Once and only once in my life, I did a celebrity stakeout. My wife and I spent hours in a Croatian hotel to see members of the band Duran Duran, who were known to be staying there. We managed to meet three of them briefly. I have to wonder if a sort of celebrity stakeout is happening at the beginning of today's Gospel passage too when some Greeks come to see Jesus and try to gain access to him through the disciples.
In the context of the passage, Jesus has just ridden triumphantly into Jerusalem. Many in the city expect him to claim the Messianic kingship. During the day, he is teaching in the city, accompanied by his disciples. By night, he is at a hidden location at the Mount Olives outside of the city, so he is not as easily accessible during these days as before. Are the Greeks hoping to see him for spiritual reasons or because he is widely regarded as the rising power of the political order?
We do not find out if these Greeks got to see Jesus. As sometimes happens in the Gospel of John, the setting of the scene becomes the occasion for Jesus to expound on deeper themes and we do not get more details on how that specific situation unfolds.
But if they did get to meet Jesus, they would not have seen someone who was about to claim a kingship strong enough to overthrow the Romans. Instead, they would have witnessed his preparations for his own crucifixion.
Christ will certainly claim complete dominion in the fullness of time. But first he has to complete the mission for which he came. He has to lay his life down in self-sacrifice. As we can see from the passage, the enormity of the task ahead troubles him. With his human nature, he would rather avoid the suffering that awaits him.
But he will undergo the suffering of his self-sacrifice out of love, so that through his suffering and death he can offer atonement for our sins. He offers us true liberation. By allowing Christ to transform us through his self-sacrifice, we are freed from the self-destructive prison of our sins. Through the healing sacrifice of Christ for us, we are freed from the evil spiritual powers active in the world, who seek to separate us from God's blessing through our own self-defeating behavior.
At the same time, we should remember that when Christ calls us to follow him, he is also calling us to imitate him, to be like him. He calls us to be ready, like him, to sacrifice ourselves for others in small ways and great.
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The readings for the Fifth Suday of Lent, Cycle B, are:
Jer 31:31-34
Psalm 51:3-4, 12-13, 14-15
Heb 5:7-9
Jn 12:20-33
The full text can be found at the USCCB website.
Photo Credit: The Mount of Olives by Zoltan Abraham (c) 2016.