanded). New York: HarperCollins, 1993 (originally published 1973). 119.