GOOD FRIDAY

Spinning the Story:

The Politics of Good Friday

[John 19:17-27] So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them. Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” Many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek.

Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’” Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.” When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four parts, one for each soldier. They also took his tunic; now the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from the top. So they said to one another, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see who will get it.” This was to fulfill what the scripture says,

“They divided my clothes among themselves,
and for my clothing they cast lots.”

And that is what the soldiers did.

Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.”

And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

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He wasn't even dead yet and they were trying to rewrite his life. At the foot of the cross where he hung in agony, they argued about what the sign above his head should say.

"Do not write, 'The King of the Jews,' said the chief priests – write 'This man said, I am King of the Jews" and Pilate replied "What I have written I have written."

It may be what Pilate wrote but it wasn't what Jesus said – is it? When he interrogated Jesus, Pilate started out by asking directly “Are you the King of the Jews?” and then – like a first century version of a frustrated prosecuting attorney –after coming at the question from several different angles he had to settle for Jesus' non-responsive response, "You say that I am a king."

Pilate said it – but Jesus didn't. The Jesus who hung dying on the cross while political leaders tried to spin his story to their advantage had nothing to do with the trappings of kingship or with earthly power or political authority – with revenge or with judgment. Instead, the ministry of the radical rabbi from Nazareth had everything to do with wholeness, with restoring creation to the fullness of the peace and justice; the truth and love that God intended – with challenging those who followed him to the high calling of loving their neighbors as themselves.

Quite a challenge, that: a challenge that required turning virtually everything the world says about life and death -- about power and control -- upside down. It's a challenge to stay "upside down" when the world around you is pointing in the opposite direction. And so it wasn't very long after the joy of Easter and the empowerment of Pentecost that the ways of the world started to leak back into the infant church.

It wasn't very long before others stepped in where Pilate and the chief priests had left off and began to "spin the story" to preserve the power of a developing institutional church rather than to empower the propagation of incarnational love. A vestige of that "spinning the story" can be found in the creeds we inherit … creeds that emerged from the early church councils having reduced Jesus' life and witness to a footnote: creeds that skip from "born of the Virgin Mary" to "suffered under Pontius Pilate" leaving an awful lot of walking in love as Christ loved us on the cutting room floor!

Verna Dozier in her wonderful book "The Dream of God" describes it thus: "The people of the resurrection made the incomprehensible gift of grace into a structure. [Rejecting] the frighteningly free gift of God go be a new thing in the world – a witness that all of life could be different for everybody – this gift was harnessed by an institution that established a hierarchy of those who "know" above the great mass of those who must be told." [pg. 4]

And so -- for generations -- those of us who "must be told" were told all kinds of things about what Jesus' life and death and resurrection meant. And a great many of them bore little or no resemblance to the actual life and witness of the one the church claims to follow – of the Jesus …

· who put table fellowship at the center of his life,
· who ate with outcasts,
· who welcomed sinners,
· who proclaimed the year of the Lord's favor,
· who was so centered in God's abundant love that he was willing to speak truth to power from that first sermon that almost got him thrown off the cliff by his irate Nazarene homies to his last cross-examination by Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea.

Instead we were given doctrines we were supposed to digest and not delve into, creeds we were supposed to recite and not question, Scriptures we were supposed to memorize and not contextualize. And the Good Friday story we were supposed to get in line behind is outlined by a colleague as: "Jesus died on the cross for your sins, and he's going to come down and beat you up if you don't pay him back."

And then they wondered why they were having trouble growing the church! The stumbling block for so many has nothing to do with the good news of God in Christ Jesus and everything to do with the disconnect between the stories Jesus told of a loving God calling the whole human family into relationship with God and with each other and the story the church was telling of an angry God demanding blood sacrifice as the price of relationship with him. And it was definitely a "him." And on it goes.

For just as Pilate and the chief priests argued at the foot of the cross on that first Good Friday over who got to "spin the story" of Jesus' life there is a gathering this Good Friday at the foot of the cross arguing over who gets to "spin the story" of Jesus' death. There are those insisting that there is only one way – their way – of understanding how it is that "Jesus Saves" – only one way of defining what is good about Good Friday.

