Fifth Sunday in Lent
April 2, 2006


“Sir, we would like to see Jesus.”

There are a few sentences in the New Testament that simply haunt me as a disciple of Jesus. They work their way into my brain and lay there and I go round and round with them like a rotisserie. Today’s gospel contains two of them. The first one reads like a one sentence examination of conscience. “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” The second one follows a few lines down. “Where I am, there also my servant will be.” I don’t know about you, but both of those hit me square between the eyes each time I hear them.

This morning, the doorbell rang at 7:56 am. Fr. Vic had the 8:00 mass, and I was enjoying the every other week Saturday morning when I could sleep in. I ignored it. It rang again. I thought about ignoring it, then decided it might be an emergency. It takes a while to get from my bedroom to the front door. In that interim, the door bell rang again. I peeked out the window, and saw one of the people whom I help on a regular basis. Oh… I just wanted to sleep a bit more. He wanted to see Jesus. I confess, I did not open the door. Though I knew he would be back, I just wasn’t ready to face him first thing in the morning. And when he did come back, I am pretty sure what he experienced was a slightly put out Fr. Bill Kempf and not Jesus. “Sir, I want to see Jesus.” I’m not sure if he did…

“Where I am, there also my servant will be.” Dang! Because I know where that is! It is what Jesus spells out in the rest of today’s passage and in the rest of his life. It is the one message that keeps coming back to me as I try to understand the life of Jesus. And it is why he said it so often, in so many ways, because I resist it time and time again. “Those who love their lives lose them. The first shall be last. The greatest must be the servant. Unless the grain of wheat die… All those metaphors point to the same truth. The pattern of our living, if we are to be true disciples of Jesus, somehow has to get caught up in sacrificial, self giving love. Where Jesus is – where He lives – is where I have to be, where I have to get myself. If I want to save my life, then I have to lose it in love for others. And lose it willingly, not begrudgingly, like this morning at 7:59 am…

Perhaps another way to hear this same message comes from my days in the seminary. One of the classes we took was “Oral Interpretation of the Scriptures.” The class was designed to help us proclaim the readings and the gospels in ways that people would hear the good news. So you got to stand in front of your classmates and a video camera and proclaim a reading, while your classmates took notes and then gave you ‘feedback.” And the one sentence question that was the ultimate evaluation of whether a student had done a good job was this: “Did I experience the reader, or the reading? Perhaps that is why these two sentences haunt me so – because they are echoes of that sentence – Do people experience in my love the love of Jesus for them? Do they see a love that is willing to sacrifice again and again? Or do they see something else. ‘Sir, we want to see Jesus.” Not you. Not me. Jesus.

As we continue our journey toward Easter, pick one or both of those sentences. Let them be the first thing you say in the morning and the last thing you say in the evening. Like bookends, may they give you the pattern and the incentive to live all the rest of the day in between by making them a reality in your world.