“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 

As we come to the last part of our Lenten journey, we hear this striking request in the gospel reading for the 5th Sunday in Lent. It has not been an easy journey to get ourselves here, Lent has not been hard on us. Week after week what has been revealed is just how much and how deeply we do not understand Jesus and the work of proclaiming the Kingdom. It has been a process of uncovering our inability to see, hear and know Jesus as we ought to.

So there is no small amount of irony in hearing a gospel lesson that begins with foreigners coming to the disciples, asking to see Jesus and the disciples not knowing how to respond. I think we know that there is a disconnect in our current understanding of Jesus (read: what this faith business is all about). We know that we are in a strange place these days as mainline Christians hanging on to whatever we can, yet also feeling distant from and uncertain about our own faith commitments, feeling unsure if all the stuff we profess to believe is true and trustworthy. 

I am pretty sure many of us would feel ill-equipped to handle things if a visitor came to us and asked, “We wish to see Jesus.” 

In the online spaces I roam about, I am connected to a lot of other pastors and clergy from all kinds of denominations – mostly mainline or progressive. As much as folks in the pews might be wondering and wrestling with what role faith and faith practices have in our lives, the same wrestling is happening among clergy. If someone were to ask a group of pastors, “We wish to see Jesus” the number of Jesuses that would be pointed to would be as many as there are clergy present. 

Like the folks in the pews, pastors and clergy have wonderings and questions too. Often how we see and understand Jesus has less to do with what we know and understand from the witness of scripture and our ancestor’s faith as it has to with whatever concern, issue, hobby horse or question seems to be occupying our attention. There is gun-toting Jesus, social justice Jesus, moral purity Jesus, prosperity Jesus, correct theology Jesus and so many more. 

It is almost as if we shape Jesus to fit whatever thing is front of mind for us, whatever issue of our own is most important at the moment. 

So as rough as this Lent has been, unraveling the ways in which we don’t understand has been something we needed to do.  Something we need so that the revealing of the Jesus we truly need can begin. And when those folks come to us and ask, “We wish to see Jesus” we might pause and consider. Rather than the version of Jesus we want to show, who is the Jesus they need to meet? Who is the Jesus being revealed to us this Holy Week and Easter?