Seeing Jesus
I.
Pastor Cecil Fellers left a gift for all who would follow him as pastor of The Christian
Church of Sacramento. On the pulpit is a brass plague with these words engraved on
it… “Sir We Wish to See Jesus”. The quote comes from John 12 - the passage that
was read today.
II. The Greeks want to see Jesus.
A. Andrew and Phillip are Greek names.
B. Why were Greeks in Jerusalem for the festival?
C. What did it mean that they wanted to see Jesus?
D. What does it mean, when the preacher looks at Cecil Fellers brass plague - Sir We
Wish to See Jesus - and realizes that this is the hope of the gathered community. Seeing
Jesus has deeper possibilities than it did for the Greeks.
III. Jesus’ Answer
A. Ten times in John’s gospel, Jesus says “My time has not yet come” - Cana wedding And finally, this time, Jesus makes the bold statement “The hour has come for the Son of Man to
be glorified…. If a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies it remains alone, but if it dies, it
bears much fruit.”
B. The Greeks want to see Jesus. What Jesus shows them is his very essence - Jesus
clues them in that before them is not simply a healer from Galilee - but before them is the Word.
Jesus of Nazareth has unleashed the message from the Word, and now will in the hour of glory
(the hour of his death) return to the heavenly Father and will allow the body of Christ to bear
much fruit.
The crowd who gathers to see Jesus hears the voice of God acknowledge that indeed the time of
glorification has begun.
Sir We Wish to See Jesus - they are going to see that this man before them will lose his life to
the glory of God. Jesus said, “He who believes in me, believes not in me but in the One who sent
me. And he who sees me sees the One who sent me.”
Later Jesus tells his followers, “Now is the Son of Man glorified and in him God is glorified - where
I am going now you cannot follow me now; but you shall follow afterward. A new commandment I
give you that you love one another. And people will know that you are my disciples, if you have
love for one another.”
IV. Debra Metzgar Shew is vicar and director of Emmaus House, an inner-city ministry in Atlanta,
Ga.
Historic St. Paul's Chapel, which had stood dwarfed in the Trade Center's shadows, now stood in
the bright open air with its back door opening directly onto that gaping wound of death and
destruction, its historic graveyard now extended by 16 acres. My daughter's godmother and
several others had begun a respite ministry at the church for rescue workers, for those who
worked out on "the pile" -- as they called it -- 24 hours a day, and who came within the quiet walls
of the church for a hot meal, some sleep, fresh supplies, a place to pray, a chance to talk, or a
chance not to talk, to read some of the thousands of crayoned cards that arrived from school
children, meant to comfort and cheer and encourage and that soon festooned every pew.
The site outside those walls was filled with the most horrific destruction and death that most of us
had ever seen.
And yet.... And yet just a few yards away, within the walls of the church, a different sight was
unfolding, a different reality emerging. Inside St. Paul's, people from every walk of life, every
religious tradition or none, every part of the United States and beyond, were gathering, and were
discovering something they had rarely known. They were discovering that what all that
destruction outside had torn down was not simply the walls of the World Trade Center but the
walls of division that we create between ourselves. In the face of death they were recognizing the
real truth of their lives and existence: that we are all one. That what we have in common is our
mortality. That it is precisely at the point of our deaths that we reach the point of our oneness.
That when our vulnerability and finiteness is faced, an invulnerable and infinite love emerges.
That life emerges. That amidst the grief and despair and exhaustion, amidst the tangible proof of
the cost of human hatreds and religious discontents was the most palpable experience of
community and love that we had ever known. That somehow in the recognition of our mortality we
were given life. That the explosion outside had become the occasion for an explosion inside, an
explosion not of steel and hatred and despair but of life and generosity and hope.
We had arrived with our sense of helplessness, arrived with our limits, arrived with a sense of
dread and death. And what we found was each other.
IV. “Now is the Son of Man glorified and in him God is glorified - where I am going now you
cannot follow me now; but you shall follow afterward. A new commandment I give you that you
love one another. And people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one
another.”
In another look around the sanctuary, and in the kitchen, I saw members of this church who
barely knew Kenny expressing love for Lois with gifts, and hugs, and food. And with total
presence and support.
The Greeks said, Sir We Wish to See Jesus and Jesus shows them life beyond death. This
church gathers periodically to look death in the eye and indeed good fruit emerges. Can it be that
our visitors to Kenny’s memorial looked at you with the same amazement of the early Pagans
looking at the first Christians saying… “LOOK! Look at how they love each other! Look at how
they love each other!”?