The First United Methodist Church of Napa, CA
March 29, 2009
5^th Sunday in Lent

Scripture Readings:

Hebrew Scriptures – Jeremiah 31: 31-34¹

³¹The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. ³²It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. ³³But this is the covenant that 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 on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Gospel Lesson – John 12: 20-26²

²⁰Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. ²¹They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” ²²Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. ²³Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. ²⁴Very 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. ²⁵Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. ²⁶Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

“We Wish to See Jesus.”

I once heard a story about a pastor who was moved to tears the first time he was asked to preach to the people of a church to which he was assigned as an intern. It wasn’t the invitation to preach that brought tears to his eyes, but what he saw the first time he stood in the pulpit. As he ascended those short few steps that spiraled around up to the pulpit to deliver his sermon, he noticed a little bronze plaque attached to the interior wall, which was inscribed with a compelling six-word statement: “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” It was at that moment that the pastor then turned to look out over the congregation and saw them for who they truly were, people who longed for a relationship with God that they’d come to expect Jesus would give them – not the preacher, Jesus.

Here in John, it wasn’t the congregation asking a preacher. It was some Greeks asking Philip. The desire of these Gentiles to see Jesus shows just how far the reach of the gospel has gone beyond Israel. Jesus’ response to the question sets up the shift toward what he knows is about to happen to him. The hour has now come. The unfolding of this little narrative really gives us little other information beyond theology and a glimpse of what’s about to happen to Jesus. We don’t discover anything else about those who wished to see Jesus. John doesn’t say whether they even met Jesus or if they had any kind of encounter that transformed their lives. Curious.

But this is how discipleship happens. The Gentiles tell Philip; Philip goes and tells Andrew; and Andrew is the one to tell Jesus. Back when Jesus called Phillip, Philip went on to find Nathanael. Before that it was Andrew who went to see Jesus, and he then went to find Simon. John’s gospel has this wonderfully unique combination of “word of mouth” and those “who have eyes to see.”³ News about Jesus travels in such ordinary ways, but as we all have come to know, it’s the Spirit that primes the heart – as we hear the echo of Jeremiah’s word here – enabling us to actually see and experience the truth of who Jesus really is.

The Greeks might fade away in John’s gospel narrative, but John’s point as to where and how to see Jesus is right there for us. The answer Jesus gives includes the metaphor of the grain of wheat that has to “die” in order to bear fruit. More than once Jesus has taught his disciples about this paradox of giving up one life in order to gain a greater one, and that following him has to mean – in some way – being his servant.

In a sermon that she entitled “Unless a Grain Falls”, Barbara Brown Taylor⁴ candidly reexamines her own theology of the doctrine of atonement. Along with us she asks, what does it mean to say “Christ died for our sins”?

How did something that happened two thousand years ago affect what I may do tomorrow? Does Jesus go on dying for our sins? And what kind of God would require that?⁵

Taylor zeroes in on verse twenty-four, “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” and finds in that statement a truth about “the redemptive power of suffering, both [Jesus’] and ours.”⁶

What Jesus is telling us is that if you and I do everything in our power to protect our lives in the way that they are now – if we successfully prevent change, deny conflict, bury or hide from our pain – then, in the end, we’ll find out that we had no life at all. But if we “hate” our lives in this world – which as far as I’m concerned can only mean if we hate all the ways that we’ve cheapened our lives by not confronting our pain but chasing only after comfort, safety, and superiority in this world, if we hate that enough to stop it and begin to open up our hearts to a renewed covenant with God instead – then there will be no end to the abundance of our lives! Because in the end it is about life, not death. And even though that cross still looms over us here in Lent, it’s not Jesus’ dying that saves us, it’s his offer of life that does. Why else would he say to us, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”?⁷

This “abundant life” that Jesus promises is radically different from the kind that most of us in this culture idolize. When Jesus refers to “this world” in the Gospel of John, he’s referring to the dominant values that our culture all too often equates with abundant life – values like status, material wealth, self-centeredness, success at others’ expense, values that inevitably privilege some while de-valuing and oppressing others. Wasn’t it just a few months ago that we heard that familiar anthem of a credit card commercial that went something like, “I want it all, I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now!”? Look where that’s gotten us.

On the other hand when Jesus refers to “eternal life” in the Gospel of John, he’s not so much referring to the so-called “after-life”, but to the deep eternal values that truly make for abundant life – values like love, justice, peace, wholeness and compassion. These values favor all of creation (including our environment, by the way) over the interests of “the few.” And they especially favor those people that the values of this world do not: the weak, the plain, the poor, the sick, the oppressed and the marginalized.