And there are others pushing back – saying "wait a minute" – revisiting ancient texts and reclaiming ancient truths and coming to very different understandings about the mystery of the "goodness" of this Good Friday – understandings of how the death on the cross of the radical rabbi from Nazareth liberated the world – freeing it from the fear of death and offering to it the gift of eternal life.

And in what can best be described as a most interesting spirit of synchronicity, there has recently been quite a remarkable surge of discourse and dialogue about these matters sparked at least in part by Jeffrey John, the Dean of St. Alban's Cathedral, who offered a "Lenten Message" on BBC radio in which he shared his own journey with the cross.

The instinctive feeling that suffering must be a punishment sent from God seems to lie deep in the human soul - or it does in mine anyway. In my case it may have something to do with the fact that I was brought up in a tradition …which took a pretty firm line on sin and retribution.
The explanation I was given went something like this. God was very angry with us for our sins, and because he is a just God, our sin had to be punished. But instead of punishing us he sent his Son, Jesus, as a substitute to suffer and die in our place. The blood of Jesus paid the price of our sins, and because of him God stopped being angry with us. In other words, Jesus took the rap, and we got forgiven, provided we said we believed in him.

Well, I don't know about you, but even at the age of ten I thought this explanation was pretty repulsive as well as nonsensical. What sort of God was this, getting so angry with the world and the people he created, and then, to calm himself down, demanding the blood of his own Son? And anyway, why should God forgive us through punishing somebody else? It was worse than illogical, it was insane. It made God sound like a psychopath. If any human being behaved like this we'd say they were a monster.

Well, I haven't changed my mind since. That explanation of the cross just doesn't work, though sadly it's one that's still all too often preached. It just doesn't make sense to talk about a nice Jesus down here, placating the wrath of a nasty, angry Father God in heaven. Christians believe Jesus is God incarnate. As he said, 'Whoever sees me has seen the Father'. Jesus is what God is: he is the one who shows us God's nature. And the most basic truth about God's nature is that He is Love, not wrath and punishment.

Hardly radical stuff to those accustomed to sermons from this pulpit, but Dean John's willingness to challenge so directly this particular "spin" of the salvation story as contrary to a whole list of things drew lots of attention – including an across-the-pond attack by two evangelical bishops decrying John's theology (while admitting they hadn't actually read his talk yet) and accusations by self-described orthodox Anglicans of abandoning the foundations of the faith.

Never mind that substitutionary atonement – that's seminary lingo for the issue Dean John is addressing – is not and has never been a "doctrine" of the church. As Dan Martins, a priest in the Diocese of San Joaquin and a significant conservative voice in the Episcopal Church clarified "... there are other equally biblical and equally plausible theories of the atonement, and to the extent that this may be Dean John's point, then he indeed has a point. As C. S. Lewis wisely observes in his classic Mere Christianity, none of the possible theories can alone account for the mystery of the cross, and none have ever been declared official dogma by the Church." It is a theory – one among many – and it makes as much sense to insist that we have to "believe in a theory" in order to be saved as it does to insist that we have to "comply with a report" in order to be in communion with each other.

So when I read this morning that one bishop declared "the truth that Jesus died as our sin-bearing substitute carrying the punishment for our sins on the cross is the glorious heart of the Gospel" I was right back at the foot of the cross with Pilate and the chief priests arguing about what kind of king was this man who never said he was a king.

And I am convinced that if we were able to ask Jesus the question "Are you our sin-bearing substitute carrying the punishment for our sins on the cross?" his answer to us would be the same as it was to Pilate: "You say that I am."

All of this inspired our friend Giles Fraser, vicar of Putney, to write: "Easter is a time for stringing up the innocent. And this year, once again, the sacrificial victim is the dean of St Albans, Dr Jeffrey John. Of course, we all know the reason… [it's] because he’s honest. And it’s this same honesty that has got him in trouble again. For, once again, what he has been saying is nothing other than a truth known by most people in the pews: that the idea of God murdering his son for the salvation of the world is barbaric and morally indefensible. It turns Christianity into “cosmic child abuse.”

And it spins the story into something the institutional church has used for far too long avoid what Verna Dozier names as its high calling: to claim the frighteningly free gift of God go be a new thing in the world – a witness that all of life could be different for everybody.

