Jeremiah 3: 31-34 (New Jerusalem Bible)
John 12: 20-33 (Common English Bible)
Everyone who follows Jesus is on a mission from God. As God provided for Jesus, we also are not without directions and guidance. We can think about the success of the warming station within the Salem Presbyterian Church. The Session and myself were all for it, but is it going to work? But I will tell you the truth, God made it work. Angels in the flesh made it work. And when the temps become warm, the SPC will have Monday evening dinners for those who have no place to go. So I ask, what is more important to God? Filling the pews on Sunday, or helping those without fancy careers or backgrounds? Those who have no place to live. It does not matter whether those we help are Christians or atheists, they are all of God’s children. It’s long overdue for mainline Protestant churches to move beyond their comfort zones of the upper middle class to embrace those of the lower class whom politicians even ignore because the homeless have no place to vote. God is not silent when there is a task to do, especially one that Jesus would strongly approve of. If we listen to God speaking to our conscience anything is possible. The problem is that when God speaks, we often close our ears to what God really expects of us. Make no mistake, God is still working through the SPC, perhaps in different and more better ways than before. The warming station is an example of that.
Presbyterians sometimes turn to the first question of the Westminster Catechism which is, “What is the purpose of humankind?” The answer is, “To glorify and enjoy God forever.” Our work in life and perhaps even after death, is to witness God’s love and grace and enjoy God’s creation of all things.
We try hard to hold onto our own lives, not just in terms of staying alive, but in turn what we want and possess. Jesus does not deny the fear of death, but he turns its uncertainty into a promise of a new existence.
The passage read from the gospel of John gives us more insight into Jesus’ own thoughts and feelings about his calling to the cross. In previous passages, Jesus has been with his disciples, trying to help them to be prepared and to understand his mission. As we listen in as Jesus shares his thoughts about what he will face, it is a stark and somber reminder what Jesus did was not easy. To be executed on a Roman cross was one of the worst ways to die. Only cursed people were supposed to die like that according to the Hebrew Bible in the Book of Deuteronomy chapter 21, verse 23.
Reflecting on the death of Jesus, it is not about God being angry with humankind as many fundamentalist Christians believe. God was disappointed with the people who separated themselves from God, because they didn’t realize God’s love and what it meant. Jesus compares his upcoming death to a grain of wheat being sown, buried beneath the soil. It becomes similar to a kernel, transformed into a new life, an entire plant with many stems and berries. Through “dying” it produces a new and better existence.
Now when the Greeks approached Philip to learn more about his teacher Jesus, we are not told what they believed. Were they still pagans or what was called “God Fearers?” Those were the non-Jewish people who believed in the God of Abraham, but haven’t gone the entire way, like getting circumcised. But the Greeks were always curious about something new or challenging, whether it was philosophy or exploration. In the year 330 BC the Greek sailor Pytheas left his comfort zone in the Mediterranean Sea area and sailed north as far as the British Isles to Scandinavia and even Iceland. That was unheard of in the ancient world during that era. Up until then, ships were only used for local commerce and war. But the Greeks who were curious about Jesus no doubt heard about his miracles and maybe his forcing merchants out of the Jerusalem Temple.
At first Jesus reminds his disciples and the Greeks to understand what it means to love their life even if they have to lose it. If a follower of Jesus truly loves their life enough to follow Jesus, they must realize to separate their life from its connection to the material things of the world. And that includes perhaps, even their own physical life.
This is not what the Greeks expected to hear. But the Christ had done all it could do in its human form as Jesus, and now the time had come. Jesus would become that grain of wheat to be buried and rise again. This was the only way to spread God’s message of the futility of human power, whether religious or political.
Dying is more than physical death. We can die a thousand deaths during our lifetime. Think about a loss of a loved one, loss of a relationship, bad health and lost opportunities. Sometimes there are things we need to let go of, things that deny us the real fullness of life we want with God.
The reading from Jeremiah chapter 31 is set around 538 BC when the Jewish scholars and family return to Jerusalem after their long exile in Babylon. The focus from the Prophet Jeremiah is how the liberated Jewish people will react with God in a new era of their existence. A new covenant with God must be arranged, not one written in stone, but on the heart. In the Hebrew Bible, the “heart” meant more than emotion. The heart was also viewed as a place of intellectual, ethical and moral activity. The new covenant, according to Jeremiah, will no longer be expressed through outwards displays like sacrificing animals and circumcision for men, but instead will be experienced within the mind and heart of people. Because the new covenant will not be written on stone or paper or centered in one location, it will not be identified with a particular place or religion. It will be with the people, wherever they might be.
Centuries later the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans chapter two, verses 14-15, “When the Gentiles who have no knowledge of the Law of Moses, act in accordance with it by the light of nature, they show that they have a Law in themselves, for they demonstrate the effect of a law operating in their own hearts. Their own conscience endorses the existence of such a law, for there is something which condemns or commends their actions.”
Through Jeremiah we see God adapting to the realities of God’s relationship with the people of Judah and Israel. The previous covenants grounded in fear and obedience were not successful. The idea of “intelligence” as adapting to change can produce a more positive world. The end of slavery, which existed for thousands of years, has become an evil relic of the past. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Human beings have a moral responsibility to be intelligent.” In Reverend King’s view, this intelligence would lead the human family to the correct understanding of love and justice distributed into society without prejudice or preference. Imagine the implications of calling people to that moral responsibility in a world filled with deliberate and intentional misinformation calling it for what it is, malicious fake news. This will call for listeners to seek and search for the real truth.
Seeking the truth can be hazardous to your health and some have paid the ultimate price. Oscar Romero was a El Salvadorian Catholic priest who worked for social justice and peace from violence. In a sermon during Palm Sunday on March 24, 1980, about this very same reading we heard today from John 12:20-33, and I quote, “Many do not understand, and they think Christianity should not be involved in social justice. But to the contrary, you have just heard Christ’s Gospel, that one must not love oneself so much as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life which history demands of us, those who avoid the danger will lose their lives while those who out of love for Christ give themselves to the service of others will live, like a grain of wheat that dies, but only apparently. If it did not die, it would remain alone.The harvest comes because it dies, allowing itself to be sacrificed in their earth and destroyed. Only by destroying itself does it produce the harvest.”
As Archbishop Romero finished his sermon and began the celebration of the Eucharist, Romero spoke of its symbolism in the wheat and chalice. It was then that a hitman, likely hired by a right-wing politician, came into the church and shot Romero to death at the altar.
Seeing Jesus is not a spectator sport. It is a way to be followed, a truth to be embodied and a life to live through love and justice.
AMEN