For a powerful vision of a world transformed by these values take a look again at Isaiah 65: 17-25 – words that begin, “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth.”⁸ It’s no accident that we hear an echo of those words in the last book of the Bible.⁹ I suspect most of us are capable of loving a vision like that in the abstract. But what would it really mean to work or struggle for it the way Jesus and some of his followers have and are still trying to do? What do we love about our lives in this gas-guzzling, “I want it all, I want it now” world that we would stand to lose? What ways might we have to die to in order to live and help others live in true abundance?

No one in her or his right mind looks for pain, suffering or martyrdom for its own sake. But with our world the way that it is, truly worthwhile human transformation rarely comes about without our having to go through something that we’d just as soon postpone or avoid. What were the words of that old spiritual – “so high you can’t get over it, so low you can’t get under it, so wide you can’t get around it”? As some of us are learning in our Lenten journey, you’ve got to go through the door! I can’t tell you how often I’ve been thinking of this phrase when listening to people these past few weeks or when dealing with my own resistance to hard but needed change.

So Jesus had two choices it seems to me: run for his life and save himself from the inevitable suffering to come, or loving something more than he did his own life. Is there anything that you and I love more than we do our lives? Do we even know how to love that much? To choose to face the crosses in our lives will mean suffering – just as it did for Jesus and anybody else who chooses to follow his way of relating to the world. But he did have a choice. So do we. It’s very important, then, I think, to point out that Jesus’ suffering wasn’t at all a requirement for atonement,¹⁰ but a consequence of it. Unlike much that has been passed off as Christian orthodoxy, Jesus’ goal was not to get himself killed! It was his goal, though, that led to his execution – which was to embody as completely as he could who God had created him to be, no matter what it cost him.¹¹

What John is trying to say to us is no matter how much Jesus may have agonized about his own ministry and fate, there was a power, a presence, an identity at work in him that, even in his utter devastation, could never be shaken. His life, even his death, embodied for us a life of boundless self-giving that can undergo every rejection, every agony we can imagine – not just pretend to undergo, you understand, but really go through it – and yet still be able to give again and again and again, until the whole creation is caught up in this boundless generosity. The life that he embodied, the church has come to say, is God’s life. In Jesus God knows crucifixion, even death, from the inside. But God does not cease to be God, not even then. In fact, we see the very heart of who God is in this final moment of letting go of everything, even life itself. Even here, God is God – the deep mystery and yet inexhaustible generosity at the heart of all creation.

A way of understanding that metaphor of the grain of wheat, then, is realizing that it can’t grow, unless it “dies”. If you were to make an amulet or charm out of it, encase it in crystal and hang it around your neck, it would never be good for anything but bling¹² or the odd focus of conversation. For any seed to do what it was meant to do, it has to be given up. It has to be buried in the dirt. It has to sit down there in the dampness and dark until its hour comes when it’ll begin to swell, crack, and hatch something new. If you were to dig around in its roots that have now almost mysteriously appeared – looking for the seed – you won’t find it anymore. It’s dead and gone. It gave up its life so that there could be more wheat in the world.¹³ What a powerful way of reframing our understanding of the cross here in Lent for any of us who are still wishing to see Jesus.

It’s no accident, then, that we came to decide upon “Planting Seeds of Faith” as our theme throughout this season of Lent. I hope that most of you have found time to do just that – if not, there’s no better time than now! I think that this metaphor of the seed falling into the ground and “dying” in order to bring forth life still speaks powerfully to our own situation as well. Imagine if each of us were a seed – a conscious, busy, well-ordered seed, proud of our “seedness” and calling it “me”, my unique “seed” self. Feeling already fulfilled then, a perfect seed – made in the “image” and “likeness” of God even – which one of us would ever risk being buried; which one of us would ever risk such a death to come to know our “plant” self that even now lies there inside of us all, waiting to germinate into new life?

Finally it’s about having our broken hearts healed by accepting that a new covenant with God be written there. As Gabriella Grant¹⁴ noted for us at this past Wednesday’s “Violence Prevention Summit,” even though it’s been said, “time heals all wounds,” more often than not time actually conceals them. Hidden bruises and scarred over wounds can cripple a person for his or her entire life – or, worse, they can begin to fester and poison a person into places of deep depression, uncontrolled drug use, even sociopathic behavior. It’s only when they’re cracked open and exposed to the healing and nourishing presence of God, that new life begins.

The way that Jesus lived and died is there to show us – and to more than just show us – to seed into our earthly existence the path of our own and the world’s evolution. So intimately connected is this mystery with the meaning of this Earth on which you and I live that the German poet, Goethe,¹⁵ could write these words:

As long as you have not comprehended
this dying and becoming,
you are but a shadowy guest
upon this Earth.

As we enter into a time of prayer together, then may we be able to sing together, instead, “Change my heart, O God, may I be like you.”¹⁶

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