We Wish
to See Jesus
Rev.
Dr. Rebecca L Kiser
3/18/18 Lent 5B
John 12:20-33
I’m drawn to the agricultural metaphor in
this text about the grain of wheat….its fitting, somehow, here in the fields
near Hemingway. We’re farmers and
gardeners – we’ve planted the seeds, and watched as those same seed split open,
and sent up a spout of a new thing. It
reminds me of the Kindergarten bean in a pot, where the new spout comes up with
the old bean seed split on the first new leaf.
Seeds go into the ground - buried, as it were - laid in the dark and
covered over. There in the dark, it dies
to its form as a seed, and the energy in that seed feeds the new life pushing
out and up toward the light. The seed is
gone; what comes up as new life doesn’t look like the seed – its not the same
anymore. The seed contains the
potential, and its burial releases that new thing. The seed is the last stage of the plant’s
life-cycle ---the plant grows, it flowers and fruits, and sets seed– lots of
seeds, actually; and for certain things like a butter bean or okra seed, or an
apple seed or a squash seed, it gives lots of food from that one seed.
In this last Sunday of Lent (as next week
is Palm Sunday, or Passion Sunday, as its now called), we continue to approach the cross with Jesus and again he tells of his
coming death – and the concept of resurrection.
Our particular text this morning holds references to several of our
earlier Lenten readings – there’s an echo of being lifted up, like from last
week with the bronze serpent; there’s the word play about saving your life to
lose it, and losing your life to save it; there’s something close to take up
your cross and follow me. There’s even
an echo back to Jesus’ baptism, when the voice from heaven thundered and people
couldn’t make it out.
Jesus is, of course, using this seed metaphor
to illustrate his own approaching death and burial. From his own falling into the earth in death,
the miracle of all kinds of new life will emerge. God will use this death to do a mighty new
work, new works, new growth, new life.
Jesus could have used any number of
metaphors, because this resurrection from death, this transformation through
death, is seen and told all over the place in God’s creation of our universe. This death and new life theme is all over the
natural world. As a matter of fact, our
whole universe was created from the death of stars, stars that compressed down
and then exploded, forming new elements in the crucible of their heat, and
throwing those new elements out into space where they combined with other elements
and formed our planets, including our Earth.
Star stuff – everything we see is made of star stuff; including our own
bodies.
We
could go on to remember the massive forests of green stuff that died and
compressed into coal, and then diamonds.
Many use the illustration of butterflies and other insects, who start
out as an egg, then a larvae, and then they build a cocoon, where the little
wormy thing develops wings, antennae and body, emerging from a casket-like
thing as a colorful butterfly.
Trees die and fall over – then bugs and
fungus begins to work on it, and breaks it down, transforms it, into the dust
of the earth, where it nourishes new life.
Composting - when I started my first community garden, we had a huge
composting pile – we were really into composting, making a nutritious substance
from the cast–off plants, orange peels, egg shells, coffee grounds, cucumber
peels, and so on. One of the guys made weekly runs with Rubbermaid tubs to
gather used coffee grounds from local Starbucks, and then hit the whole foods
place that squeezed juice from carrots and wheat grass. We all added our raked leaves, and even stole
bags of leaves from our neighbors. We
had a large pile, and took its temperature during the winter to make sure it
was working – if you put your hand in it, it was HOT in there! Steam rose!
We turned it and cared for it, and in the spring we had good stuff, full
of nutrients for our new plantings. The
dead stuff broke down into a valuable material for new life.
Yet another layer of this death and life
theme is in our own personal losses - when for example a relationship dies, a
friend or a significant other, a spouse…. We have to grieve it, yes - then let
it go, not hang on. No new relationship
can grow until we let the old one die. There
come times when a job ends, when we come to the end of what we’re doing - and
we have to let it go, let it die, in order to move forward.
