“Then Jesus replied: ‘The hour has come for the son of man to be glorified.  In truth, in very truth I tell you, a grain of wheat remains a solitary grain unless it falls into the ground and dies; but if it dies, it bears a rich harvest.’”

John 12:23-24 N.E.B.

St. John alone, of all the gospel writers, attaches to his account of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, that mysterious incident of the Greeks who came to see Jesus.

As we read the story we cannot help but wonder what those Greeks wanted when they came to Philip, the disciple, and said: “Sire, we would see Jesus.” Did they have a friend who was sick, or crippled, or blind, whom they wanted Jesus to heal?  Did they have a theological question they wanted Jesus to answer?

The gospel record does not tell what the Greeks wanted of Jesus or asked of him.  We can only surmise.  Judging from the context there is a strong possibility the Greeks did not come to ask anything of Jesus but rather to offer something to him.  For immediately after their coming He launched into a penetrating discourse on the necessity of dying to self in order to live to God.

“Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone,” said Jesus.  “But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. . . What shall I say?  Father, deliver me from this hour?  But for this hour came I into the world. . . . I, if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men unto me.”

What could the Greeks have said to Jesus to trigger such a response from him?

If in the continuity of the gospel narrative there is any connection between the event of the coming of the Greeks to Jesus and the discourse he speaks immediately afterwards, the most likely explanation of the purpose of the Greek embassy is that they came to offer him asylum – to open a door of escape to him from danger.

“Come away with us to Athens,” may well have been the message.  “Come with us; there is safety there for you.  You know you are on a collision course here in Palestine.  You are in deep trouble with the religious establishment.  Your criticism of their hypocrisy and empty rituals has cut them to the quick. Your assault on the Temple to drive out the money changers and merchants has infuriated them.  The leaders of the Sanhedrin have already met and marked you for death.  This is surely no news to you.  You are feeling the mounting pressure against you.  If you stay on in Judea or Galilee you are sure to be done to death.  Whether you fall from an assassin’s dagger or are condemned to die on a public gibbet, either way it would be a great loss to the world.  For you are a famous teacher.  You have a keen philosophical mind.  Come away with us to Athens where people love to debate and discuss all the issues.  There you would be left free to teach whatever new thing you desire about God and truth.  Come with us and get out of this death trap.”

This may have been just what the Greeks came to offer Jesus.  Whether that be so or not, immediately Jesus launched upon his favorite theme – that the secret of life is revealed in death to self in order to live for God and others.

First, Jesus says this life principle is illustrated in the natural realm.  “Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”  This is the law of God’s harvest – whether in fields of waving grain, or in the winnowing of the years of human life.

Farmers know this well.  Their livelihood, their work day by the day in planting, cultivating, and harvesting is all based on the basic principle; unless the seed is planted and dies as a seed it remains one seed, but if it dies it brings forth a rich harvest.  But do framers live by this same principle in the larger world of relationships to God and man?

There is no deeper tragedy for a person than the living of a completely selfish life and the utter loneliness to which such living condemns the selfish soul.  Truly it lives on without dying to self in a little worldly hole it burrows for itself.

“I lived for myself, I thought for myself,

For myself, and none beside –

Just as if Jesus had never lived,

As if he had never died.”

But if the self die in self-sacrificing service for God and for others, if its love and concern and help are poured out for others, then in the economy of the human harvest there are rich gains for God, for others, and for self.

Next, Jesus applied this principle to himself and his own life mission.  “Shall I pray to be delivered from this hour – this hour of gathering gloom and danger?  Shall I ask for safety for myself when obedience to the principle of laying my life down for others brings me into the valley of the shadow of death?  Shall I make this prayer?  But for this cause came I into the world to bear testimony to this truth, to give my life as a ransom for many.  Therefore, I will pray, ‘Father, glorify thy name through me.’”

Finally, Jesus applies this principle of fruitful spiritual life through death of the self to his disciples.  “He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.   If any man serve me, let him follow me: and where I am, there also shall my servant be; if any man serve me, him will my father honor.” For this way of the cross, this losing of ones life to find it, is not just for Jesus alone.  It is for all who follow Jesus.” (Layman’s Commentary on text)

And, as for Jesus, his exaltation and glory come not in spite of his enduring the death of the cross, but because of and through it, so also his disciples and his church must come to victory and to glory through the way of the holy cross.  All that Jesus said in the great “I Am” passages: “I am the water of life,” “I am the bread of life,” “I am the light of the world,” “I am the resurrection and the life” – all the great “I Am’s” should never be separated from what He said and did about dying to self and taking up a cross and losing life to save it.

