They came to Phillip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

We are coming to the end of John’s Gospel, just as we are coming to the end of this Lenten season.

The Palm Sunday parade, which we will celebrate next week, has just ended in today’s scripture. The Pharisees have just complained that “the whole world has gone after him” and John, who never writes anything casually or accidently, slips in this story in order to prove that the Pharisees were right.

A few men of Greece ask Phillip if they can see Jesus.

It is interesting that they approached Phillip and it takes us a little bit of a side trail, but one that is worth the trip. Phillip had a Greek name, maybe that was what drew them to him and he was from Bethsaida, a more cosmopolitan city than the fishing village of Capernaum, so perhaps he would be more open to foreigners and their request.

Isn’t that how most of us have come to Christ?

Someone we trust, someone we respect, someone we feel comfortable with gives us an introduction.

For many of us it was our parents holding us at baptism that started the process, but as the years went by there were others. Family members, friends, neighbors who said something to us about faith and it resonated and so we followed.

Someday someone will have the courage to examine that which passes for Evangelism in America and they will measure the cost, in time, money and emotion, of all of the programs that denominations and others produce and then they will examine what it is that really brought people to Christ; and they will cry when they realize how many millions of dollars, that could have fed and clothed the children of God, were wasted on glossy brochures and TV preachers with glittering smiles.

The reality of evangelism is this: one beggar telling another beggar where to get a meal. One lonely soul telling another lonely soul where to find the peace and companionship of Christ.

As Christians it is important to realize that you are Phillip to someone.

You speak the language they can understand, you live the life that they can see themselves living, they trust you.

You are the person whom they can feel comfortable coming to with their questions and their fears and their faith and their doubts. It may be someone in your family, in your neighborhood, or where you work but you need to be ready and accessible to those who wish to see Jesus.

They came to Phillip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

It seems to be a small thing, of itself, a minor detail in the drama of that last week of Jesus’ life that takes half the gospel of John to tell, in fact we never even hear the exchange of questions and answers, ideas and values that must have occurred.

We only know that some Greeks wanted to see Jesus.

Well maybe we know a little more than that.

We know that Jesus was deeply moved by the request and I found myself this week wondering why.

He had just enjoyed the acclaim of the crowds that he loved, the children of Israel had poured out their affection as they waved their palm branches, why was it so significant that a handful of Gentiles wanted to see him?

Let me suggest that it was because Jesus had what we need, in all circumstances but perhaps in the current economic climate we need it more than ever.

He had the ability to see with his heart.

Just as Tom was able to see, in the pennies that some kids were throwing away, a fortune that would become available to the unfortunate ones in our community.

Just as our friends in Trenton are able to see in our gently used clothes a restoration of dignity to those who have fallen upon hard times.

Just as the imaginative and creative among us in this Church have been able to share God’s love, in ways that are disproportionately greater than our facilities or our talents.

That is how Jesus was able to see the request of the Greeks to Phillip, a small thing that was the first sign of a great thing to follow. And this wasn’t the first time that Christ saw something great and holy in something that we would dismiss as trivial and commonplace.

He spoke of faith the size of a mustard seed being enough to move a mountain.

He held children up as the example of what it means to be a mature believer in God.

When he sent 70 followers out, 2 by 2, into the world and they returned with only modest results in a world of sin and hatred, he met them with a cry of triumph “I saw Satan fall like lighting from heaven” he said, as a result of their work.

And in a few days he would give them bread and wine, the commonest of items in a Jewish diet, and say that he would always be as close and available to them as these things.

And a day after that he would die on a cross, but not before he heard a dim, groping faith from the cross that was next to him, “remember me when you come into your kingdom”. It was a weak faith but a real one that lifted Christ’s soul and allowed him to proclaim his victory “It is finished! It is working and will continue and I have succeeded in all that God gave me to do. And nothing can stop it now!”

You see Jesus saw all these little things with the eyes of his heart.

He saw the things that had begun, the blessings that would multiply, the love that would grow.

And so he saw, with his heart, a few Greeks, not much as far as numbers go, not impressive to those who live by budgets and headcounts. But he saw beyond them to Greece, to Rome, to Spain, to India, to Korea, to Kenya, to Venezuela, to Ireland, to the United States, to all of the places where, for the next 20 centuries people, who at that time would be called outsiders just like the Greeks, would gather to give him praise and promise him our hearts in his service.

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

He knew that it had begun, this kingdom of his, this Church of his and it was unstoppable and it still is.

It had begun now and, as St. Paul would put it a few decades later “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God, in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

All of this Christ could see with his heart.

In the same way that we can.

That is the promise from Jeremiah that Chris read.

We’ve had a lot of covenant stories during this Lenten season, the rainbow, the old people Abraham and Sarah having a baby, last week’s worship, as we watched the children who are no longer children, was a testimony to the covenant that is cut each time we baptize a child, as parents join in promises with us and with God.

Well today Jeremiah tells us that we are intimately connected to God, his law is written on our hearts and so when we see the good thing, the right thing, we know it.

It isn’t a question of having a great mind. Yes education is important, hey I am still a teacher at heart, but you can’t think your way into living a life of love, there are too many times when love doesn’t make a bit of sense. Look at the cross and try to analyze it and understand it with your head and you will fail, but let your heart be open to it and you will recognize a wisdom that far exceeds mere intellect.

Nor is it a question of having a great soul. Yes religion is important, I would be the last person to suggest that it is not, but you can’t pray your way into living a life of love, there are too many people who pray and sit back and wait rather than praying and then risking their hearts. Look at the cross and limit your understanding to the spiritual and you will lose the beauty and the pain that Christ has offered to you, a beauty and pain that can only be understood with love.

But when we look with our hearts, when we see in a rainbow the promise of God’s protective love for the world, when we see in a newborn baby the promise of God’s creative love in our midst, when we see in a young couple the promise of God’s visionary love for the future, when we see in an active family the promise of God’s abundant love for the present, when we see in the empty nesters the promise of God’s renewing love for the journey, when we see in the elderly the promise of God’s wise love for eternity, when we see all of these things, when we look around this room and see the saints of God where others just see common people, then we are looking with our hearts.

And then our hearts will survey that wondrous cross and sing:

They came to Phillip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”