302 Who Wants To See Jesus?

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Who Wants To See Jesus”, originally shared on March 13, 2024. It was the 302^nd video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   There are influences in our culture today that are making people outside the Church more open to encountering Jesus. And people inside the Church less so. Today, we’re going to find out what they are and how they can be opportunities for us share the good news of the cross.

   You may have seen the Oscars last Sunday. It was the annual awards ceremony of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Some people call it a bunch of rich people giving each other awards, but that’s all we see on TV.

   The Academy is composed of over 10,500 people from around the world who have been sponsored and who have demonstrated significant accomplishments in at least one of the Academy’s 18 branches. They vote on who gets the awards in their own branch, except “Best Picture”, which is voted on by everybody.

    They are artists and they work when they have work. Many in the Academy work only sporadically and are supported by truck drivers, electricians, carpenters, food service workers and many others who also work only when they have work.

   What people see at the ceremonies are the celebrities. They can make or break a movie. They are the faces of the movies that allow hundreds of other people to get paid and make a living.

   Celebrity is a big part of our culture in Los Angeles, where the LA Times, when it was a bigger paper, covered the Academy Awards under “Local News”.

   Music, TV, theater, video games and other expressions of the arts all have a major presence in L.A.

   In fact, the entertainment industry here is sometimes just referred to as, “The Industry.”

   And there are enough celebrities in the Los Angeles area that it is not uncommon for us ordinary folks to encounter them. And there are enough encounters that there are certain behaviors that are expected of us. Like giving celebrities space and allowing them to have a normal public life.

   Depending on the situation, though, it’s OK to approach celebrities as human beings, with respect and appreciation, and to receive some form of acknowledgement.

   I wonder if the Greeks who wanted to see Jesus had any trepidation about approaching Him, in the text from the Gospels that will be read in the vast majority of churches in the world this coming Sunday, John 12:20-33.

   The Greeks didn’t approach Jesus directly.

    Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem that we call Palm Sunday had just happened, and the raising of Lazarus not too long before that. Jesus had come into Jerusalem as a celebrity! At least to some. Many others had come to celebrate Passover.

   We see it in John 12:20-22,

20 Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. 21 They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22 Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus.

   Jesus gives an answer to all in response to the request from the Greeks for a personal “meet-and-greet”.

   He says, in verses 23-26.

23 Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Very truly, I tell you, 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. 25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

   Not long ago, many churches offered dedicated worship events called “Seeker Services”. They weren’t for Christians. They were sort of stripped-down versions of Christian worship services that didn’t expect too much or cause any difficulty. They were for people who just wanted to dip a toe into the water to see if Christianity was for them.

   Perhaps you can see some problems with that approach. Like the “bait-and-switch” element, the danger of making Christianity conform to the culture, or just pandering to spiritual babies who don’t want to grow up.

   Whatever it was, it is no more.

   Few people are seeking or, if they are, they are not seeking it at churches.

   We’ve all read about “the great uncoupling” or the “rise of the ‘nones’”, the people who list “no religious preference”, what some studies describe as the fasting growing religious group in the United States. Or, if not, we have seen it in our churches, and it was starting well before the Pandemic.

   But those same studies found that not all have drifted away or even gone into a self-centered “spiritual but not religious” category. In fact, they often retain many traditional beliefs about God (at least for now). They just don’t see churches as places that will speak to their spiritual growth.

   They have also come out of the Pandemic and have still not found ways to connect with people in a meaningful way. They are hungry for friendship and community that is not merely virtual. A.I. is at the door, and people are trying to find ways to say “I am not a robot” while asserting a genuine personhood and meaning in life. And a way to come to terms with death.

   Others have found less constructive ways to address their emptiness through chemicals, violence, or withdrawal.

   Augustine (AKA St. Augustine; fun fact: his mother “Monica” became St. Monica and the namesake of “Santa Monica”) wrote in his book Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”

   It’s been said that we were made for a living relationship with God, which we broke, so that there is a God-shaped hole in the human heart that only God can fill.

   The good news we share is that Jesus, who was fully God and fully human being, died on the cross to show us the way to new life in Him. New life that is eternal life.

   We come near to people every day who don’t know that.

   We come near to people every day who aren’t Christians, or even church members, who experience daily emptiness that they’ve tried to ignore. So far, unsuccessfully.

