A
Reflection for V Lent All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC
March 22, 2015 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector
We
Want to See Jesus
“Please
sir, we wish to see Jesus”. The Greek-speaking Jews come to Philip
who has a Greek name and make this request. The request is passed up
to Andrew who speaks Aramaic and makes the request known to Jesus who
doesn’t speak Greek. Jesus then remarks that every grain of seed
has to die in order for a new life to begin, and he moves from that
to his own death.
Is
something lost in the translation between the request and the answer?
I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t look like Jesus is really
responding to the request. It seems that the editor of John’s
Gospel just added a random statement from Jesus rather than directly
addressing the plea. Yet, sit with the situation for a minute and see
if there is a connection.
The
Greeks who don’t speak Aramaic want to be able to translate this
Jesus experience to their own culture and time. John, who is writing
a half century or more after the death of Jesus, is faced with
translating the experience of the early disciples to a world that
does not know this wandering Jewish preacher from East Nowhere
Nazareth. We in 21st
century Outer Banks North Carolina need to translate this Jesus
experience to our lives right here and now as, like the Greeks, “We
wish to see Jesus.”
But
where do we see Jesus?
 |
| Haden Institute Tile |
When
Pat and I went through the graduation exercise of the Dream Group
Leader Program, besides getting pretty pieces of paper with our names
on them, we got tile plaques with a quote from 20th
century Swiss psychiatrist and mystic, Carl Jung. Jung had a plaque
put up on the doorway of his house and later on his tomb of a Latin
quote from Erasmus:
Vocatus
atque non vocatus, Deus aderit,
which translated is “Summoned or not, God is present.”
One
of the things we do in church is to summon God when we say things
like “The Lord be with you” or “Come Lord and be our guest”
or “Send your Holy Spirit” or, as in the Collect for today,
“Almighty God you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and
affections of sinners. Grant your people . . . “ But the reality is
that God is already here, the Risen Christ is already in the space
between us, the Spirit of the Living God is already inside our very
breath, the law of God is already written into our heart as the
prophet Jeremiah tells us in the Hebrew lesson for today. We just
don’t pay attention. We just have a lot of things on our minds.
However, like the quote by William J. Toms which you may have have
handed to you by your Sunday School teachers as I was, “Be careful
how you live your life, you may be the only Bible some people will
ever read,” so I tell you, that “You may be the only Jesus that
people may come into contact with.”
I
do this thing with people who want to get married - I tell them I am
not in the business of throwing Holy Water on people in heat. I am
asking this couple to help me out because the church gets so busy
doing Church Stuff (sometimes I actually do say “Stuff”) that we
never get around to showing people what Christ looks like. I am not
interested in weddings but I am
interested in relationships that demonstrate the Jesus is alive in
the space between the two people. I am looking for people who can
pour themselves out to one another, to die to their own agendas, to
forgive extravagantly, to remember that even when they disagree they
still love one another, to demonstrate that their love grows between
them and is not to be hoarded as a private treasure but shared with
others to make creation a better place, to gracefully care for each
other even when the other deserves it the least because love is a
gift given not a wage earned. I want them to make a commitment that
their love for each other becomes the Holy space between them, and
when people look at that Holy Space, they will say, “Oh that
is what Jesus looks like!” They may want me to say holy words, but
I need them
because “I want to see Jesus”.
Summoned
or not, Jesus is present wherever two or three are gathered together,
even when the name is not spoken. I had a dream this week after a
Vestry meeting. In the dream people were gathered around a bowl which
held a large blooming flower. I and the others gathered around the
flower and we each picked a petal and ate it, but the flower was
still full of hundreds and hundreds of petals. As we ate the petals,
they turned to bread in our mouths, and we were all aware that we
were all connected. I realized that the dream was telling me that the
body of Christ had been present all that previous day and during the
Vestry meeting. The bright petals became a symbol of the huge,
bright, almost golden sliver of the moon in the eastern 5:00 AM sky
as I was on my way for my workout and, on the way back at a quarter
to seven as the sun was almost on the horizon, the moon had shrunk in
size and color to a deep silver. The universe was announcing the love
of our creator, pouring out beauty and the Christ through whom all
things were made. The dream reminded me that Jesus was there in the
people I talked with that day in the middle of all the brokenness.
The dream said Jesus was in the middle of the Vestry meeting as we
had discussions and listened
to each other, remembering that we were not there to push our own
agendas but to be the church in miniature seeking the mind of Christ.
Jesus was in the way we treated each other with respect and opened us
up to see new possibilities. Yes, we talked about things that could
be “church stuff” such as Communications, websites, responsible
hosting of our guests at Room in the Inn, Sunday school, preschool
progress, and organ upgrades, but they all were a part of seeing
Jesus. We want to see Jesus.
Part
of what we do today at the 10:30 service is to give thanks for the
proceeds of the All Saints’ After Dark Program and to provide them
to programs in which we see Jesus. We want to see Jesus. In the Room
in the Inn, we see Jesus in welcoming as brothers and sisters those
who we tend to ignore. We see Jesus in the Community Care Clinic as
they work to bring healing to those broken bodies. We see Jesus in
the sharing of the loaves and fishes in the Beach Food Pantry to
those who are hungry to see grace in this world. We see Jesus in the
Food for Thought program as he places a child’s needs in the midst
of his disciples and says “whoever receives this child, receives
me”. We see Jesus in the Interfaith Community Outreach who are the
hands of Jesus to help mend lives of neighbors and strangers. All of
these programs pour themselves out, all of them pouring out outward
expressions of love, time, attention, and care, giving it away
because love is a gift given, not a wage earned. We say thank you to
them because we want to see Jesus. Summoned or not Jesus is present.
“Please
sir, we wish to see Jesus.”
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