Our Venerable Father Theodore the Sanctified, Disciple of Saint Pachomius (364)
Acts 17:19-28; John 12:19-36.
Read John 12:19-36
Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen!
I wonder how those Greeks felt. You know, the ones at the beginning of today’s gospel, who came to Jerusalem for the feast, found some of Jesus’ disciples, and asked to see Jesus. It strange, but Jesus seemed not to be concerned about actually meeting these Greeks who wanted to see him.
But the point is not really about whether Jesus met this group of curious Greeks or not. John doesn’t mention them to make a point about how easily distracted Jesus could be. On the contrary, the Greeks represent something: the beginning of the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles, and it’s connection to Jesus’ own death and resurrection.
Part of the mystery of our salvation is that God often decides to work through a particular person, like Abraham, and eventually through a particular people, the nation of Israel. This is a kind of training program, a propaedeutic course that runs more than a thousand years and culminates with Jesus, himself a Jew and descendant of Abraham, but also the incarnate Son of God. But the concentration of all God’s work in a single person isn’t the end of the story – actually, everything in salvation history leads to Jesus, focusses on him, so that it can expand outwards once again. But this expansion goes far beyond the people of Israel: in the death and resurrection of Jesus, every human nation has the promise of salvation. That’s why Jesus, hearing that the Greeks are asking to see him, announces that his hour has arrived – his public ministry is fulfilled and now he is ready to die, and rise again, so that the Gentiles may know the power of God. Jesus, lifted on the cross, will bring all people to himself. Let’s look to him who died, and give our lives like he gave his, so that we may believe, and in that belief show the power of Christ to the world.