“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” These are the words of the Greeks who have come to the Festival of the Passover in Jerusalem. They have seen Jesus riding his colt toward Jerusalem, and they approach Philip. Then Philip tells Andrew, and then Philip and Andrew tell Jesus. And then Jesus addresses the crowd with his speech.
These Greeks who ask to see Jesus are on a pilgrimage of
sorts. They’re travelling to the holy site of Jerusalem for Passover. In many
cases, pilgrimages are to sites of martyrdom, and that is somewhat true in this
case: they are visiting a site of impending martyrdom, as Jesus makes clear in
his speech to them.
One of the most visited pilgrimage sites is Canterbury
Cathedral, which became famous after the martyrdom there of Thomas Becket in
1170. People come from all over the world to see the cathedral, the place where
Becket was murdered by King Henry’s knights. And then they go down into the
crypt where his body lay. An artist has suspended a sculpture of a man’s form
from the ceilings, and it looks as if it has been made from nails that have
been soldered together. Pilgrims go down into that dimly lit crypt and look at
the body raised into the air, and then they emerge again into a brightly lit
nave with a ceiling several stories high.
Really, those pilgrims are coming to see Jesus. In fact, the
mission statement of Canterbury Cathedral is four short words: “To show people
Jesus.”
How exactly does one do that? How does one show people Jesus
when we seem far removed? Whom do we approach to say, “We wish to see Jesus”?
I would like to say that we show people Jesus in acts of
compassion and social justice, in acts of radical love and acceptance and
forgiveness. But recently, I was speaking about discipleship to a group of
teenagers preparing for Confirmation, and I spoke about the importance of this
type of service. They challenged that idea. They argued that anyone can perform
these acts, so these acts were not necessarily a sign of being a Christian
disciple.
Now of course, I had not argued that there was anything
exclusively Christian about these actions. Certainly, people of other faiths
and people who practice no religion also perform acts of compassion and social
justice and demonstrate the radical love of Jesus. They are being children of
the light. Jesus doesn’t say that everyone must join and practice a particular
religion.
So when I ask myself, “How do we as Christian disciples show
people Jesus?,” I think about those teenagers’ objection. What is unique about
following Jesus? It has to be more than radical love. It has to be more than
wise teachings. It has to be more than a devout love of God.
What is unique about Jesus? The Cross and the Resurrection.
Why do people go to sites of martyrdom, sites where someone’s life has been
sacrificed in a Christlike way that inspires others to journey there? They go
to see the Cross and the Resurrection.
In 2012, I went on a brief trip with some classmates to El
Salvador to visit various churches and mission efforts there. And while we were
there, we visited two sites of martyrdom: the Jesuit house at La Universidad
Centroamericana where six priests and two women were slain, and the convent
hospital chapel where Archbishop Romero was shot while celebrating the
Eucharist. While we were in the brightly lit chapel with white tiles all
around, a guide showed my group where Romero was shot, and where his body had
fallen on the ground behind the altar.
I felt very drawn to that spot. Very drawn. I waited until
my classmates and other visitors had left the chapel, and then I knelt behind
the altar and placed my hand on the cold while marble where Romero fell, where
the pool of blood had been. But I wanted to get even closer. And so I
prostrated myself on the marble and laid my heart where his heart had been,
where his blooding aorta had been.
I can’t explain why I did that. I have never done anything
like that before. But I think I wanted to get closer to the place of martyrdom.
I wanted to be one with it. I wanted to see Jesus.
There were resurrections as the result of these
assassinations. The international community put great pressure upon the
Salvadoran government to end the civil war and the persecution of the poor and
of the Church. And the liberation theology of the martyred scholar priests
caught fire and spread throughout the world. It led to a rebirth of the Salvadoran
people, and to a worldwide acceptance of the same liberation theology that
before had been considered suspect, too closely tied to Marxist ideology and
Communism.
These things came about due to the Cross and the
Resurrection. How appropriate that these things happened in a country called El
Salvador—which means “the Savior” in Spanish.
“To show people Jesus” does not mean merely to speak of Jesus in witnessing and
proclamation or to do mighty acts of charity, healing, and inclusion that
signal God’s providence. It’s something deeper and more mysterious. When people
ask me where my Christian faith comes from, I could spout stories from the
Gospels, all that I learned in my childhood years of religious instruction, the
wonderful examples of Christian discipleship that my parents and others have
provided.
But these things are not the source of my faith. They are
human sources of wisdom, which, as you can see, Paul is not so enthusiastic
about. We can read tomes and tomes of theology and still not be able to see
Jesus, much less show him to others. Here is one of the major sets of works by
the great theologian Thomas Aquinas: the Summa Theologica, or “Summary of
Theology.” He attempted to answer every possible question about God, Christ,
the Holy Spirit, humankind, and creation. And a few months before the end of
his life, he stopped writing. He is reputed to have said on his deathbed, “Such
secrets have been revealed to me that all I have written now appears as so much
straw.” His writings did not show Jesus—not completely.
And here are the many volumes of Karl Barth’s major work,
Church Dogmatics, which he also worked on until he died. And yet he, for all he
wrote, admitted that human wisdom was incapable of knowing God directly. He
believed that Jesus Christ was the one pinpoint of intersection between the
vastness of God and God’s wisdom and the human mind and spirit. Through Jesus,
we could know God.
When people ask me about my faith or what I think about
Jesus and his divinity, they are asking me to show them Jesus. And so all I can
do is to explain how Jesus—God—came to me, often in times of despair or loss or
tragedy, but also in moments of peace and quiet and joy. I can describe the
effect these visitations had upon me: how I felt companionship, love, comfort,
and an assurance of God’s presence in my life. I felt resurrected. At other
times, I have felt Jesus spurring me on, encouraging me to go where I thought I
could not go.
In short, I have seen Jesus in the Cross and the
Resurrection. All of the human knowledge that I have acquired has bolstered my
faith, challenged it, and developed it. But none of that knowledge explains why
I lay down on the marble at that chapel in El Salvador to be one with the
memory of the spilled blood of Oscar Romero. None of that knowledge explains
why I never miss Palm Sunday or Good Friday, as painful as I find the
descriptions of Christ’s suffering and crucifixion. And none of it can explain
the spiritual high I feel on Easter Vigil and Easter morning. Or the excitement
I feel at baptisms. Or the fellowship and peace I feel in the Eucharist, which
is in part a memorial of the spilled blood of Jesus.
In all of these things, I have been shown Jesus. And it is
the Church’s privilege in Holy Week, and throughout the year, to show other
people Jesus.
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