Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 51:1-13
Hebrews 5:5-10
John 12:20-33
Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Today, I have to tell a story on myself. On that first cold
and snowy Sunday of Lent, you might remember that I invited the kids to come
forward to plant “Alleluia seeds” in our Lenten chest here by the pulpit. I had put some good
potting soil in the bottom, and I handed the children some large seeds, which
were really gourd seeds. Following my instructions, the kids pushed the gourd
seeds down into the soil with eager fingers, and then we closed the lid and
circled the box with heavy chains, entombing those “Alleluia’s” for Lent just
as securely as Jesus’ body had been sealed inside of his tomb. The idea was
that, on the Saturday before Easter, I would surreptitiously help God perform a little “miracle,” by
opening up the box and inserting some colorful pansies that I had bought at the
store. The gourds, of course, would not have grown, and when you all arrived on
Easter Sunday, the box lid would be thrown open, a banner proclaiming “Alleluia”
would unfurl, and each child would be able to take home an Easter flower,
resurrected from the box.
A week or so
ago, I was here in the church planning the Easter banner placement with Julie,
when Rob came up from the organ and pointed out that we had better check on the
seeds in that box. “It’s going to get nasty in there,” he warned. “Without
light and air, those seeds are going to mold in that damp soil, and it’s all going
to start stinking. You had better take them out before Holy Saturday.”
Yuck, I do not like mold. So I
gingerly unwound the chains and opened the box, my lip curled and nose wrinkled
in the expectation of finding death and rot. But guess what we found?! Those
gourd seeds had sprouted! Without any light or air or water, ghostly pale
shoots—some of them 5 or 6 inches tall—were tottering on thin, twisted stalks
in that box. At the base of each shoot was a wad of nasty grey mold, like a
little cloud. But out of those grey clouds of death, pale life was struggling
to emerge, despite the chains, despite the darkness.
I marveled. It
was almost like a miracle—a miracle that I hadn’t controlled or orchestrated.
But it wasn't the happy Easter miracle that I had wanted. That Easter miracle was joyfully colorful, and it did not involve mold. Somewhat reluctantly and
with a sigh, I rolled up those little plants in a plastic garbage bag, along
with the moldy soil, and I threw the whole thing in the trash. Now the box is
clean and ready for Easter, I thought. I’ll just get some more potting soil on
Holy Saturday, and I’ll plant my pansies in there, and we’ll be all set for light
and music and joy and Alleluia’s on April 5.
I didn’t
really feel bad until I read today’s Gospel.
There were some Greeks who wanted
to see Jesus. They were looking for Truth. They were seeking God. They had
perhaps heard of Jesus’ healing miracles. They had perhaps heard snippets of
his wise teaching. So they asked around, checking with those among Jesus’
followers who could speak Greek. “We want to see Jesus,” they inquired. “Which
one is he?”
But then what happened? John’s Gospel doesn’t describe for us their
encounter with Jesus. What did they say to him? What did they think? We have
only Jesus’ address to the disciples: that depressing comment about the seed planted in the earth
that has to die in order to bear fruit. I imagine that those Greeks took one
look at Jesus, the scruffy Galilean rabbi, with his dust-stained robes and his
dirty bare feet, standing amid a crowd of shabby-looking Jewish peasants, smelly
fishermen, and low-life women, and they didn’t see what they were looking for.
I imagine that they looked at Jesus like I looked at the weak plants in our
Lenten chest: “This is not the miracle that I’m looking for,” they might have
mumbled. “This is not the God who can save me.”And perhaps they turned and
walked away.
And who can
blame them? Who doesn’t prefer the pansies of our own devising over the sickly
shoots that we find when we open the box? “Why does Jesus have to die?” we
whine. Why would God kill God’s own beloved Son? Why does Jesus tell us that we
have to die in order to live? Why is Christianity so full of death, so full of talk
about failure and suffering and loss?
