sermon
fifth
sunday of lent – year b
“a
curious paradox”
john
12:20-33 / march 22, 2015
Let us pray: May
the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to
you, O God, our strength and our redeemer.
Amen.
“Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in
this world will keep it for eternal life.”
One of my favourite Christian writers, Frederick Buechner, offers his
thoughts on this passage of scripture which I’d like to share with you
“....doing the work you’re best
at doing and like to do best, hearing great music, having great fun, seeing
something very beautiful, weeping at somebody else’s tragedy – all these
experiences are related to the experience of salvation because in all of them
two things happen: firstly, you lose
yourself, and secondly, you find that you are more fully yourself than usual.
A closer analogy is the experience of love. When you love somebody, it is no longer
yourself you is the centre of you own universe.
It is the one you love who is. You
forget yourself. You deny yourself.
You give of yourself so that by all the rules of arithmetical logic
there should be less of yourself than there was to start with.
Only by a curious paradox there is more. You feel that at last you really are
yourself.
The experience of salvation involves the same paradox. In Matthew’s gospel Jesus put it this way: “Those who lose their life for my sale will
find it.” You give up your old self –
seeking self for somebody you love and thereby become yourself at last. ‘You must die with Christ so that you can
rise with him’, Paul says. You do not
love God so that, tit of tat, God will then save you. To love God is to be saved......you do not
love God and live for God so you will go to heaven. Whichever side of the grave you happen to
be talking about, to love God and live for God is heaven, is eternal life. ... ‘we love,’
John says, ‘because God first loved us.’
Who knows how the awareness of God’s love first hits people. Every person has his or her own tale to tell,
including persons who wouldn’t believe in God if you paid them. Some moment happens in your life that you
say “yes” to right up to the roots of your hair, that makes it worth having
been born just to have happen --laughing
with somebody until the tears run down your cheeks, waking up to the first snow, being in bed with somebody you love.”
Buechner concludes, “Whether you thank God for such a moment or thank
your lucky stars, it is a moment that is trying to open up your whole
life.
If you turn your back on such a moment and hurry along to business as
usual, it may lose you the ball game.
If you throw your arms around such a moment and hug it like crazy, it
may save your soul.”
Jesus’ saying about loving our life and thereby losing it, about hating
our life in this world and thereby gaining eternal life, indicates that there
is one way we lose ourselves which is destructive - when we adhere to wordly values vis a vis God’s
values; and there is another way we lose ourselves which, ironically, gives us
true and meaningful and full life, which is the life that is in right relationship to God.
The fact of the matter is that it’s not always a pleasant thing to lose
oneself for the sake of conforming to God’s will, God’s way and thus to be
saved; that is to be fully and truly who we are meant to be.
Some of you may recall that old black-and-white movie, On the
waterfront, starring a young Marlon Brando. This film classic explores
union corruption and the struggle for integrity within human life and
relationships. An early scene depicts a
murder in the street in front of a cathedral.
The victim’s sister rushes into the street and kneel’s by his lifeless
body.
A priest representing us religious folk emerges from the church.
He looks fearfully about, rushes to the young woman, and pleads with her
to flee with him to saftey in the church.
She turns angrily to him and with emotion-laden voice says, “God does
not hide behind cathedral walls.” God calls us to places and situations that
may, like in the scene from on the waterfront, put us at risk for the sake of
the other – a kind of ‘hating self’ so as to be true to the way and the will of
God, a way of losing self for God’s good purposes, so we might be even more
than we normally would be.
Some Greeks came earnestly seeking Jesus
- the one who had caused such a commotion in Jerusalem kingdom of God
They wanted to be a part of that kingdom of life.
And they got their wish. They
saw Jesus. He didn’t perform any
miracles for them. He invited them, as
he does us, to follow him even though the path might lead through suffering and
death. Those who want to see Jesus
today, what do they want to see? – Crowns without crosses, discipleship without
sacrifice, love without hate, service without cost or pain?
