Well the theme for our reflection today and throughout the week is the rejourney and trust with death and with Jesus’ life. When the Greek speaking visitors approached Philip they said, “We would like to see Jesus.” Surely we all, all of us, can echo that sentiment. We would like to see Jesus. We recognize the longing in the human heart that was so beautifully expressed by St. Augustine when he said, “You have made us for yourself, oh God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

When Jesus was told of this desire of the visitors he gave a very very strange answer. It wasn’t, “Oh, tell them I’d love to see them, I’ll be free this afternoon at two o’clock…”. No, the reply was very very strange. He said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. But, if it dies, it produces much fruit.” It is as if he said, “Go and tell those people that there’s a price to be paid for seeing me.” Before we can see Jesus, before we can journey with him in trust there has to be in us a death. A death to selfishness a death to self absorption, a death to self indulgence, a death to anger, a death to whatever addition is holding us in its grip. This was the life of Jesus. You remember his public ministry began, just before his public ministry, with his time in the desert when he was tempted. He was tempted to be self-important, great, showoff; but, he rejected it all—he rejected that.

The gospels actually depict his life as a journey to Jerusalem but this was not just a nice literary devise that the writers used to tie his whole life together, it indicates his entire mission, to reveal God to the world by his own humility—by not putting himself forward, by always trying to see that his father was glorified. “Father, glorify your name”—this was his life. It was a journey towards the temple of Jerusalem and that journey was marked by triumph and failure, by applause and betrayal, by joy and by suffering and ultimately by a death on Mt. Calvary that was to supplant all the sacrifices that were made on the temple mount. He said it was for this purpose that I came into the world, “Father, glorify your name.” Does this resonate with us in any way, especially during this time of lent? Can we see our life as a journey to the heavenly Jerusalem, a journey made in trust? Because, we too experience the ups and downs of life, the joys and the sorrows, acceptance and rejection, gain and loss.

In all of this, can we say, “Father, glorify your name”—very very difficult to do that. Can God be glorified in human suffering? Well, I don’t think that’s exactly what Jesus meant. I believe what he meant was that God is glorified in our acceptance, in trust, our acceptance of the world as it is; our acceptance of the human condition, our flawed human nature with all it’s good and all it’s bad. We’re asked to accept, in trust, that all things will somewhat work together unto good—unto the glory of God--eventually if we journey with Jesus in trust. It’s a very very hard thing to do, especially, you know, we look around the world and we see so much evil. We experience pain in our own hearts and sometimes in our own bodies. We see the pain in the faces of our loved ones. It’s a great great question of good and evil, of life and death.

For us as Christians, the only answer surely must be the one that springs from our faith in the life and death of Jesus, not so much the bodily life that he lived, important as that is, but rather the resurrected life that he now lives. It is in this that we trust. St. Paul summed up the life and the mission of Jesus in this way. He said, “…He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death even the death on the cross and because of this, God highly exalted him.” His death was not only life-giving for himself as evidenced in his resurrection and ascension, but also for us—“Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains just a grain of wheat. But, if it dies, it produces much fruit.” We are the fruit of the dying and the resurrection of Jesus. We have received spiritual life because of his life and his death and resurrection. Our baptism is telling us that we journey in trust, believing in the power of this sacrament to help us make that journey—to help us walk in his footsteps and make the sacrifices that may be necessary. Yes, if we in our turn are to produce much fruit, we must die now to many things—let go of many things—if we are to glorify God in our life.

We will be celebrating all of this very shortly in the great liturgies of Holy Week that begin next Sunday. We’ll be celebrating the triumph of Palm Sunday, the love and then the betrayal on Holy Thursday, the falling to the ground and the dying on Good Friday, and the glorious fruit of Resurrection on Easter morning. So let us, during this coming week kind of try to get into that mood—try to enter into these liturgies with great faith, journeying in trust with Jesus in his life and in his death. Amen.