That is the witness we have to offer the world – the witness we call turning the human race into the human family. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with swallowing morally indefensible theories of blood sacrifice and everything to do with living morally accountable lives of service and self-offering. It has to do with what Frederick Buechner names as "the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need." It has to do with being the Body of Christ in the world -- it has to do with these words to the hymn we sing as one our presentation hymns on Sundays:

A world in need now summons us
To labor, love and give;
To make our life an offering
To all that all may live.
The church of Christ is calling us
To make the dream come true;
A world redeemed by Christ-like love
All life in Christ made new.

All life in Christ made new is the Easter promise we claim even as we stand at this moment at the foot of the Good Friday cross – a cross which Jeffrey John describes in this way: On the cross God absorbs into himself our falleness and its consequences and offers us a new relationship. … From Good Friday on, God is no longer "God up there", inscrutably allotting rewards and retributions. On the Cross, even more than in the crib, he is Immanuel, God down here, God with us.

God is with us – and that is good news: on this Good Friday and always. Amen.

Maundy Thursday

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From "The Sacrament of Servanthood"

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So what's up with the footwashing? One commentary I read reaches this conclusion: "Jesus was showing us that we are all equal when we gather around the table of the Lord. If the Creator could wash the feet of the created, should not the creatures wash the feet of one another in equality? And if Jesus saw himself in his creatures, shouldn't we see him in each other?"

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Does that mean we're supposed to REALLY wash each other's feet? Well, let's look again at our criteria for primary sacraments in the church: We do it because Jesus told us to. ("given by Christ to His Church" in the loftier words of the catechism)

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Baptism in Matthew 28: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son & Holy Spirit.

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Eucharist in Luke 22: And he took bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them saying, "This is my body which is given for you. DO THIS in remembrance of me.

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And in Footwashing in today's gospel: John 13: So, then, if I -- your Lord and teacher -- have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example that you also should do as I have done to you.

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Could it be that part of the reason the "kingdom" hasn't come yet is that the church missed the boat on what Jesus intended to be another primary sacrament "given by Christ to his Church": the sacrament of servanthood? Sadly, examples are all too easy to find -- such as the newspaper article about a church edict forbidding women and children to participate in ceremonial foot washings on Maundy Thursday. It declared that the act of foot washing was symbolic of Jesus choosing an all male priesthood -- therefore the ceremony would consist of twelve men from any congregation -- no women and no children.

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Can you imagine our Lord saying to his disciples gathered on the night before he was handed over to suffering and death: “A new commandment I give you: exclude women and children.” I can’t imagine that – instead I imagine Jesus reading that news report, shaking his head in discouragement and saying, “What part of love one another don’t you understand?”

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The priesthood of all the faithful: that’s the calling we ALL gather on Maundy Thursday to celebrate as we share with each other the bread and wine made holy. The priesthood of all the faithful -- ALL the beloved people of God: not just the ones with white plastic around their necks and seminary degrees hanging on their walls. Can we – in this "out-of-the-ordinary" week – dare to claim that extraordinary calling? Can we – each and very one of us – believe that God will give us the grace to obey this New Commandment if we will but ask – if we will but follow the One who calls us to walk in love as He loved us and gave Himself for us.

The Bishop of Utah Responds

On March 31st Utah's Bishop Irish offered her "Report on the Spring Meeting of the House of Bishops" to her diocese. You can read it all here ... but here's how it starts:
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Bishop Katharine, who has been in office only about three or four months, reported to us her experience of the Dar es Salaam meeting. She said it was ‘not entirely unpleasant’. She enjoyed getting acquainted with the other new primates (14 in all) and receiving supportive comments by the primates of other Provinces.*
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Incidentally, she did not sign the Communiqué, as was feared or rumored; no one did. The document was quite positive in fact until the last night when it all began to go downhill. The penultimate version of it included a comment about respect for the Episcopal Church, whereupon the primate of Nigeria rose to say he had no respect for the Episcopal Church, so that clause was removed. At 11:30 p.m. the Archbishop asked if the version we eventually received was OK, and most or all said yes. Katharine herself said she would bring it to our House of Bishops.
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* She did, however, allow that the low point of the meeting occurred when one of the Primates, when asked about the learning and listening process to understand homosexual orientation, remarked “We don’t study murder; why should be study homosexuality.” This was too much even for the Archbishop of Canterbury.

