March 22, 2015: May God’s words alone be spoken, may God’s words alone be heard. Amen.
We have come full circle.
This final Sunday of Lent, we have come full circle in the cycle of covenant with God, and so has God with us. We begin and end with Psalm 51, a Psalm about forgiveness, and in the weeks between we are reminded of who we are, and what God expects of us in our relationship of Creator and created. We finish Lent with a passage from Jeremiah and from the Gospel of John both of which brings everything fully around.
In Jeremiah we hear that the law of the covenant has been relocated. Where is God to be found? Right in our hearts, according to Jeremiah. So, covenant is fulfilled in US! And in John, Jesus is preparing his disciples for what is to come. Is this request by the “Greeks” to “see” Jesus the final sign that it was time for him to go? This is where the paring of the two is most poignant. Think about the Hebrew text – the time had come for the love of God, and for God, to be written on the heart, not on the eyes with rainbows or the tablets of the law. Jesus, the incarnate God, had reached that same time. It was no longer time for seeing, but for feeling, knowing, loving, being. Having come full circle, it is time now for us to be people of the heart.
And there could be no better time than now.
I don’t know about you’all, but I gotta ask – Spring…where is it? The day it was to arrive we were greeted with more snow. Really? It can make you wonder if we will ever see green on the trees again. That would be okay, if that were the only thing happening, but lately the news in the media can leave anyone who has a heart feeling deeply saddened about what is happening in the world. What is wrong with people? The nightly news shows people taking selfies while others are suffer right in front of them rather than offering assistance taking video and pictures – what kind of narcissistic insanity is that? A baby is ripped from a young mother’s womb by someone who placed an ad in Craig’s list selling baby clothes. Terrorists explode bombs in mosques killing men, women, and children as they pray. Families killed in house fires, people killed in horrific car crashes. And that was just the past week.
In the words of Jesus, we might all say, “”Now my soul is troubled.” And this is why these scriptures – the entire Lenten experience – and most especially the journey into Holy Week is so important for us now.
This passage from the Gospel leads us into Holy Week, but it is somewhat odd, in that it actually occurs in the Gospel just AFTER the triumphant procession we will hear about next week on Palm Sunday. So, it is a bit out of sequence, like a lot of Hollywood movies, right – start in the middle, with a few sequels, and then a few prequels, just for good measure. I think, sometimes that is a good way to develop the long arc of the plot. For us, having moved through Lent, and heading toward the cross, it is also a good transition. This passage, and the one from Jeremiah, prepare us for what is to come, and what is here now in our world today.
Jesus tells his disciples, “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.” This was his answer to the request of seeing him.
Now, this past week, there was a neat story on NPR about how plants that grow from seed work. It was fascinating how something that appears dead on the outside could produce such an abundance of life. One of the botanists described a seed as “a baby plant in a box with a lunch,” meaning that within that seemingly lifeless seed is the embryo of the plant that feeds off of its environment – much like a human in a womb, I suppose. The seed may be small, but the potential contained within it is enormously large by comparison. If the seed is placed in something that brings it out of its dormant state – water or soil – eventually the seed gives way for the plant to grow beyond its casing – downward into the soil and upward toward the sun. The seed dies, and the plant lives. The plant will produce more seed, and the cycle continues. No matter what happens to the plant, there will always be more seed, and more possibility for new plants – new life. If this passage from John were written today, the authors might have Jesus say “download the podcast from NPR about the seeds – text me if you have questions.”
Still, how does this help ease our own troubled spirits in this deeply disturbing world in which we live?
Let’s pause here for a moment and talk about what is to come in Holy Week. We will start the week celebrating Jesus as he comes into Jerusalem. We will hear the passion story. On Maundy Thursday we will be reminded of all that Jesus teaches us summed up in a single new commandment of love. Good Friday we agonize as he hangs on the cross to die. And we celebrate his resurrection in Easter. Much later in Eastertide, we will watch with the disciples as he ascends into heaven. It is an emotional roller coaster. And, it is a full package – you can’t take one part without the other.
In liturgical classes in seminary it is emphasized that within all parts of the Triduum (the three holiest days of the year – Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter) there is always the death & the resurrection. Both are present in all three – and throughout all the year. In fact, for a Christian, our identities are a fuller circle than even that – as we are always a part of the Incarnation-Crucifixion-Resurrection-Ascension story. Death brings Life brings Death…it is a never ending cycle.
