We Wish to See Jesus

sermon preached at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Bellingham, WA

by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Associate Priest for Adult Formation

Lent 5B, March 18, 2018

Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-13; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33

Have you ever tried to be good—I mean, tried really hard over a significant period of time? Sometimes I say, “I’m going to be less openly critical of people I’m impatient with” … or, “I’m going to be more aware of my feelings in the moment” … or, “I’m going to call my elected officials every single weekday.” And I do OK for a while, but then I just somehow … stop. Maybe this is because I don’t actually want to make these changes in my life. They are a bother, and they keep me from what I really want: an endless stream of comfort and entertainment. Can you relate?

Now, of course I also find good works fulfilling. But it takes effort to do them, and sometimes I just don’t have the energy. And that’s not merely an excuse. I simply cannot be good by myself.

In our Collect of the Day, we prayed that God might help us want what God wants. This is a very countercultural statement: help us not to want what we currently want, but what God wants instead. I may want something sinful, but I don’t want to want it. In fact, I want not to want it. That’s not enough to get me all the way there.

Do you ever feel helpless in the face of goodness? When you fail to “be good,” do you throw your hands up in disgust at yourself? Do you beat yourself up? When C.S. Lewis became a Christian, he set himself the task of becoming the kind of person he thought a Christian should be: a purely good person. He failed miserably. And in that failing, he learned something crucial: this failure is not only normal. It’s the whole point.

The Hebrew Scriptures are the story of the People of Israel learning to be God’s chosen people, sent to reveal the nature of God to all the peoples of the world. Now, for the Hebrew prophets, “being good” revolved around two main goals: fidelity to the One God, and social justice. So it’s no surprise and not at all revolutionary that Jesus summed up the entire law as “Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Was Israel’s status as the Chosen People to be dependent on their being good? Not really. Being good was part of what God asked of them, and they failed again and again and again. Yet the breaking of the covenant came not when they failed to be good, but when they failed to acknowledge their failure and turn to God for help. The murderous adulterer King David is the exemplar of the failed hero who repents and returns to God.

In today’s passage from Jeremiah, we hear God’s heartbreak at the broken covenant, and then we witness God’s resolve to do a new thing: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” This new covenant is eschatological: that is, it is a vision of what will happen at the fulfilling of all of God’s plans.

The new covenant won’t come by force, because that would defeat the purpose. We may sometimes interpret God as using force, and you’ll find plenty of evidence in the Bible for that. But ultimately, God wants us to think for ourselves and to accept God’s love freely. For as long as I believe myself to be in control of my own destiny, I will exert that control. When it fails me, I will have to depend on God. And then, hopefully, I’ll come out the other side and realize that there is very little I have actual control of, but that God would like to see me use that little bit of control to accomplish good works.

And so we do good works, small and large. We do our best. We treat our families and friends well, but also those who are of no apparent use to us. We feed the hungry and house the homeless. We give money to help make positive changes in the world. And it’s nice when I find that I can bear much fruit. But it won’t last—not reliably. I will fail again at being good.

Jesus himself finds “good” to be a suspicious label. When a powerful ruler addresses him as “good teacher,” Jesus says, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” Even the one who is to be equated by God won’t put up with being called good. Why?

For one thing, the notion of being good might lead us to think that there are only good people and bad people. Whenever anyone draws this distinction in black and white between good guys and bad guys, please be suspicious! It’s just not that simple. To be straight-up “good people” is beyond the reach of every one of us. And so we should also know that God has no time for our declarations about who is “a monster” or “purely evil.”

The notion of being good might also lead us to identify good people and put them on a pedestal. Then we find out that Martin Luther King, Jr. cheated on his wife. And Gandhi sexually exploited young girls. And not just him: how many of your celebrities have been taken down lately for their despicable actions with the simple hashtag “#metoo”? This is just the working out of justice. If you find yourself placing all your hope in a human being to fix what’s wrong with the world, you’re in for a disappointment. Our heroes, for all their good deeds, are proven not to be saviors through their bad deeds.

I think the project of “being good” is a trap and an idol. We can’t live our best lives now. We can’t better ourselves into salvation. Safety and prosperity and self-actualization are short-sighted illusions. Giving away your money and forgiving your enemies is great when you can manage it, but it will not win you any brownie points. We can’t earn our way into “the good place.” Do good when you can. Repent of the evil you have done and make amends. But for God’s sake, don’t think you can be good.

So if that’s not the goal, then what is? Jeremiah hears God saying, “They shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” And how will this come about? “For I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”

God will forgive us, and then we will know God. We can’t be good until we know our evil and then find ourselves forgiven. We will be good when our trust in God’s goodness restores us to goodness.

How does this connect with today’s gospel reading? Some Greeks came to the festival of Passover to worship. They said, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” I am fascinated by the identity of these “Greeks.” There’s a silly part of me that wants to imagine them as sorority women and frat boys. But most likely, they are “God-fearers,” a term for Gentiles who hang out in the synagogues and at the temple. This was apparently a popular thing in the Greco-Roman world.

Today we might compare God-fearers to people who come to church, but who don’t seek baptism and thus a full commitment to the Christian faith. But there’s a key difference: Jews don’t generally proselytize. There never was a mission to convert the whole world to Judaism; it was always understood to be an ethnic distinction and not a matter of belief. These Greeks could have been circumcised and become Jews if they wished, but there was no theological urgency to do so. The God-fearers were an expected, respected part of the Jewish community.

So these Greeks show up, and while we never find out whether they get to see Jesus, the effect on Jesus is apparently profound. He says, “The hour has come.” Once the Gentiles wish to see Jesus, the tipping point has been achieved, and the message is about to go viral. Nothing now will stop the spread of the Gospel. This is Jesus’ cue that it’s time to complete his work. Not many years later, Paul will write, “There is no longer Jew or Greek,” and I like to imagine that these anonymous Greeks are the ones who got that ball rolling.

Jesus knows now that there is only one thing left to do: to surrender his life to those who wish to silence him. Jesus will die, and then the evil powers of this world will be unmasked, exposed, subjected to judgment. The evil one who has been ruling the world will rule it no longer. “And I,” says Jesus, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all to myself.” Our English translation says “all people,” but in the Greek, it’s just “all”—so I prefer to think of it as “all creation.” Everything in our creation dies and rises to new life in Christ.

And this is why I am not in direct pursuit of “being good.” Jesus has begun the work of writing the law on my heart. My good works will be honored, and my evil works will be judged. But seeking holiness through some quid pro quo, tit-for-tat, transactional system of good works never lasts for long. Goodness can only grow and thrive in the context of eternal love. And please know that this is not a mushy kind of loving feeling, but fierce, fiery, loving action—the love by which God pursues us. And that love includes loving judgment and the expectation of growth and change. The phrase I keep returning to this Lent is, “God is growing me.”

I think I’m rather like those Greeks. I just wish to see Jesus, because to see Jesus is to begin to know Jesus. Jesus is the one who is life springing from death, the one who shares that death with us for the purpose of abundant life for all of us. I wish to see Jesus so I can follow Jesus into his death. I wish to stand before him and offer myself as a living sacrifice. I wish to unpack all the evil in me, lay it at his feet, and say, “Well, here it is—all of it. Please judge me. Please burn away all these worthless things. But be on the lookout for a single good grain that can be buried with you. Please nourish it and help it to grow. I can’t do this work—only you can.”

Indeed, I have learned that in my baptism, I have already joined Jesus in his death, and now my life is “hidden” there with him—hidden like a seed growing deep in the earth. Amen.