From My Bishop ...

April Letter to the Clergy of the Diocese of Los Angeles*
from the Right Reverend J. Jon Bruno
Bishop of Los Angeles

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My brothers and sisters,

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As we prepare for Holy Week and Easter, it's important that we look back at the last month or so and what's happened in our life as a church. People have said to me over and over again, "You should write a pastoral letter about what happened." This isn't a pastoral letter, but I would like to offer these thoughts on recent events.

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I encourage you to read the three documents put out by the House of Bishops: the request for the Archbishop of Canterbury to come and meet with us face to face, and the two resolutions addressed to Executive Council. That will tell you exactly where we are as a Church.

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Lately I've been reading A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, by Edwin H. Friedman. His description of characteristics encountered in a "chronically anxious" family seems to me to reflect recent events and attitudes in our Communion:

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[What follows is] a description of five interlocking characteristics of chronically anxious individual families and their regressive parallels in the great American family of today. Each is regressive because it subverts a major principle of the way life on this planet has survived and evolved.

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Characteristic:

1. Reactivity

2. Herding

3. Blame Displacement

4. A Quick-Fix Mentality

5. Failure of Nerve in Leadership

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Evolutionary process subverted:

1. Self-regulation of instinctual drive

2. Adaptation toward strength

3. A growth-producing response to challenge

4. Allowing time for processes to mature

5. All of the above.

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All five characteristics contribute to one another, although the fifth, lack of leadership, may be the link among them all. For the first four all share two factors in common that always tend to compromise effective leadership: denial of emotional process and a devaluing of the individuality that is necessary for summoning "nerve."-- Edwin H. Friedman "A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix" (page 61)

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The Episcopal Church is blessed by a House of Bishops that stood up for individuality and for self-differentiation as they wrote these documents, realizing that we as a church of 2.3 million people in the United States, two territories and 14 countries must maintain our autonomy and the authority of our Presiding Bishop. If we allow the Archbishop of Canterbury to set up a visiting Primate or a pastoral vicar, as he has suggested, for our presiding bishop, we would be undermining the power and the authority of Katharine Jefferts Schori.

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The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori is one of the most articulate and capable women I've ever met in my life, and to undermine her authority would be a great disservice to our Church. Furthermore, to allow the Primates---who have no adjudicatory responsibility or power over The Episcopal Church---to have a steering committee that would look over Bishop Katharine's shoulder and see if she's doing things in a "proper" fashion (according to them) would be an even greater disservice to our church.

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I hope that the next few months of study--a "fasting" for a time of study as suggested by our Presiding Bishop-would be a great gift to the Church. I know that the Presiding Bishop and Bonnie Anderson, president of the House of Deputies, are setting up a method for doing that. I look forward to them giving us tools to help determine what our final response should be.

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If you'll notice, the resolutions that went to the Executive Council were not a response to the Primates, but a suggestion of behavior to the Executive Council from the House of Bishops. I would hope that our future is within the Anglican Communion. I desire nothing more than to remain in the filial relationship that we've had for so many years-a relationship that leaves us free to be open, creative and evolutionary Christians.

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I would pray that the Primates and the Archbishop of Canterbury-who is the only one responsible for saying whether or not we should be a member of the Anglican Communion-will see the importance of us being part of this community. I have to be clear and tell you that the Presiding Bishop and the Executive Council and the President of the House of Deputies are doing all they can to make a metered response to this untoward request that has been placed upon this Church.

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In addition, there are a couple more things I want to share with you. I've just been asked by Bonnie Anderson and Bishop Katharine to sit on the Communique response writing group. I will be doing that as a member of Executive Council and the House of Bishops.

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I pray that we can give a response that will allow us to be part of the Anglican Communion, but not in any way, shape or form dishonor the inclusive nature of our Church. For we cannot go backwards. We are not a church that will turn around and walk away from our decisions.

