I can’t tell from this Gospel who these Greeks are or why they want to meet Jesus. Since they are in Jerusalem for the Passover, do they have some notion of the Messiah, or the Judean subjection to a Roman governor? Are they expecting Jesus to be a Jewish leader, political or spiritual? I can’t tell.
But Jesus is certainly determined to give no false impression as to what he is about! A charismatic leader would promise better times, the settling of scores, better conditions or autonomy. Jesus may call disciples to live under a discipline but is not seeking a constituency to support him: if he were, he wouldn’t talk about dying.
Perhaps he must. When we humans want something better for ourselves, when we want to settle scores and come out on top, we, unfortunately, achieve that by putting some other human beings down. We seem convinced that we can only be better if someone else is worse; and if they are not, we’ll make their lives worse.
Jesus will have none of that.
He fulfills his mission by dying, by giving up his life, by trusting himself to a new life that only God, the author of life, can give. Is that what these Greeks are expecting to hear? Is that what I want to hear? Do I only want a magic solution that costs me no pain or loss, that inconveniences me in no way?
Shouldn’t I have already learnt that genuine growth is nothing like that? It costs me heavily; I don’t unfold effortlessly like an oak tree from an acorn. I only develop and progress contrary to my natural tendencies and appetites. Don’t I have to die to myself many times to mature, long before biological death?
Jesus says that even biological death is not the end but the planting of a seed that grows into something bearing no resemblance to the seed planted.
Do I want to trust that? Am I ready to take Jesus at his word?