   We come near to people every day who need Jesus, but don’t know it. People who are searching for something that only God can fill and that God does fill .

   We come near to people every day who struggle to see themselves as anything but a cog in an impersonal soul-destroying machine, and we have the answer!

   We don’t need to bring God to them, God is already there. God is the need they know but can’t name.

   All we need to do is to name the name.

   But those same influences in our culture that are making people outside the Church more open to encountering Jesus, are making people inside the Church less so.

   The decline in local church participation has made our churches look inward toward survival. Many churches have become church cultures rather places where people can see Jesus. Some members just want the church to hang on until they can have their funerals there. Church leaders are sometimes more concerned with cementing their legacy than with the vitality of the church.

   They dumb-down the church’s liturgical message, retreat into cultural enclaves, seek political power, become social service agencies or anything else that they think that those outside the church will like them for. But, paradoxically, this same behavior drives people away because we have nothing meaningful to offer them.

   In watering-down the gospel, we eliminate the very thing, in fact the only thing, that can heal the human heart. Jesus.

   The danger for Christians is to make the Church into a place where we think that we have found Jesus when we have only found a church, a comfortable community of people like ourselves, where our main purpose is to maintain our own ingrown traditions.

   I heard a pastor say once that the church is divided into two kinds of members: the pillars and the caterpillars. The pillars hold the church up, but they also hold the church back. The caterpillars come and go, but they turn into beautiful butterflies.

   How can these be reconciled? We have good news to share.

   The words from today’s reading, in John 12:21, have been engraved in many pulpits where the preacher (male or female) can see them, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

   How can we turn our churches into places where members can uphold the things that lead people to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit that makes them into a new creation?

   We get the answer from the words of Jesus in the second part of today’s Gospel reading, John 12:27-33,

27 “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” 29 The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” 30 Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 31 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33 He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

   Jesus faces his death on the cross with one concern, “Father, glorify your name.” He cared only for the living reality of God.

   His promise was that, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

   Jesus has destroyed death and created new life for all who believe, who accept his gift of faith, a living relationship with the one true living God. This is the good news we all have to share.

   Jesus has created a community, the Body of Christ, by drawing all people to him.

   Think about the spokes on a wheel and imagine Jesus at the center of the wheel.

   Each of us is like the spokes on that wheel. The closer we get to Jesus, the closer we get to one another. The farther we get from Jesus, the farther we get from one another.

   Jesus says, in Matthew 11:28-30,

28 “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

   Our community comes as a gift from God. We bring this good news to the world.

   Sally and I go to the “99 Ranch Market” store in Rancho Cucamonga sometimes. It describes itself as an Asian Supermarket, but most of the items there are Taiwanese or Chinese, and I try to practice my very limited understanding of Mandarin there. When I speak, however, people have such little expectation that Mandarin will be coming out of my mouth that they think that I, as a non-Asian person, must be speaking terrible English, when in fact I am speaking terrible Chinese. 😊

   When they realize that I am speaking Mandarin, or at least trying, and I say that I understand a little but that I speak very badly, they usually say that my Chinese is very good, to which I respond, “No…No…” because that is a way to show that I am humble, and humility is a virtue in many cultures, as it is in the Norwegian community from which my ancestors came. It tells people that we don’t think that we are any better than anyone else.

   Likewise, Christians believe that all people rebel against God, and that all people are sinners.

   We can’t be good enough for God to save us. But we don’t have to. We have a Savior, and his name is Jesus.

   Why?

   We separate ourselves from God, but God draws us to him because of his great love for us.

   Paul writes, in Romans 5:6-8,

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. 8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

   We are disobedient and ungrateful, and God still loves us. God’s desire is not that we be punished, but that we receive his gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ. We bring this good news to the world.

   We don’t have to live to please God. God is pleased with us through Jesus Christ. We live in response to the new life that God has given to us and revealed through the Holy Spirit. Our lives naturally produce the fruit of that Holy Spirit, as Paul writes in Galatians 5:22-23,

22 By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.

   We are well over half-way through the season of Lent today. We continue to be reminded that God has saved his people and saves all who believe, through the death of Jesus on the cross.

   Let us live as the people of God and bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the world.