Those who have lost someone dear to them can understand this cycle more than most. With the death of a loved one, we die too. Our friends and family comfort us, and God walks with us in our grief until we are alive once more – changed, different, but alive again. Those we love and God are like that seed – nurturing us until we are able to spread roots again, until we are able to stretch toward the sun again. And to get to that point, we have to die to what had come before. This doesn’t mean forgetting, but it does mean understanding that we are no longer the person were before. We are changed – changed deeply. The death does not stand alone – it is always paired with life. And life is always paired with death.
As they say, the only thing to be sure about in life is death and taxes…or in New Jersey, death BY taxes.
So back to the question of what all this means for us – the ones with spirits troubled by the horrors of the news. Maybe the collect from today can help. We prayed this morning asking God to “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.” If this reminds you of the passage from Jeremiah, you are on to something.
We are being reminded that God doesn’t live in some far off place. God is in our hearts, and there our hope is as well. This is in many ways what Jesus is trying to tell his disciples too. That they will look for him and he will not be seen in the way they have seen him before. He is preparing them not only for the cross, but for the resurrection and ascension, when he will be in their hearts – not in front of their eyes in the same way. He is preparing us for times such as these – times when we feel we are weighed down by the crosses the world places upon us – when the darkness seems to overwhelm us. He is telling us that the death cannot be separated from the new life – that his death, his cross, cannot stand alone without the resurrection and ascension. That there is always life in death – always light in darkness – always hope amidst despair. There is always God in our hearts no matter what happens to us.
God inscribed on the hearts of all that God created an everlasting covenant of love – wanting us so much to know that love – to really feel it, that God was willing to become human – to die and then live, so that we might understand that nothing of human workings – not even betrayal to a gruesome death – can ever, ever, take that love away. All we need do is to open ourselves to who we are – who we are right down to our very heart.
It isn’t that bad things won’t happen to us. It isn’t that bad things didn’t happen to Jesus. It is just that if we focus on only that, we will lose sight of the full meaning of the incarnation – the full understanding of the cross. The cross can never be looked at without the resurrection, and vice-versa.
In other words, if we listen to only the bad news, we don’t see the full picture either, do we. We always need to look at the full picture, or the world will seem without hope. It means we need to also remember that this week, the United Nations encouraged the world to celebrate the “International Day of Happiness,” established by the UN in 2012. Yes, that was part of the news too! In fact, Ban Ki-Moon, the Secretary-General of the UN said in a speech this past week, “Peace, prosperity, lives of dignity for all – this is what we seek. We want all men, women and children to enjoy all their human rights. We want all countries to know the pleasure of peace,” Not only that – the UN asked folks to name the song that makes them happiest. Bon Ki-Moon’s – “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” by Stevie Wonder. Gotta love it! And, amid all the snow, some crocus were seen popping up with their bright purple flowers just the other day. And in all those terrible events, the fires, the traffic accidents, the murders, there were those who came to help: First responders – fire and police and EMTs, doctors and nurses, passerbys who used their phones only to call 911 not to take photos and video, family and friends of victims who consoled the grieving. And of course, God. If we refuse to see beyond the cross, we cannot see the resurrection. If we allow the news media to show us only the dark side of humanity, we will lose sight of the light that is always present.
And doing that – remembering to look at both – is exactly what Jesus is calling us to do when he talks about bearing fruit. A seed can only bear fruit if it dies to an identity as a seed, and expands beyond that. Jesus is telling us that we must die to our illusion that we are humans living independently from one another, from all of creation, and from God.
When describing the early Christians to the Emperor Hadrian, Aristides wrote: “They love one another. They never fail to help widows; they save orphans from those who hurt them. If they have something, they give freely to the person who has nothing; if they see a stranger, they take him home as a brother or sister in the spirit, the Spirit of God.”
Within each of us, all who follow Christ, is the hope of resurrection. We have stood before the cross, we have also stood by the empty tomb. And throughout, we know that God’s love is written on our hearts. Within our very identity is the hope of the world.
We are essentially hope in a box with a lunch – full of potential for ourselves and for the world – potential far beyond our imaginations. Jesus is calling us out of our dormancy. As followers of Christ, we are to die to that existence and spread roots of hope for the world, as we are sustained by the son of God – the light of Christ. In this dark world, it is time for all of us to live into our potential – to die so that we and others may live. It is time to shed the small existence in the seed, and be the plant whose new seeds of hope bring new life to the world.
It is for this reason that Jesus, and all who follow him, have come to this hour.
Amen.
[Sermons as written may not be as delivered on any given Sunday]Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
March 22, 2015
Fifth Sunday of Lent
1st Reading – Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 51:1-13
2nd Reading – Hebrews 5:5-10
Gospel – John 12:20-33
