We Wish to See Jesus! 3/18/18 Lent 5B

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.