How well instructed by Biblical truth was Walter Rauschenbusch when in his day he prayed for the Church: “O God, we pray for thy church which is set today amid the perplexities of a changing order, and face to face with a great new task. Baptize her afresh with the life-giving spirit of Jesus . . . Fill her . . . with a Christ-like tenderness for the heavy-laden and down-trodden.  Give her faith to espouse the cause of the people and in their hands that grope after freedom and light to recognize the bleeding hands of the Christ.  Bid her cease from seeking her own life, lest she lose it.  Make her valiant to give up her life to humanity, that like her crucified Lord she may mount by the path of the cross to a higher glory.”

But what does all this mean for us individually, this incident of the Greeks coming to Jesus and his discourse on the royal way of life leading through the death of self to a higher glory?  Why, it means that always there are those who are coming to us and opening up a tempting way of escape for us to cop out on our royal way to life.  For Jesus it wasn’t just at the Garden of Gethsemane, or when the Greeks came, or when the tempter took him up on the mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world with their glories, but a life-long temptation to cop out.

How often the Greeks come to us in our business, our vocation or profession, with the beguiling appeal to save and make comfortable the self and cop-out on the greater and more thrilling life of self-denial that opens up before us.

How often the Greeks come to us when we are in stormy times over our personal relationships.  How attractive their offer of freedom from worry and danger by running away.  Ask any judge in any divorce court what most often really wrecks a marriage.  Behind all the charges of mental cruelty, desertion, drunkenness, and infidelity, lies that basic fundamental lapse which threatens every marriage, the refusal of one or both parties to die to self in order to bring a marriage to life.

A wife insisted she must seek a divorce from her husband on the grounds that their continual disagreements would blight the life of their child.  The counselor suggested that she consider what she might be teaching her child in leaving her husband and the child’s father – namely, that the way to handle a disagreeable personal relationship was to cop-out on it.  The counselor further suggested that if, with patient love, she sacrificed some of her personal peace, pleasure and profit for the sake of her child and her marriage, she might not only teach her child his most important lesson in how to handle difficult human relationships, but also enter into a larger and more rewarding life for herself.

How often the Greeks come to us in the dark and dangerous days of community and national responsibilities, with a call to cop-out, with an enticing invitation to seek our selfish safety at any cost.  I heard a respected civic leader who has at great personal financial sacrifice continued to serve his city and nation say that he is more depressed over the mood of our nation today than ever before because “there is everywhere to be found so little willingness to sacrifice personal gain for the sake of the nation and for the moral and spiritual values that have made our nation great.”

But of course, the most crucial point, in your life and mine, where the Greeks are always coming and offering their beguiling invitation to us to cop-out on the great adventure of life which lies before us leading enviably to the cross, is in the area of our duties and responsibilities to God.  God will not compel us.  We can so easily rationalize and excuse and temporize.

Once Phillip Brooks observed that Jesus on that first Palm Sunday used the glory and the triumph that the people of Jerusalem accorded him to purify the desecrated Temple, and suggests what it could mean if all of us made a similar dedication of the privilege and power and talent that is committed to us.  “How privilege would be sanctified, and the desecrated places of our common life would be made holy, if every person in whom others saw genius . . . should choose to go to some temple which belonged to God, but which men were profaning with their wickedness, and with the fire of that genius sweep it clean; if every person who towered above others with colossal wealth used that almost despotic influence which wealth brings to glorify integrity and teach charity; if every person in high office consecrated that power to defy and stigmatize corruption; if every brilliant scholar tried to make literature and learning more sincere and full of faith.  This is the only way in which powers become embalmed forever. . . O prosperous, powerful, privileged people that we are!  In all our ways, let us be like our Lord, and seal and consecrate our privilege by using it for some glory to God.” (Phillips Brooks – The More Abundant Life – p. 215)

Whenever and however there come to us those who, like the Greeks of old came to Jesus, offer escape for the self from the rigors of self-denial, God give us the grace to say with the captain of our salvation: “Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit . . .  He that would save his life shall lose it, but he who will lose his life for Christ’s sake and the gospel shall save it unto life eternal, Lord, glorify thy name through Me.”