The Hour Has Come (Sermon - Following the passage of Amendment 14-F)

“The Hour Has Come”

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

John 12:20-33

3/22/15

         Last Friday was the first day of spring. One could know that by looking at a calendar, of course, but a calendar only confirms what we already knew. Scorekeeping may begin with the vernal equinox, but spring has already begun. There is no denying that the days have been lengthening and brightening with sunshine and birdsong. Daffodils and crocuses bloom in gardens and ditches. Ducks and geese have paired off on pondshore and creek bank. And as their buds appear, maple trees have been blushing a deep, shameless red. The “telltale signs of spring” we call them.

Spring is more than a calendar event. Spring is an unfolding. It progresses, develops, and in time gives way to yet another unfolding – the hot, earth-swell of summer.

         As Jesus’ third Passover approaches, signs of change have begun to break through. The Jews reject Jesus. He weeps publicly at Lazarus’ grave. In a surreal moment fraught with the tension of things to come, Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with a pound of expensive perfume, and wipes them clean with her hair. Jesus enters the great City of David to choruses of “Hosanna!” And now, among the pilgrims who have made their way to Jerusalem, a contingent of Greeks makes a bold appearance. Finding the disciple Philip, they say, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

John calls them Greeks, but his point is that Gentiles have come looking for Jesus by name. They want to see and talk with this Jewish anomaly for whom neither age, nor gender, nor race, nor class, nor any other life condition prevents inclusion in God’s household of grace.

This has been a stumbling block for the Pharisees, of course. In chapter 7 of John, talk of Jesus of Nazareth being the long-awaited Messiah heats up. Unable to accept that a man like Jesus could fulfill God’s promise, the leaders of the temple send their police to arrest and silence the rabbi. When they find him, Jesus says to them, You may know where I come from, but you don’t know where I’m going. And you’re not going to be able to follow me there, either.

Stunned, the temple leaders reveal both their outrage and their deep prejudice: Where does this guy think he’s going that WE can’t find him? Is he going to go among the Greeks?

Imagine everyone’s surprise when Greeks show up at Passover, in Jerusalem, asking for help to find Jesus. When Andrew and Philip tell Jesus that Greeks are at the door, he says, “The hour has come.”

Whether we observe signs of the coming spring or signs of the coming kingdom of God, some moment will arrive that says to us, ‘the hour has come.’ It will be a moment of great and glorious promise, as Jesus says. And, as he also says, it will be a moment when something must die – a grain of wheat, the dark obsession with power and self-concern that John calls worldliness, or even the death of our own living and breathing selves. Death does not come easy, not even for Jesus.

“My soul is troubled,” he moans.

In this moment, John’s version of the agony in Gethsemane, God Incarnate wonders if he should pray his way out of his calling when things turn challenging and threatening. Should he pull away from the community when it seems to have turned against him – and against God? Who would blame him if he did?

Then Jesus seems to ask himself, But if I leave, what blessing will come for those I love? What would I reveal of God that way?

“No,” he says again, this is my hour.

We glorify God in the midst of arrival, and presence, and change. And change always involves some sort of death. Even when we use the phrase “change for the better,” something dies. Something that was is no more – some condition, or relationship, or arrangement. And not all changes happen for the better, of course. But when we find reason and strength to say, The hour has come, we are seeking Jesus. We are seeking God’s presence and purpose in that trying moment itself, and in the signs that led us there, and in the future toward which we travel.

         In his spiritual memoir, The Sacred Journey, Frederick Buechner looks back on his life. He remembers the influences that led him in particular directions so that he could make this observation: “Nothing,” writes Buechner, “was more remote from my thought…than theological speculation…but certain patterns were set, certain rooms were made ready, so that when, years later, I came upon Saint Paul for the first time and heard him say, ‘God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,’ I had the feeling that I knew something of what he was talking about… Something of grace.”¹

         Frederick Buechner’s hour had been coming for a long time, and when it arrived, he claimed it. His hour changed him. It changed his voice, and his new voice began to glorify God in fresh ways, ways that have continued for decades to enlighten and invite others into the realm of faith, hope, and Love that is God’s kingdom.

The prophecy in all this is that God choses “things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are.” (1Cor. 1:28) Buechner and Paul both know that the new life toward which the coming hour leads us, is a life animated by the power of resurrection. That means, of course, we enter new life through some kind of death.

         Have you ever had a dream in which you or someone else dies, or is dying? If you have such a dream, pay attention to what is happening in your waking life. Karl Jung and others tell us that death in dreams almost always represents some kind of change. Death dreams are often scary, because change can be scary. Change often seems to threaten everything that has felt stable, trustworthy, and true in the world.

         And what isn’t changing? If you’re sitting at your computer, a friend in Australia can know as quickly as the friend sitting next to you what’s on your mind. And how many lives have been changed forever by thoughtless venting, bullying, or bragging on social media?

In the 19 years that I have been a pastor, technology has shortened the length of hospital stays, and diminished the discomfort of many treatments. For all that change, healthcare seems to have gotten far more expensive, complicated, and impersonal.

         Our denomination, like the Church Universal, looks different now than it did a generation ago. Last week’s passage of the amendment allowing PC(USA) churches and pastors to decide for themselves, within the bounds of state law, how to handle the issue of same-sex marriage has once again laid the reality of change squarely on our chancels. Some of us are singing praises to God about that, and some of us are crying prayers of passionate lament. And as we bow shoulder to shoulder, glorifying God, many of us are saying, “The hour has come.” While we mean quite different things, we are all dealing with the realities of death.

         Millions of us feel that the church has traded death for life. She has sold her Christ once again, and such a change bodes only the crucifying pain of Friday. Then again, millions of us have died death upon death, having been told by family, neighbor, church, and culture that we, or ones we love are abhorrent to God for who we are or for what we think. The present changes, then, cry out the scarred but speechless joy of Sunday.

We occupy the same place. We see and hear the same things. But we are not of one mind as we interpret the signs.

I think this invites us as a congregational family to step out of our Friday or Sunday mindsets and to sit together in the quiet stillness of Saturday. On Saturday we look backward and forward. We pay attention to all that has led us to this moment. For our sake, God speaks, and for our sake, the Christ is lifted up – again – to draw all people to himself. That is the “kind of death” he dies – a death that heals, reveals, and reconciles. For us, as followers of Jesus Christ, this is our sure and certain hope.

As I have said before, Jesus comes not to prepare us to be dead, but to be alive. It may be difficult to feel this, but regardless of which side of some death we are on, no death can be the end for us. When we seek Jesus together, all signs bode for us the promise and the aliveness of God’s kingdom.

So yes, the hour has come. And come what may, there is, finally, one destination for the troubled, Saturday soul of humankind. For Jew and Greek alike, for us and them alike, God thunders the message of springtime itself: Welcome to the life Resurrection!

¹http://www.frederickbuechner.com/content/patterns-were-set

Charge:

Resurrection: What it looks like for us right now, and when we will recognize it, I don’t know.

But I do think that it will be most real and timely, and it will glorify God most fully when we seek and find the will to share our differences in honest Love for those with whom we disagree.

In this hour, and it all hours, let us be guided by those bold Greeks. Let us say to one another, Brothers and Sisters, “we wish to see Jesus.”

And let us also say, whether we are in the midst of a dying or a rising, Brothers and Sisters, I see Jesus in you, and I wish to be one through whom you see Jesus, as well.

May the risen Jesus be with us all.