Cedar Heights Community Presbyterian Church
The Fifth Sunday of Lent: March 25, 2012
John 12:20-33
Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus." Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 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. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.
"Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say - 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name." Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again." The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, "An angel has spoken to him." Jesus answered, "This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.
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"Very truly, I tell you," says Jesus, "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."
The first Christian martyred in the Roman Coliseum is said to have been St. Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch and one of the Apostolic Fathers or leaders of the early church. Following a life of outspoken ministry and leadership, he was thrown to the lions and exclaimed, "I am as the grain of the field and must be ground by the teeth of the lions, that I may become fit for his table."
"Very truly, I tell you, those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life."
In the 14th century, Catherine of Siena notoriously refused all food except for the holy Eucharist, not only signifying her devotion to God and Jesus but also demonstrating her clear commitment to the spiritual over the physical, to the godly over the worldly. She and the others who engaged in this “holy anorexia” claimed that they possessed at least some measure of spiritual enlightenment from their asceticism. They variously claimed to feel "inebriation" with the holy wine, "hunger" for God, and conversely, that they sat at the "delicious banquet of the Lord." Catherine of Siena died at the age of 33. Not eighty years later, she was declared a saint.
"Very truly, I tell you," says Jesus, "whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there my servant will be also."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor, theologian, and anti-fascist. He was a participant in the German resistance movement against Nazism and a founding member of the Confessing Church, a major source of Christian opposition to the Nazi government. He was arrested in 1943 by the Gestapo, was convicted of conspiring to assassinate Adolf Hitler, and was executed by hanging two years later, a mere 23 days before the Nazis' surrender.
The camp doctor who witnessed the execution wrote: "I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer…kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God."
Now, while it seems that physical death for the sake of the Gospel is and could continue to be an apt reading of today’s text, and while the aforementioned martyrs are undoubtedly faithful to an important message of Christianity, I don’t think that today’s story necessarily demands the same of us. I don’t think God wants us literally to hate our physical lives and I don’t think God intends that we sacrifice our physical existence in protest of a broken world.
I do think, however, that today’s story challenges us to refocus. To recognize that, at one particular moment in history, death was demanded of Christ, and that his sacrifice, has the potential to change our orientation entirely. To shift our attention and our devotion from the worldly to the godly. And to make everything that distracts us from serving God peripheral and expendable.
The kind of death that Jesus challenges us to die in today’s Scripture is not a physical death as an alternative to a physical life, but rather a spiritual death as an alternative to being distracted, controlling, ungrateful people. He calls us to let go of the idea that we know what’s best and that we are in charge of the direction of our lives. He insists that we understand that the things we have and the way we look do not make us more or less valuable. He begs us to stop moving so fast, to stop trying so hard to find worldly success and affirmation.
How many of us go through our days in a technology-driven frenzy, cell phone in one hand and remote or mouse or steering wheel in the other? How many of us allow popular culture and the media to tell us what it is we want, what it is we need, and what it is that will make us whole? How many of us spend our days clawing our way to the top of an amorphous corporate ladder or social network? And how many of us spend our nights worrying about the job market, the stock market, the housing market, the weather?
I do. And doing so, I’m quick to claim, makes me human. But it doesn’t make me faithful. These worldly preoccupations have taken the place of God, and spiritual death returns them to the periphery. The kind of death that Jesus challenges us to die is the painful relinquishment of control. It is the refusal to engage in comparison. It is the conscious denial that anxiety and fear have power over us or anyone else. And it is the excruciating act of slowing down, of paying attention, of making time in our days for interruptions, for rest, for God.
In short, Jesus challenges us to confess. For the covenant community of Israel, the "shema," the affirmation of one God, stood against the surrounding culture that offered various gods or idols. For the earliest Christians to say that "Jesus is Lord" was a clear renunciation of the Romans' claim of Caesar's lordship. For us to say that "Jesus is Lord" is just as clear a renunciation of our various gods and idols, be they success, control, busyness, or beauty. To confess is to return to God all that which, in the beginning and in the end, is God’s. Dorothy Day, leader of the Catholic Worker Movement, once said, "If we rendered unto God all the things that belong to God, there would be nothing left for Caesar."
