PSA 25 March 2012 Passion Sunday

Ken Howcroft. “We Want to See Jesus”. Do the Pope and Fidel Castro want to meet when the Pope goes to Cuba? Intermediaries are doubtless  going to and fro trying to make the link. In the Gospel reading we hear of Gentiles who are interested in God as known by the Jews at the time of Jesus, but who are not able to take part in Jewish sacrifices. They try to reach out to Jesus through intermediaries. They turn to Jesus because they begin to recognise that they can see God in Jesus and know God in Jesus, because you do not need sacrifices to be at one with God. When Jesus prevented animals being sold and money changed in the Temple, he was not saying that people were cheating but that this way of religion has come to an end. Something as dangerous radical as that was bound to take him to a cross. In a sense he is replacing any need for animal sacrifice with his own self-sacrifice in love. He becomes a new bridge-builder, a new priest if you want to think like that, between earth and heaven. It is all about love. The challenge for us as for those Gentiles in the reading is “Do you really want to know that love? Do you really want to see Jesus?” Because if you do, he is here. Amen. A Sermon for the 5th Sunday in Lent, the first Sunday of the Passion. The readings were Hebrews 5:5-10 and John 12:20-33.