I think that if the Gospel Lesson you have just heard is to make much sense to you, . . . I need to say something about where we are in Saint John’s Gospel and what has recently happened.  We are in Chapter Twelve.  The Chapter begins by saying that,

Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany . . . [and then a little further on John tells us that]  The next day a great crowd who had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.  So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying, “Hosanna!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the king of Israel!”

So, in the portion of John’s Gospel read to you this morning, . . . today is what we customarily call “Palm Sunday.”  And,

among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks.  . . . these came to Philip . . . and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

In other words, as well as the Jewish pilgrims who had come to Jerusalem to keep Passover, . . . there were also a number of non-Jewish “tourists” -- a number of Gentile visitors to Jerusalem who wouldn’t know a Torah from a tomato.  . . . Do you remember the festival we keep each year on January 6th and the Gospel Lesson that is read at that festival?  It is the account Saint Matthew gives us about a number of Gentile astrologers who come to Jerusalem with gifts and worship for a mighty king of Israel whose nativity they discerned in the stars.  Do you remember?    . . . Well, John doesn’t have any infancy stories in his Gospel, . . . but, very similar to what Matthew tells us, here are a number of Gentile visitors (“Greeks”, John calls them); . . . here are a number of Gentile visitors to Jerusalem who have come to “see Jesus”; they have come to meet this man about whom report of His words and report of His deeds have moved their hearts to speak with Jesus and hear Him firsthand.  These Gentile pilgrims have been touched by a longing far more embracing than the narrow issues of Jewish Law.  The words and deeds of Jesus are Wisdom . . . they are Truth . . . they are Life.  Moreover, these Gentile visitors have just witnessed crowds of Jewish pilgrims greeting Jesus with shouts of “hosanna” as if He were their king!  In other words, just as the Gentile astrologers saw the birth of God’s mighty Christ manifest in the heavens, . . . these “Palm Sunday” Gentiles have felt the might of God’s love and mercy manifest in their hearts!  . . . And so, while Saint Matthew gives us report of a Natal Epiphany, . . . a manifestation to the Gentiles of Christ’s Birth, . . . Saint John gives us, instead, the account of a Paschal Epiphany, . . . a manifestation to the Gentiles of Christ’s redemptive Death and saving Resurrection.  . . . For, upon being told of His Gentile visitors, Jesus says

The hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified.  … Now is my soul troubled.  And what shall I say, “Father, save me from this hour”?  No, for this purpose I have come to this hour.  Father, glorify thy name.

    At the time of the Natal Epiphany, in the days of Herod the king, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there till I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.”  In this way was the life of the Incarnate Word preserved.  Preserved for the moment of the Paschal Epiphany.  And so, Jesus says

I, when I am lifted up from the earth will draw all men to myself.

Saint John records these words of Jesus here at this place in his Gospel because of what you will witness on Good Friday:  “one of the soldiers pierced [the side of Jesus] with a spear [John tells us], and at once there came out blood and water.”  Blood for the remission of our sins; water as a sign that the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon the world.  The might of the Word Incarnate has turned the hearts of even Gentiles.  And at the death of the Son upon the earth, the Lord, the giver of Life, pours the Life of the Word into the hearts of all peoples, fulfilling the Word spoken by the Prophet Jeremiah:

this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord:  I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

And the Law which the Holy Spirit has written upon the hearts of God’s new Israel -- on the hearts of both Jew and Gentile who love God and who have received the Water of Life -- the Law which is written upon your heart is Jesus!

    And so, we are told by Christ Himself,

He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Now, . . . to contemporary ears those words can sound terribly off-putting; they are words so not to live by in a feel-good society which demands life-affirmation.  Life is to be loved and not hated.  . . . But, you see, that is exactly wrong.  God is to be loved and not hated; Jesus is the definition of a human person.  And so, at your Baptism, and its periodic renewal, you renounce the things that advertise themselves as life-giving but have no such power; . . . you renounce the world and your own flesh and the devil, . . . and you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour in Whom you put your entire trust . . . and love.  This liberation from the disappointment and loss that comes from loving a life founded upon a lie was purchased for you by the Paschal Epiphany, about which John speaks when Jesus is visited by a number of worshipful Gentiles:  “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, [Jesus says, I] will draw all men to myself.”