Lent 5B
March 21, 2021
John 12:20-33
INTRODUCTION
Today we hear the final covenant of this Lenten season, and it comes from Jeremiah, a prophet normally known for his doom and gloom. And yet here, he gives us beautiful words of hope – which is a real surprise, because his situation is anything but hopeful! The Israelites have just endured a disaster: military defeat, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the exile of the Israelites to Babylon. And yet, into this, Jeremiah offers this covenant: that although they have lost everything from their lives, everything they thought made them who they were, God has not left them. Indeed, God has given them what they need the most and written it on their hearts, where it can never be taken from them or destroyed.
The passage we hear today from John is on the other side of disaster, as Jesus foretells his death. Yet John does not see this as a disastrous event. Rather, Jesus says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified!” In other words, “This is it, folks! My whole purpose is about to come about, and it’s gonna be awesome!” This exchange comes at the hinge point between the Book of Signs (Jesus ministry and teaching), and the Book of Glory (the passion, resurrection and ascension). At this point in the narrative, Jesus has just raised Lazarus from the dead, the Judeans are out to kill him, he has already entered triumphantly into Jerusalem (a la Palm Sunday – we’re a little out of order here!), and the next event is the foot-washing. What we’ll hear today is Jesus’ last public discourse; the next time the public will hear from him will be at his trial. So you can imagine: tensions are pretty high!
Hebrews and the Psalm also address the pain of suffering and unmet expectations, so these are all texts and themes that ought to resonate with us today. As you listen, look for signs of new life. Look for the ways God enters into the fearful, painful places, and does a new, life-filled thing. Let’s listen.
[READ]
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
We have been doing confirmation class this year over Zoom with several other congregations in the conference. While this isn’t always ideal (Zoom seldom is), one cool thing is that we all get the benefit of hearing from several different pastors, who have been alternating teaching duties. All the pastors attend each week, leading small breakout groups as needed, but 1 or 2 take the lead for each lesson. Last week in class, we talked about the question, “Why did Jesus have to die, and why does this matter to us today?” After the leader talked a bit about some different ways of understanding the purpose of Jesus’ death, he asked the other pastors to offer some words about why this central story of our faith matters to us personally.
Before I tell you what anyone said, I want to stop here for a second, and ask you to think about it. If you had to give an elevator speech answering that question, “why does the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection matter to you?” what would you say? Does it matter to you? Does it make a difference to you in your day-to-day life? Does it matter to you in the big moments of your life? Why does it matter?
It’s a difficult question – Christian thinkers have spilled much ink in trying to answer it, and there are numerous angles from which to understand it. Each of them carries some truth, but none of them can seem to capture the whole story. But honestly, I don’t think offering the “right” answer is the point – at least it is not the point of my posing the question to you now. The point is just to think about it: what does this story that is central to our faith really mean to you? Why does it matter to your life – not just cosmically or eternally, but today, and in your regular, ordinary life?
As I’ve thought about this question, I find myself drawn to this image from our Gospel reading today, of a grain of wheat dying, which Jesus uses to foretell his death. Jesus says, “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.” It strikes me as a really important image during this time when we have lost so much – even as we are also getting to the point where we can start to look for fruit, for signs of life emerging. I have been so drawn to this image, in fact, that I used it for our opening Bible study at our council retreat last weekend. We talked together about how sometimes things have to die in order for them to bear fruit – like the way you prune a rose bush or an apple tree in order for it to flourish. We recalled some things that have died this year - not so much people, but ways of life, activities, our previously held perceptions of the world. Council members discussed which of those things we are honestly glad to have seen die, because we realized they were not bringing life to us or the world, and we may not have even realized that if they hadn’t been taken from us – but when we no longer had them in our lives, we could see more clearly why they had to die. And then we shared some ways we have seen new life start to emerge, some even out of that same death and loss. Then, with this hope and image in mind, we continued the work of being the church council: dreaming together about who and how the Church is called to be right now, and how we at St. Paul’s are uniquely suited to fulfill God’s mission for the world in our particular setting.
So how would you answer those questions? (I’m all about making you do some of the mental work, today, huh? All these questions to think about!) What has died this year that really needed to die? And what has that death allowed to, as Jesus says, “bear much fruit”? In other words, where do you see new life and opportunity emerging where previously you saw loss and death?
Here’s one thing. This past year, the need for a racial reckoning in our country has been brought to the fore. I know that even though I thought I was fairly knowledgeable about racism, I have over the past year learned so much about the form that racism takes today, some explicit, and some quite unconscious, often in the form of micro-aggressions. I have, consequently, lost some of the rosy view I had about us all living happily together and about what progress has been made, as the veil has been pulled back on what our siblings of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds experience in this country. This week, we saw another horrific shooting, this time seeming to targeting people in the Asian American community in Atlanta. Reports on the incident have pointed out that hate crimes against people of Asian descent have increased 150% this past year, largely because some believe China is to blame for Covid-19, and this apparently warrants attack on anyone who looks like they may be from China. I have close family members who are Chinese American, and so all this hits me somewhat more personally, though not nearly so personally as those who are recipients of this verbal and physical violence. From where I sit, the death I experience is not physical, but a death of my assumption that people I love are physically and emotionally safe here, and that no work needs to be done in this area. The loss of this assumption is painful and scary, but certainly important.
So if that’s the death – what fruit may come from this? Such a recognition may drive me to educate my own children more thoughtfully, or to learn more myself, or to donate time or money to an organization that seeks to make progress in this area, or to preach about it in a sermon. It may simply open up important conversations in my family. 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. So what fruit will be borne from this death?
All of this reflection leads me finally to offering the answer I offered in our confirmation class, in response to the question: why does the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection matter to you? This story matters to me not because it happened one morning 2000 years ago in Palestine. That matters, of course, and matters tremendously for my and for your eternal salvation. But in my daily life, it matters to me because I see this story of life emerging out of death continue to play out in my own life, in big and small ways. With this story of death and resurrection as the lens through which I view my life, I find myself always searching for the new life that can or will spring out from whatever loss I experience or burden I bear – whether I’m living through a pandemic, or finding my view of the world changing, or experiencing a rocky spot in an important relationship, or a difficult decision about a job or a move or some other life change. I find myself continually asking, “What life will come, what fruit will be borne, from this death, this loss?” To be clear, that’s not to minimize or overlook the sadness and grief that comes with loss – those are important feelings, too. Lament is also a part of faith. Rather, it is an orientation, a way always to have an eye not toward longing for getting something back that is gone, but toward whatever new thing God might be doing in us and through us. We can hold both things.
In this way, Jesus’ passion and resurrection it not only something that happens one weekend each spring, but rather, something that we live out all throughout our lives. Next Sunday, we will begin the journey through Holy Week, the time each year when we reflect on this central story of our faith. As we encounter once again this story of death and life, and all the grueling emotions along the way, I hope that you will see it not only as an event that took place in first century Palestine that has eternal implications for our faith but nothing more. I hope that you will also hear and experience it as a story that can help us to understand and tell the story of our lives today, and to help us make sense of them. Because there is always loss. There is always pain. There is always grief. And, there is always the promise that when things die, God uses that death to bring forth much fruit.
Let us pray… Loving, life-giving God, when we lose things that had been familiar to us, we often long to have them back. Orient our attention instead toward seeing what fruit you may bring from that death, so that the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection might become the story of our own lives. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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