Thoughts, Prayers & Art

Originally published: April 15,2025

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus…”

These words echo across time and space, don’t they?
They could just as easily have been spoken today—from a grieving mother on the Gaza border, from a transgender teen seeking sanctuary, from a migrant family at our southern border, from a young person despairing at the collapse of civil rights, or from any of us watching the soul of a nation tremble beneath the weight of division, greed, and indifference.

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”
Don’t we all?
And yet Jesus doesn’t respond with a simple “Yes, come and see.”
Instead, he speaks of death.
Of wheat falling into the earth. Of surrender. Of sacrifice.
It feels, at first, like a hard turn.
But perhaps Jesus is not turning away from us, he is turning us toward what must be faced.

Here in the United States today, we are living through a season where so much seems to be falling apart. Institutions that once felt stable are faltering. The rule of law is cracking under the weight of authoritarian desire. Greed masquerades as policy. Racism and xenophobia are emboldened. People are being disappeared. And in the shadow of such chaos, fear grows louder and hope can feel like a whisper.
And yet.
Jesus says: Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies… it remains just a single grain.
This is not just a metaphor for Jesus’ own passion. It is a summons to our own transformation.

We cannot cling to the life we know when that life is rooted in comfort, privilege, and illusions of control. If we are to bear fruit as individuals, as communities, as a Church we must be willing to release our grasp. We must let the self-centered versions of our faith die. The versions that favor nationalism over neighbor. The versions that cower in silence while the vulnerable are harmed. The versions that speak only of blessings and never of justice.
This Gospel calls us to fall like wheat into the soil of discomfort, of surrender, of solidarity.
Because that is where resurrection happens.

To serve Jesus in this moment means more than Sunday worship or pious language. It means standing where Jesus stands—with the broken, the brutalized, the exiled, the erased.
It means following him even when it’s unpopular, inconvenient, or dangerous.
It means knowing that death—whether it’s the death of ego, systems, or security—is not the end.
It is the beginning of the harvest.

I believe we are being asked right now, as followers of Christ in America, to give up what we love about this world—not because the world is evil, but because it is not enough. Not yet.

Not until the hungry are fed.
Not until the children are safe.
Not until the immigrant is welcomed.
Not until Black lives matter—not in word, but in policy and practice.
Not until this land flows not with hate and fear, but with mercy and courage.

My beloved, this Gospel is not easy.
But neither is it void of hope.
Jesus is not calling us to die meaningless deaths. He is calling us to bear fruit.
And that fruit looks like justice.
That fruit looks like peace.
That fruit looks like love that doesn’t flinch at truth.

So, we who still cry, “We wish to see Jesus,” must remember—
He is not far away.
He is not hidden.
He is waiting for us in the hard soil, in the broken places, in the radical work of resurrection.

Let us follow.
Let us serve.
Let us die to what holds us back.
And rise into what bears fruit.

Amen.