Perhaps you are thinking to yourself, “What was that gospel all about?” If so, I wouldn’t blame you one bit. Some Greeks said to Philip, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” Philip took their simple plea to Andrew. We have no clue if the Greek pilgrims ever met Jesus yet their request sums up our deepest longings as Christians, doesn’t it? But if we are to see Jesus, then we had better listen to what Jesus said to both Philip and Andrew.
Instead of reaching out to greet his visitors, Jesus gives a reply, which seems to makes little sense. “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Amen, amen I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” I know he isn’t giving us a basic lesson in gardening 101, so what’s going on behind the scene that we are oblivious to? With just days to go before his arrest, Jesus knows that he has come to a cross road. If he accepts the will of his Father, the time of his death is near.
This insight that a grain of wheat must fall to the earth is not just for him. Intending this message for anyone who wishes to see him, Jesus goes on to say, “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life this world will preserve it for eternal life.” By the time he finishes his spiel, Philip and Andrew may have been shaking their heads and muttering, “This is Greek to us!”
Jesus certainly isn’t suggesting that we hate ourselves, so what is his point? This isn’t so much an anti-life statement but an anti-world one when we view the world as anything that distracts us from God. Think back to the passage from Jeremiah where we heard of the Lord talking of a new covenant that would be made with the House of Israel. A covenant that would not be written on sandstone tablets, unlike the covenant he had with Moses, but one that would be written in their hearts. Like a tattoo, God hopes that placing this new covenant in the heart of his people would leave a lasting imprint on them and us.
In scripture, the heart is portrayed as the center of our lives; the seat of our desires, emotions, thoughts and plans; the primary arena in which we meet God and in which God endeavors to cause change, enlightenment and new life within us.
Under this new covenant, God’s laws are to be seen as internal rules and responsibilities that we, as people of God, have made a vital and necessary part of our personal principles. When we honor this covenant, we then respond to the world around us out of love, not self-centeredness or the need for self-preservation.
Have you ever seen the movie, Rainman? Tom Cruise played the role of a selfish, hustling salesman named Charlie Babbit and Dustin Hoffman played the role of his older autistic brother, Raymond, who lives in an institution. Charlie did not even know he had an older brother, much less an autistic one, and the only reason he even cares is that their father had died, leaving three million dollars to Raymond and an old 1949 Buick to hotshot Charlie. Charlie spends much of his energy and time trying to cheat Raymond out of his inheritance. After all, how would a guy like that know what to do with all that money?
In the course of the movie, against his will, Charlie begins to care for Raymond. Before he knows it, for the first time in his life, he is thinking more about another person than of himself. That to me is an example of what Jesus meant by hating our lives in this world. Slowly, Charlie begins to die to self and live for Raymond.
At one point he has to make a decision to do so, very much like our preoccupied Jesus had to. In doing so, he becomes a different person, a whole person, or as we would say in religious language, Charlie became redeemed. He lost his life for Raymond’s sake only to find it for his own.
Like Jesus and Charlie Babbitt, we cannot avoid making decisions. That is what life is all about. Many of them, however, are made unconsciously, that is, without much thought. We let them slide into self-serving actions. Pulling us out of such preoccupations, this gospel jolts us back to reality and makes us face up to questions we don’t care to face. Who are we? By whose values do we live our lives? Are we committed to the covenant that God has inscribed in our hearts? Or are our choices shaped by the values of our secular world? What means so much to us that we are willing to die for it?
Countless martyrs, even in recent times, have died for their faith. Could you ever do the same if you had to make a choice? Few of us would ever have to make such a life-threatening choice, but what about dying to our own will if that is what it takes to save a struggling marriage or a wounded relationship? What must we let go of in order to grow in our relationship with God and others? Often, the answer is our pride, our self centeredness, or our refusal to seek help. Unless we die to our own will, we cannot really ever see Jesus.
Lent is a decision making time for us. That is the situation Philip and Andrew found Jesus in. He was trying to discern which way to go. Was he ready to fully commit himself to what his heavenly Father was asking of him? Soon thereafter, as we know, he would be arrested, condemned, and executed. In giving totally of himself, Jesus would regain his life in the resurrection.
Like the Greek pilgrims, we seek the Lord but before we can find him, we are being challenged to answer one of life’s most fundamental questions; not Hamlet’s “To be or not to be?” but one posed often by Jesus, “To love or not to love?” One does not need a degree in philosophy to comprehend that we have no choice in the matter if ultimately we want to “bear much fruit” and live life fully.