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When the appointment of Jeffery John, a gay man who was chosen to be a bishop in England, was reversed, that act of going backwards did great disservice to Jeffery John and to the English church. When the Presbyterian Church made proactive statements about sexuality and went backwards, it did great disservice to that church-and on and on with other denominations. The Episcopal Church shall not be one that backs up on this issue.

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Well, I guess I can't say that exactly. But the Diocese of Los Angeles will not back up. I have commitments from all my bishops to support the people of this diocese, regardless of their sexuality, to support their baptismal covenant ministry and what God calls them to do.

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I will keep you in my prayers. Please keep me in yours.

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Yours in Christ,

+J. Jon Bruno

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To read the Primates' Communique, the resolutions passed by the House of Bishops, and several other documents and commentaries relating to the current crisis in the Church, click here and scroll down the page to "Resources."

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*published in the April 2007 edition of "The Angelus" -- the clergy newsetter of the Diocese of Los Angeles

Atonement Update

The transcript of Dean Jeffrey John's BBC reflection is now available ... click here for the whole text ... here are a few bits.

First the part that "got them going":

The explanation I was given went something like this. God was very angry with us for our sins, and because he is a just God, our sin had to be punished. But instead of punishing us he sent his Son, Jesus, as a substitute to suffer and die in our place. The blood of Jesus paid the price of our sins, and because of him God stopped being angry with us. In other words, Jesus took the rap, and we got forgiven, provided we said we believed in him.

Well, I don't know about you, but even at the age of ten I thought this explanation was pretty repulsive as well as nonsensical. What sort of God was this, getting so angry with the world and the people he created, and then, to calm himself down, demanding the blood of his own Son? And anyway, why should God forgive us through punishing somebody else? It was worse than illogical, it was insane. It made God sound like a psychopath. If any human being behaved like this we'd say they were a monster.

Well, I haven't changed my mind since. That explanation of the cross just doesn't work, though sadly it's one that's still all too often preached. It just doesn't make sense to talk about a nice Jesus down here, placating the wrath of a nasty, angry Father God in heaven. Christians believe Jesus is God incarnate. As he said, 'Whoever sees me has seen the Father'. Jesus is what God is: he is the one who shows us God's nature. And the most basic truth about God's nature is that He is Love, not wrath and punishment.

And then the "OK ... if that's not what the point of the cross is what IS the point?" part:

The cross, then, is not about Jesus reconciling an angry God to us; it's almost the opposite. It's about a totally loving God, incarnate in Christ, reconciling us to him. On the cross Jesus dies for our sins; the price of our sin is paid; but it is not paid to God but by God. As St Paul says, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Because he is Love, God does what Love does: He unites himself with the beloved. He enters his own creation and goes to the bottom line for us. Not sending a substitute to vent his punishment on, but going himself to the bitter end, sharing in the worst of suffering and grief that life can throw at us, and finally sharing our death, so that he can bring us through death to life in him.

Fr. Jake has some commentary here ... always worth reading is Fr. Jake.

All Atonement All the Time

It was actually kind of refreshing this week to have noticed some bona fide theological discourse leaking into the blogosphere -- a nice change of pace and certainly seasonally appropriate as the doctrine dujour has by acclamation been decreed to be atonement.

The first flurry was in the news over an article in the London Telegraph entitled Easter message: Christ did not die for sin discussing a yet-to be-broadcast BBC radio Easter message from Dean Jeffrey John. Fr. Jake chalked the Telegraph article up to "an attempt to sell more papers" and it seems to have worked. It certainly got the conversation going ... as Ekklesia reports: Two junior evangelical bishops have attacked a Lent talk to be given tonight on BBC’s Radio 4 by Jeffrey John, the Dean of St Albans cathedral, without reading it.

Yes, by all means, none of this pesky waiting about to actually HEAR what those whom one presumes one disagrees with have to say -- what a time saver in these busy days to get the attack launched ahead of time! Wished I'd thought of that.

The aforementioned Fr. Jake proceeded to post a most excellent "atonement 101 cheat sheet" which is highly recommended -- whether you're needing a seminary/EFM brush-up or starting-from-scratch introduction to the various theories of atonement.

