"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."
John 12:24
Well, Holy Week is fast approaching. And of course, now is the time when my blogger-conscience starts bugging me about not having posted here in a good long while. But a solution presents itself: Below is the transcript of a sermon I preached this past Sunday (Lent 5B, March 22nd) that some have found useful. Hopefully you will, too. Blessings on your Holy Week and Easter.
Gospel text: John 12:20-33
It wouldn’t have occurred to
me
To think like a seed.
It’s an interesting window
into Jesus’ mind:
The way he sees people.
The way he sees us.
It wouldn’t have occurred
to me that to a seed,
Growth might not be an
attractive thing.
Even though growing is
what seeds have evolved over hundreds of millions of years to do, for an
individual seed,
who’s never been through
it,
It would be a death.
Your skin—your boundaries
of who you are—would be ruptured.
The only identity you’ve
ever known—a particular seed in a particular place and time—would cease to
exist.
A new thing would exist in
its place,
and what that is, you
can’t control.
It’s up to God.
Thinking like a seed, it’s
terrifying.
But thinking like a
farmer,
You realize it’s all the
seed is meant to do.
The only way to truly be
alive.
Jesus says, “Those who
love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal
life.”
I don’t think Jesus means
that the only people who’ll go to Heaven are those who are in constant agony in
their earthly lives.
Based on how he uses the
word elsewhere, I think “hate” here means more like reject.
That if you cling to the identity the outside world
wants to give you, that outer shell, what you
consider to be your life will be very short.
But if you reject that identity, and admit it’s not who you are, then God can reveal to
you something deeper, something real,
something infinite.
If you’ve never been
through that kind of
growth, it is like dying. It’s letting go of who
you think you are, without being entirely
sure who by God’s action, you’ll become.
I mean, you know you can’t be a seed forever.
Transformation is coming.
It’s just a question of
whether you’ll enjoy becoming something more.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus
has a lot to say about “the world.” He
doesn’t just mean the physical, “earthly” realm as opposed to some separate “heavenly”
realm beyond the blue. It’s more of a shorthand for Jesus’ mission field—where
he works. That part of existence which doesn’t know him. That which needs to be
saved. That which rejects Jesus and his followers, yet which God still loves. It’s not a place so
much as a value system, an institution, a way of thinking, but also a spiritual
force.
It’s the dominant force in
the human spirit far too often, the part of us that values only the outer shell
of that seed:
what we can see, what we
can get, whom we can influence.
It’s the system in which
your identity is nothing more than a set of attributes: a pile of money and
possessions, the pages of a resume, the letters after your name, the number of
your Facebook friends or twitter followers, the number of employees who report
to you, the acreage of your territory, the way your body compares to a
photo-shopped body in a magazine.
It’s a system that tries
to make eternal, the things that are temporary, as though this life we see is
all there is.
It’s a system that ranks
us by the numbers, yet somehow makes sure none of us measures up.
And despite this constant
abuse, it’s a system in which we can get way too comfortable.
It’s like the pothole on
your commute that’s there for so long that you swerve without looking, or the aching
tooth that makes you chew all your food on the other side of your mouth.
It’s a status-quo that we
forget is even there.
Especially
if we’re benefitting from it.
If our power and prestige
is coming at the expense of injustice against someone else.
If our comfort comes at
the cost of others’ pain.
If that’s the reality of
this world, you can understand why so many choose not to see it.
Jesus says his kingdom is
not of this world.
But he’s not here to lead
us out of it either.
He’s here to drive the
ruler of this world out.
To take down the whole
system.
He’s here to show us
there’s another way:
A system of acceptance, instead
of rank.
A system of love, instead
of judgment.
A system of forgiveness,
instead of score-settling.
And the way he’s going to
do that is to be lifted up, for everyone to see, not on a throne, but on a
cross. Not by conquering, but by dying.
When Jesus says his hour
is coming, and that he’s going to glorify
God, that’s what he’s talking about. He’s talking about this moment, in
which he utterly rejects
everything the so-called “world”
has to offer.
When he rejects the lie,
that all that matters is how strong and pretty a single grain of wheat looks
like on the outside, and shows us that what really matters is the life that’s
growing on the inside.
When Jesus willingly
accepts the most shameful, painful place in this world’s system, he shows us that
even death itself is only a transformation,
and dying in the world’s eyes, is the pathway to being truly alive in God.
When we die to
ourselves—to our selfishness, our need to be the best and the strongest—we can
live for others, and for God. We can start living the resurrection life Jesus
promises,
Even now.
In Baptism, we died in the
world’s eyes.
We renounced the powers of
this world that rebel against God. We rejected the identity, the status, the rank that the world wanted to give us.
That identity got left down there in the water, like the outer shell of a seed.
God connected us to the
death of Jesus,
And the Holy Spirit then
gave birth to our new
Identity: an identity that
has nothing to do with what we have, or look like, or can accomplish, and
everything to do with God’s love for
us.
That’s where the growth
starts.
That’s where the
transformation starts.
There in the water.
It really should give us
pause.
It should be a little daunting,
giving up the false
personae that the world gives us, and not knowing what God’s growing us into.
It might be more
comfortable to feel as though nothing will change—that the rules of this world
will always apply. Once a seed, always a seed.
But God wants so much more
than comfort for us. God wants transformation. Growth. Death…and resurrection.
And through Jesus, we
receive it.
Amen.