There are times in our lives that we have
to choose what activities we deem important enough to keep in, and what we
either let go or simply never choose. There’s
no room for new things in our lives until we let go of what needs to go. Angers – gotta let them go, and let that tied
up energy free, to be used for something more productive. Prejudices – gotta let them die and move into
welcomes of new people, new challenges. Bad habits – or just habits that have become
hide-bound – gotta let them die, and create new and better habits. Knees or shoulders get bad and make for lots
of pain, and fortunately, our doctors know how to implant new ones for our use!
In Jesus, when the time was come, God
personalized this mystery in Jesus, who died, was buried…. and who God raised
into new life, a new creation, a resurrection.
Jesus embodies the deep truth that God is a God who turns death into
something altogether new. God is a God
of Life; God is alive. This is good news
– our God holds the mystery of new life, and is always bringing new life out of
death.
The hard part of this is that new life
comes after a death - there can’t be an Easter without a Good Friday. There can’t be a transformation without first
there being a death. There can’t be new
growth without the death, the loss, of what was before. This is true on so many levels, and it’s a
difficult truth. It hurts. We feel the loss, the death; we grieve it; but
death has to come before new life.
The first task of an Interim Minister, or
now called a Transitional Minister, is to help a congregation grieve what used
to be under the former pastor, or in the old system of behaviors. We’ve learned that in order to better receive
what’s coming (and who’s coming!) , a congregation has to let go of the former pastor,
however beloved or despised. One place
where I served kept trying to turn me into their former pastor, telling me
things like, “Pastor Jack always ended his sermons with it, ‘the good news
is…..’, and we want you to do it, too.”
“Pastor Jack didn’t preach from a manuscript, and we want you to do
that, too.” They were used to Pastor Jack, and I wasn’t him. Another place, where the pastor retired after
17 good years, had the same problem:– his sermons were full of quotes and poems
he discovered in the local college library. So not only did I not look like a
retired white male, and not only was my voice different, my sermons were different! The weekend I did a continuing education event,
I got a retired man to fill the pulpit, and they said it felt back to normal…..they
really needed grief work, and letting go, but unfortunately they couldn’t do it.
So churches also need to let go of their
past, after celebrating it, of course – and look at what the scoop is NOW - who
are the members NOW, what is the community like NOW. The neighborhood may have changed, a different
economic level may have moved in, or a different race, members may have moved
some miles away.
My home church, when its neighborhood
changed, bought property further out from DC where the white folks were moving,
and built a new building for themselves there.
They couldn’t make the changes needed to minister to the people around
their location, when the people were another color. As a child, I thought that since we said we
valued being a neighborhood church, we ought to reach out to our neighborhood;
and didn’t comprehend what the adults found difficult about that. What a message of radical Christian welcome
and acceptance that could have been, or could have modeled for the racial
tensions in the area. Instead we did
what everyone else was doing, Christian or not.
I know another Interim Pastor, some years
back, who was glad to be invited to some parties by the leading elders and
decision makers, took his whole family and kids. Suddenly he realized that these parties were actually
swinging parties – spouse-swapping. Now
there was a custom that had to die! Some churches have such a dysfunctional
culture that they get a reputation as clergy-killers. If those churches are going to minister and
serve, some behaviors are going to have to be confronted and die.
Next to those rather extreme examples,
most churches look pretty okay! There’s
always some history, though, that can interfere with moving ahead in service
and love. Any change can be
difficult.
Resurrection only comes after a
death. A plant only comes from a seed
that falls into the ground and dies. We
have to let go of one trapeze to catch the next one – can’t keep both or we get
stuck in mid-air. We have to step off
the boat onto the pier – can’t do both, or we fall in! (Been
there, done that!) We gotta let go, let it go, let it die – and step into the
future with both feet.
If we at Indiantown want to revitalize, redevelop,
grow in service, there will be new things.
A new pastor will feel different and do things differently. New members bring new ideas and new ways –
they won’t know ours. How we welcome and embrace the changes will be
significant, whether we grasp onto the old, or are able to move with the
new. When we find ourselves feeling the
pinch, as it were, remember what God has built into creation and showed forth
in Jesus the Christ – that Easter only comes after Good Friday – that resurrection
only comes after a death. AMEN.