But in an extraordinary turn of events, theological discourse on the atonement appears not to be restricted to bloggers and newspapers -- some has actually leaked into the PULPIT!

Both Michael Hopkins (Rector of the Episcopal Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene in Rochester, New York) and Ed Bacon (Rector of All Saints Church in Pasadena, California) took on issues of the atonement in their Palm Sunday sermons last week.

Michael's entitled "Turning Stones Into Glory" is available here,

Ed's entitled "A Profound Grief Has Humanized My Soul" is available here

Very different sermons with a very similar "take away" -- that there ARE ways to understand the salvific power of the cross without having to swallow substitutionary atonement hook, line and sinker. And how thrilling that you don't have to get to seminary before someone takes the time to explain that to you but that preachers are actually gifting congregations with the theological tools they need to -- well -- to think for themselves!

But wait ... there's more!

Across the theological spectrum, Dan Martins (Diocese of San Joaquin) was also commenting on theories of atonement on his blog with this Palm Sunday post which contained this reflection on atonement in general and Jeffrey John's as-yet-unheard-or-unread-Easter-message in specific:

"... there are other equally biblical and equally plausible theories of the atonement, and to the extent that this may be Dean John's point, then he indeed has a point. As C. S. Lewis wisely observes in his classic Mere Christianity, none of the possible theories can alone account for the mystery of the atonement, and none have ever been declared official dogma by the Church. In fact, they need one another, even though they cannot be neatly reconciled, and appear to contradict one another in certain ways. (my emphasis!)

As for the love of God versus the wrath of God--this is just one in a long series of polarities that comprise the truth of the gospel. (Just to name a few: God is one and God is three, Jesus is divine and Jesus is human, salvation requires faith [Paul] and salvation requires deeds [James], prayer is "art" and prayer is "craft," faith is individual ["I believe"] and faith is communal ["we believe"]). The object of the game is to maintain the tension in the line between the two poles, the two ends of the spectrum. The temptation is always to resolve the apparent contradiction in favor of one and at the other's expense. This is precisely how we fall into error, into--yes-- heresy."

Imagine what could happen if this kind of news got out ... and if there's actually room for more than one theory of the cross during HOLY WEEK in the church is it possible that there might be room more than one theory on some other things as well? It could happen!

So stay tuned for more on the atonement in these pages ... I'll put the link up to Dean John's BBC gig when it comes available. But let's close with this quote from C. S. Lewis -- referenced by Dan Martins and quoted by Fr. Jake:

By dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed. Any theories we build up as to how Christ's death did all this are, in my view, quite secondary: mere plans or diagrams to be left alone if they do not help us, and, even if they do help us, not to be confused with the thing itself ...

TUESDAY IN HOLY WEEK: "We Wish to See Jesus"

Isaiah 49:1-7, John 12:20-33

Time flies when you’re having Lent.

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The season that began what seems like “just yesterday” with the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday has brought us already to this Tuesday in Holy Week – to the time author Nora Gallagher writes of as "the hinge between Lent and Easter ... between the guilt and shame, the inertia and fear that bind us to the past and leave us in despair and the love that lures us toward hope."

"The love that lures us toward hope." I love that line: for it speaks to me of the love of God so great that it triumphs over death ... a love that continues to "lure us toward hope" these 20 centuries after the death of the One who came to show us how to "walk in love, as Christ loved us". Was it that love -- that hope -- that lured those we hear about in today's Gospel of John? The "Greeks" who approached Philip in Jerusalem with the plea, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus"?

A brief historical “contextual” note: when John says "some Greeks", he doesn't mean folks who hang out in Athens and are related to Zorba. To the 1st century hearers of the Gospel "Greeks" meant "non-Jews" - foreigners - Gentiles. No wonder Philip had to go check with Andrew first ... did you notice that in the text? "They came to Philip -- who went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus." As one of the commentaries I consulted noted: "... evidently being dubious how they might be received." No automatic welcome for these guys: these Greeks who wanted to see Jesus.

