Have you ever felt like an outsider? When I was at school, sport was one of those activities for me when I was constantly on the outside. I tried my best most of the time, but I wasn’t all that good, and I knew it! What this did mean was that not only did I not make the school cricket of rugby teams, but it also had implication for friendly informal games. Yet, in time, I learned to live with this and to accept being on the outside, ‘that was life’, while searching for and pursuing those areas where I could do better in, one of which was music.

We all experience times in our lives when we feel that we are on the outside. It might be family related; it could be learning to live in another culture and country; perhaps some of you here might feel on the outside of church events because of one reason or another?

In a similar way, the Greeks in our Gospel reading today would have felt like outsiders too, only in this case, it was all because of their race – in other words, here we have a case of Racism – a word we hear a lot about today, yet it has been a perennial problem present in human civilisations over thousands of years. Because they were not born Jews, they were not allowed to engage fully with Jewish life and worship. Now, the first question that needs to be asked is why would Greeks want to attend Jewish worship? After all, Greeks were well known for the pantheon of gods that they already had – didn’t they have enough? (How good is your Greek mythology?)

What Scripture does tells us, is that there were non-Jews, like the Ethiopian eunuch, and Cornelius who would make such visits to attend the Jewish festivals in Jerusalem. One of the reasons for Gentile interest in Jewish worship was the attraction of Monotheism, that is, the worship of one God (worshipping one God probably sounded a lot better that trying to worship and keep happy several gods). While entrance to the inner courts of the Temple was forbidden on pain of death for all Gentiles, they could attend in the outer court of the Gentiles. If this was the case, then it is possible that some Gentiles, including Greeks, could have witnessed not only Jesus’ triumphal entrance into Jerusalem (the event which precedes our Gospel reading in verses 12-19), but also Jesus’ cleansing of the temple; and what makes this latter event even more significant is the fact that it would have taken place in the court of the Gentiles.

Up until now, Greeks had always lived with the stigma of having been born a Gentile. Hearing now that Jesus was insisting that the temple was a ‘house of prayer for all nations’, could have been enough to be drawn to a religious leader who was effectively questioning the inferior status of Gentiles before God. The irony of this whole situation is that at the very moment when the Jewish authorities are turning most against him, absolutely exasperated by Jesus’ growing influence, some Gentiles, who represent the world outside Judaism begin to clamour for his attention. This approach of the Gentiles to see Jesus was a confirmation of the Pharisee’s exclamation in v19 - ‘Look how the whole world has gone after him.’

In this instance, the approach of the Greeks is for Jesus a kind of trigger, a signal that heralds the turning point in his ministry. It is a pivotal moment, upon which the whole of the world’s future history hangs in the balance. Imagine for a minute, that you are one of those Greeks waiting to speak to Jesus. You have gone to the trouble of contacting one of Jesus’ agents called Philip, the one with the Greek name, who unsure of the protocol, has, in turn consulted the PR officer Andrew. Just as you are introduced to Jesus, he suddenly starts talking in a rather strange way. But all you wanted was to talk to Jesus. Yet you stop and listen – Jesus was saying his hour had come for him to be glorified. Hmmm, I wonder what that means? Hang on, he’s still talking. What’s he saying? Something about a grain of wheat needing to fall to the earth and die, if it doesn’t, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.’ Perhaps Jesus feels the local farmers need a helping hand with their wheat crops? Whatever the case, it is only later that the true significance of Jesus’ comments is realised.

You see, up until now, the time had not yet come for the world to witness God’s plan of salvation in which a relationship with God would become possible, regardless of race and independent of becoming a Jew. To date, Jesus’ mission has been exclusively concerned with the Jews – but now the stakes have been raised with the arrival of the Greeks seeking an audience with Jesus. Now was the time for Jesus to reveal his wider mission to the world. His hour had at last arrived. In the space of a few breaths, the true descendants of Abraham, are radically redefined, not as his descendants by blood, but as all people who would acknowledge Jesus as LORD – whether Jew or Greek, slave or free, all who would choose to confess Jesus as LORD would be able to worship and follow him. Jesus’ words were words that would ultimately turn people’s lives upside down all over the world.

Yet, such an incredible gift would only come at a great cost – his life. Jesus is the grain of wheat which must fall into the earth and die there, before he can become fruitful in the Father’s purpose. Fruitfulness for Jesus involved death, death on a cross – without that, God’s great purpose of drawing all people to himself could not be realised. Of course, the cross was a dreadful instrument to bring about death, but what is so amazing is that, for John, the cross is the moment of Jesus’ glorification. And not only that, but the Father’s full glory is revealed as He gives up his Son to death, and the world sees the full glory of his plan of salvation for the first time. As Jesus will go on to say to his disciples in chapter 13:31, ‘Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him.’ In other words, his death, which is about to happen will not only glorify himself, but it will also glorify the Father.

It is at this point that Jesus, because he is lifted up, will draw all people to himself. And in drawing all people to himself, Jesus teaches that for those who wish to truly know him and his Father, death is also involved for them. In verses 25 & 26, Jesus says that ‘The person who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honour the one who serves me.’

Just as the kernel of wheat can only bear fruit through falling to the ground and dying, we too can only bear fruit in the same manner. It is a principle of life that for fruitfulness to occur, death has to occur first – but death in the sense of denying ourselves, taking up our cross and following Jesus. This concept is repeated throughout the Gospels, for example in Mark 8:34: If anyone would come after me, they must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the Gospel will save it.

This must have been earth shattering for the Greeks to hear. They had come to Jesus believing that at last, they might be able to take part in Jewish worship, but Jesus turns it completely upside down by saying that the Jewish way of life was not just about worship, it was also about losing and finding life. Only by doing this could anyone truly ‘see Jesus’. The Greeks desire to see Jesus gave them far more than they bargained for, but then again, Jesus always does!

And this is the challenge to us – do we really want to see Jesus? If we do, the question is, are we ready to take up our cross, and follow Jesus’ lead and example? To come in from the outside means to follow Jesus wherever he leads us! And this journey will involve pain and suffering, along with great joys – are we willing to go through all this and more for the sake of knowing Jesus? It demands a response of all of us – what will yours be? After all, the kernel of wheat has to die to bear fruit or as this poem in closing suggests, the dandelion has to die to give birth to new life:

Dandelion Poem:
I am persuaded by the dandelion
To take to the wings of the updrift
To parachute into enemy country

To fall to the ground. To be walked on.
To lose beauty. To die.
And so to give birth
To a whole new generation of flyers