Jesus challenges us to die a certain kind of death. And the first part of that is confession. Over and over again. With all that we have. But equally important to the act of confession is that we understand and trust that we are forgiven.
Martin Luther entered the monastery seeking peace with God, but instead found an intense, almost obsessive commitment to religious rituals such as intense sessions of fasting and praying with long periods of penance. As confession of sins was a required part of penance, he confessed his sins interminably. He was constantly worried that he might forget some sin and therefore not receive forgiveness, so he went back and forth to the confessional booth, many times daily. Having understandably worn out his confessor, the vicar eventually told him: "Martin, why don't you go out and commit some real sins. Come back when you have something to confess."
Clearly, Luther had confession down pat. But confession purely for the sake of confessing can become a means by which we maintain a myopic, self-centered focus. It can propagate the idea that we have some control over the state of our souls, that if we fulfill a certain requirement, then we can go about our happy lives. Confession can become another idol that claims a space belonging to God. But when, in confessing, we acknowledge God’s forgiveness, we return our focus to God, to God’s power, and to God’s promise. So it is that forgiveness is the second step of the dying for which Jesus calls. When we confess, we remove our egos from the equation. When we become aware of God’s forgiveness, God fills the resulting void.
Today’s reading from Jeremiah shows how God fills this void. "I will put my law within them," says the Lord, "and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No 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… for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more."
Ironically, presentation of this "new covenant" described in Jeremiah comes immediately following the undoubtedly painful memory of what God calls “the covenant that I made with their ancestors…a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband.” God does not give the new covenant because the people earned it. Similarly, God does not bestow forgiveness because we have confessed. Confession does not achieve forgiveness. Forgiveness was granted before we sinned - we find it on the cross. But confession does make us vulnerable, opening up a space in our hearts and minds to receive the gift that we have already been given, that is, God’s acceptance of us, God’s forgiveness of us.
This connection between confession and forgiveness, once difficult for young Luther to grasp, eventually came to define his ministry. He began to teach that redemption was a gift of God's grace, attainable not by one’s well-meaning works, but only through faith in Jesus. In a letter to a friend and fellow theologian, he wrote, "Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong," a phrase often interpreted as, "sin boldly." “But,” he continued, "let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world." Sin boldly, he said, but just as boldly know that Christ has already forgiven you.
If, then, our confession admits that we are lacking, that we have continually played God and continually failed, the assertion that we are forgiven confirms the equally powerful reality that God has not failed, that God continues to be God even amidst and in response to our sinning. If confession is the sign of our proverbial grain of wheat dying, forgiveness is the fruit, the life, which our dead seed bears.
It is no secret that I stand before you today over six months pregnant. Many of you also know that, during the workweek, my ministry is that of a hospice chaplain. Each day, I enter into the rooms of people who are dying. I talk to them and their families about their beliefs, their hopes, and their fears. And then they ask me if I’m having a boy or a girl. They ask me if I can feel her kick. They ask me about my beliefs, my hopes, and my fears. Everyday, my patients and I meet the seemingly paradoxical realities of life and death head on. As much as we’d like to separate them, as much as we’d like to insist that they keep a safe distance in the hospital and in our hearts, they remain stubbornly, necessarily intertwined.
Today’s Scripture, and in fact the very season of Lent, remind us that death and life are and must be part of the same conversation. In the Christian tradition, death precedes life. Our daily act of dying to the world, of confessing, frees us to love God, to worship God, and in doing so to be our most genuine, open, vulnerable selves. And Christ’s singular, saving act of dying on the cross frees us from preoccupation, fear, and anxiety and enables us to live as a people promised eternal life with a loving God…joyfully, gratefully, and faithfully.
Friends, believe the good news of the Gospel. In Jesus Christ, we are forgiven. Amen.
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