But see him they do. Crossing all sorts of boundaries -- breaking a whole list of deeply ingrained cultural rules -- Jesus teaches them the same way he has been teaching his disciples all along. Did he think about the words of the prophet Isaiah we just read: “It is not enough for you to do my bidding, to restore the tribes of Leah, Rachel, and Jacob and bring back the survivors of Israel; I will make you the light of the nations, so that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” Maybe. John doesn’t tell us what Jesus thought, but he does tell us what Jesus said: "Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also ... Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." Then John, the gospel writer adds, "He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die."

In those few sentences is the essence of the Gospel -- the Good News Jesus came to give the world and the world couldn't hear: Follow me ... do as I do ... I have come to show you the way to live in love and community with God and each other.

NOW the Kingdom of God is in your midst ... and it is for ALL people.

Yes, he said all this to indicate the kind of death he was to die; for the inevitability of the crucifixion must have hung heavy in his heart these last days. But if we settle for John's explanation at face value, we miss the power of this text for us today. I believe Jesus said all this to the Greeks who sought him out in Jerusalem -- lured by love and hope -- not ONLY to indicate the kind of death he was to die, but to indicate the kind of life we are to live.

"When I am lifted up I will draw all people to myself." And how will he do that? I'm jumping ahead in the story a bit, but come Pentecost we will hear again of the coming of the Holy Spirit ... the birth of the Church called to be the Body of Christ in the world ... called to take up the ministry of Jesus on earth.

So if the church is indeed the Body of Christ here on earth, how good a job are we doing with those who come to us as they did to Philip saying, "Please, we want to see Jesus?" Let me tell you about my friend ... a woman I've known since the 7th grade who lives in Toronto with her husband and three children. After many years without a faith community, she wrote me that she started going back to church. "Only it's not exactly church," she said. "It's at a church but I don't go on Sunday yet ... I go Wednesday night and meet with other women. We pray and sing and support each other. And they read from the Bible, but it's so wonderful ... they don't beat you up with Jesus, so it hardly feels like church."

"They don't beat you up with Jesus" -- what an indictment! Yet in the church she grew up in Jesus -- the Jesus who yearns to draw all people to himself -- became for her a stumbling block, a barrier to faith rather than a lure toward hope. My friend never knew that there was a choice between the Jesus of Judgment and the Christ of Faith and so I pray that this community she's found will be a gateway for her -- that she can finally "see Jesus" - just as those Greeks in Jerusalem did: can see for herself that "draw all people" means her, too!

Thankfully, All Saints Church has a long history of offering a voice of hope to those who come saying "Please, we want to see Jesus" – who come looking for a place to encounter the Lord of Love rather than the Letter of the Law. It is a history with deep roots in our Anglican heritage – for the Episcopal Church is a product of the glorious 16th century experiment intended to end the bloody feud between Catholics and Protestants in England during the reformation – an experiment that resulted in a church where orthopraxis (common practice) was valued over orthodoxy (common belief).

The significance of that experiment, my Church History text tells me is that “it was able to hold the vast majority of the people together, despite being a compromise few would have chosen." And there you have it: Anglican Traditionalism.

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It seems to me that as 21st century Anglicans facing the very real challenges in front of us we would be well served to dig more deeply into our 16th Century roots ... to claim with enthusiasm the heritage that has historically given us the ability to live with disagreement ... to honor the tension of diversity and focus on the things that bind us together rather than allow ourselves to be distracted by the things that threaten to divide us.

"We must be the change we wish to see in the world," said Ghandi. When we do that, then we truly follow the Lord who told us not only what kind of death he was to die but what kind of life we are to live.

And if I have "an agenda" – and I do -- it is an agenda as old as Isaiah and Andrew, of Jesus and the Gentiles. It is the agenda of a Lord whose love lures us toward hope – of the one who yearns to draw all people to himself – of the Jesus who took time, in the last days before his crucifixion, to reach out to those Greeks who came to him -- not sure if they'd be welcome. It is the Gospel Agenda and it is begging to be fulfilled – and we are the Body of Christ who have been charged with fulfilling it in our generation.

And so, in this Holy Week, I pray that God will give us grace to commit ourselves to being "… the change we wish to see in the world" – to persevering in the proclamation of God's Good News to all people -- in spite of the setbacks and the obstacles; of the challenges and the costs -- as we journey with Jesus and claim his "agenda" as our own. Amen.