Now among those
who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip,
who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see
Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told
Jesus. [John 12:20-22]
But what follows in this gospel reading for next Sunday
is not a fascinating account of the meeting between Jesus and these Greeks. We are not even told whether they actually
got to meet him. We are given instead a
very complex series of statements from Jesus in which he voices his personal torment
and his sense of imminent crisis – the seed falling into the ground and dying,
then bearing fruit. He talks about
losing your life and saving it. He says
his soul is troubled. There is a voice
from heaven. There is something about darkness and light, and about the ruler
of this world being driven out…
So let’s go back to the simpler beginning. A party of Greeks is asking to be introduced
to Jesus. We are not told why, or who
they were. I did wonder whether they
were Greek Jews – it says they had come to Jerusalem for the Passover – but
most commentators assume they were Gentiles, perhaps Greek traders who knew
there would be lots of business in Jerusalem at that time. It certainly sounds as though it was a pretty
inconvenient time for an interview anyway.
I am sure it has already occurred to you that the Epiphany story of the
wise men who followed a star from the east to visit the infant Jesus, is
another instance in which non-Jews are mysteriously attracted, sensing
something significant.
Some Greeks… Jesus was a Jew –
something needing to be remembered by many lifelong Christians who assume he
was an Anglican, a Catholic or an Honorary Presbyterian. Jesus had never heard of Christianity. In Jerusalem, Jesus was in the heartland of
his own community and his faith, and confronting its issues. The problem was that it was his fellow Jews
who were out to get him, with the support of the Roman occupation
government. Jesus did not have what we
would call a world view. “Some Greeks”
would have been alien, interesting but irrelevant and inconvenient right
now. John includes this in his gospel
because he thinks it is a sign, of the eventual explosion of this faith far
beyond Judaism to all the world.
Many aspects of Christianity and the church reflect that
explosion. Among them is our Christian
Meditation movement and practice. The
Greeks who were interested to see Jesus, if they were not Jews, were pagan
idolaters in the terms of the day. But
they felt drawn. In Christian Meditation
we believe we reflect the mind of Christ in removing the fences, maintaining
open doors. The issue is not whether you
qualify in some way, it is whether your heart needs to live and beat behind safe
fences, or out in the wind of the Spirit, as John has Jesus saying to Nicodemus. Christian Meditation around the world is
being practised by – to borrow St Paul’s words – both Jews and Greeks, slave
and free, rich and poor, male and female.
I would add, we include meditators who are not at all sure what
precisely they believe, but who have found that this pathway brings them closer
to truth and light. When you think about
it, we are “some Greeks” who have come to find Jesus.
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