Lent #32:  Monday in Holy Week.

There were some Greeks.

(John 12:20)

At the Passover Festival, when the Jews made pilgrimage to Jerusalem and its Temple to celebrate their deliverance from Egyptian bondage, there were also some Greeks. Lookers on, I suppose, wondering what this could mean. They had seen and heard enough of Jesus to want more. So they connect with one of Jesus’ disciples with a good Greek name: Philip. Philip gathered up his buddy Andrew (another Greek name) and the two of them sought from Jesus an audience for “some Greeks.”

No audience is granted, apparently; but, Jesus does give Philip and Andrew a message for the Greeks: “The hour has come,” Jesus tells them, “for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (Jn 12:23-24).

Jesus’ mini-parable about the grain of wheat that dies to bear fruit, would resonate with the Greeks—particularly their poets (Ac 17:28). In myth and song, the Greeks told the story Persephone. It’s a myth (complicated like Greek myths are) about how death comes to the crops in winter and how spring brings them back to life. We’ve been watching our young new tree out front. Linda is fearful it might not come back to life. We spotted possible makings of some new leafs yesterday. There’s hope.

Maybe Jesus is saying something like, “Tell them that their myth has to do with me.” My guess is that all such myths and longings has to do with Holy Week and who Jesus is.