Jesus was prepared to suffer and die in service to God and humanity, and
lose himself this way rather than fleeing and hiding,
Thereby saving himself only to lose his real and authentic self. Jesus’ crucifixion, as John’s gospel
declares, judges “the world” and drives
out the “ruler of the world.” The world
(kosmos) here is not synonomous with God’s creation, but is rather the
world that exists in estrangement from God and is organized in opposition to God’s
purposes. The ‘world’ is a superhuman
reality, concretely embodied in structures and institutions. This ‘world’ aggressively shapes human life
and seeks to hold human beings captive to its ways. Kosmos is probably best translated as “the
system.” And this system is driven by a
spirit or force (“the ruler of the world”), whose ways are domination,
violence, and death. Indeed, in this
scripture text, the crucifixion is interpreted as an exorcism,
in which ‘the system’ is judged and its driving force (its ruler) is ‘cast out’ by means of the cross.
We live within a system that consumes and consumes even though we know
such consumption is not giving us life, and we know it is killing others in
sweatshops throughout the system. We
live in a system shaped by hierarchies of winners and losers. And the spirit that drives such a system
creates the structures and institutions that perpetuate oppression and
injustice. Another aspect of the system
that is particularly prevalent in our contemporary context is violence.
The ‘myth of redemptive violence’, as Walter Wink describes it, is the
primary myth of the system. According
to this myth, the way to bring order out of chaos is through violently
defeating “the other.’
And the way to deal with threats from enemies is by violently
eliminating them -- as the system seeks
to do to Jesus. This myth plays itself
out everywhere in our culture. We see it
in the old, almost archetypal, Popeye cartoons in which Popeye restores order
by eating his spinach and beating up Bluto.
We see it in video games and movies that train our children in this myth
from their earliest days. More
seriously, we see it in acts of terrorism and in nations’ response to
terrorism.
Many of us have trouble even imagining alternatives to this myth -- a grim signal of our captivity to it. Throughout his journey to the cross, Jesus
enacts his freedom from this myth, refusing to respond in the system’s own
violent terms. On the cross Jesus
publicly and dramatically judges the system by exposing it for what it is – not
the divine regent of the world, but an opponent of God’s purposes; not the way
of life, but the way of death. And by
exposing the system in this way, Jesus drives out the force behind the system;
for once we have seen the system for what it is, we begin to be set free from
its captivating ways.
We are set free to die to a life shaped by the system, in order to live
fully and freely in the way of Christ.
Martin Luther King jr.’s non-violent
campaigns illustrate Jesus’ work. When
the white powers-that-be turned the hoses and dogs on the marchers – and the
images splashed across television – the reality of white racism was graphically
and publicly exposed for all to see. And
King knew exactly what he was doing:
“let them get their dogs,” he shouted, “and let them get the hose, and
we will leave them standing before their God and the world spattered with the
blood and reeking with the stench of their Negro brothers.” It is necessary; he continued “to bring
these issues to the surface, to bring them out into the open where everybody
can see them.” And King was to some degree
successful. Once exposed, the spirit of
racism began to lose some of its power over many people.
According to John, Jesus’ death and resurrection is a judgement against
the imperial powers and ultimately – and paradoxically – a victory over
them. It has been observed that the
language of elevation and glorification for Jesus is reminiscent of roman
imperial propaganda. Indeed, the whole
discourse in John about Jesus’ elevation and glorification may be seen as an
ironic enthronement in which Jesus by his death on the cross offers the
ultimate challenge to roman authority.
John alerts us to the seductive power of the world. But there can be no compromise. Jesus is king. The emperor is not. As we walk the final days of lent through
holy week, this truth both sustains and challenges us as we contemplate Jesus’
death and resurrection. May we not lose
ourselves in the ‘madness’ of worldly goals and ambitions; rather, may we lose
ourselves in our love of God and our following of Jesus Christ so that we might
be more fully alive, more real, filled with the abundant and eternal life God
yearns for us to have. Thanks and
praise be to God. Amen.
Major
Resources:
“Weekly
Sermon Illustration:Salvation” by Frederick Buechner in http://frederickbuechner.com/content/weekly-sermon-illustration-salvation
“The
Sermon: An Approach” by Raymond Bailey in Word & Witness, Vol. 97:2
(Year B), p. 80.
Editor: Paul Scott Wilson. Liturgical Publications Inc. New
Berlin , WI
“Homiletical
Perspective” by Charles L. Campbell in Feasting on the Word, Year B,
Volume 2,
pp.
140-145. Editors: David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor Westminster
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