In our world,
we sure don’t like to talk about death. Even though we know, deep down, that we
will all die, we don’t like to dwell on it.[1]
We try to cover up our aging with creams and vitamins and even surgery. As a
society, we tell ourselves that enough money or enough power over others can
protect us from death. We even strike out at other persons and nations in order
to kill them before they can kill us. We lose ourselves in work, in drugs, and
in all kinds of addictions in order to push down the fear of our own
vulnerability. Survival is the name of the game in our world. Just look at the old TV show,
“Survivor.” It is all about doing whatever it takes to “survive,” to win the
game, no matter who else is hurt or trampled on. On that show, even team
cooperation is only an artificial and temporary path to individual
triumph. The appearance of working
together with others on a challenge is only thinly veiled manipulation. We humans alone,
over all other creatures, are able somehow to fool ourselves that, with enough
effort and control, we can avoid death. Why nurture moldy little gourd sprouts
when we can throw them out and buy Easter flowers?
Jesus has to
die in order to prove to us that God is stronger than death, and that “survival”
at all costs is a poor substitute for true relationship with God and with one
another. Jesus has to die, so that he
can rise, so that he can be lifted up to where we Greeks can see him, to where
we Greeks won’t wrinkle our noses and turn away toward life’s false yet
glittering promises. Rowan Williams writes, “the importance of Jesus’
resurrection is not that it somehow proves there is life after death in a
general sort of way. What it proves is that God keeps his promises … The violent and terrible death of
Jesus does not stop God from giving what he wants to give, giving consistently
and steadily. If Jesus is raised, we can count on the faithfulness of God.”
Do you believe
that the love and faithfulness of God are stronger than death—stronger than
death in all of its fearsome forms? Physical death, emotional death, the death
of dreams, the death of desires, the death of perfection? How much of yourself
do you dare plant in the ground, willing to let it die so that God can
transform it, and use it in ways beyond your control?
I didn’t have
to look far and wide for examples for today’s sermon. Fortunately—or unfortunately—they
were laid this week in my empty lap. So I have two more stories today for you
to place alongside my story of the Alleluia seeds. First of all, I hold up
today two very brave and daring parishioners—two parishioners who believe
enough in God’s faithfulness to risk a form of death. Harvey and Chuck both heard God’s call to service, and they publicly entered the
discernment process for the diaconate. Years of study, years of prayer, years
of painful change in their lives and schedules, years of exposure to the prying
eyes of the Church: years of vulnerability. While Harvey withdrew from the
process last year, Chuck learned just this week that the Church hears a call
for him to special lay ministry, rather than to the diaconate. While Chuck accepted
disappointment with the mature, steady reaction that we would expect from him,
I know that hearing a “no” from the church like this is like a death: it is the
death of deeply cherished dreams and hopes, the death of a certain self-image before God. Putting oneself in the vulnerable position for that death to happen is
like allowing oneself to be buried in the breathless darkness of the earth. As
their brothers and sisters in Christ, however, with faith in God’s faithfulness, we will
be there to watch the transformation as Chuck and Harvey grow into the new life
that God has in store for them—the new life that won’t look like the life of
their imaginings, the life of their own construction—but it will be the kind of
divine life that bears fruit and holds eternity deep within it. It will be a
life that they would not have known, had they not first opened themselves up to know death.
The other
death that we are facing as a parish right now is the death of our Saturday night
informal mass. The numbers and the energy at this service have been fading over
the past few years, and yet I have wanted to avoid its “death.” I have not
really trusted in God’s faithfulness—instead, it was all about what I as rector
could do to keep the service alive. As we enter Holy Week, however, I have decided, with
the counsel of the Vestry and after discussion with Saturday attendees, that we
will bury this service in the ground after Palm Sunday, and we will wait to see
what new plant comes up sometime after Easter. I don’t know how long the seed will have
to germinate in the dark before something new arises. I don’t know if the fruit
that it will bear will be the Easter pansies of my imagining, pansies of a
popular and wildly successful new service, on a different day… But I do know that God
is faithful, and that this death will somehow bear fruit for us at St. Thomas,
and for God’s Kingdom.
We all love
the joy and triumph of Easter Sunday. My wish for us as a parish however, is
that when the pansies and the Alleluia’s come out on Easter—and they will—we will
remember the real story of life arising from the darkness of a cold, Lenten afternoon, in an empty church. I know that I, for
one, need to be much more prayerful in my tendency to pack up and throw out the
tender shoots of life that don’t mesh with my own hopes and dreams. So I invite you to come to church this Holy Week in order to live the death of Jesus. I invite you to live that same vulnerability in your own lives and in the life of this
parish. “Let go with Christ, die into his love; and rise with Christ, opening
yourself to the eternal gift of the Father.”[2]
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