Jeremiah 31: 31-34 & John 12: 20-33
Fifth Sunday in Lent/ 25th
March 2012
“Sir, we would see Jesus.” As I step into the pulpit here to preach each
week I see these words. Not in my
imagination. I see them literally – they’re etched right on the edge of the
pulpit. “Sir, we would see Jesus.” It’s the King James rendering of John 20:21; the
New Revised Standard Version says, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Would
or wish, both words give expression
to their desire – the yearning, the request of these “Greeks” to meet
Jesus.
We don’t know much about these
“Greeks,” but we know something. They’re
in Jerusalem. They’re part of a group of
people “who went up,” John says, “to worship.”
By “up” John is referring to the Temple Mount, the temple to Yahweh. They were there to worship for a “festival,”
referring to Passover. These are people who worshipped Yahweh. But were they Jews? Possibly. They might have been Hellenistic
Jews, Jews from the diaspora living in the Greek-speaking world (perhaps from
modern Greece or Turkey). Perhaps they
were pilgrims, making an once-in-a-lifetime journey to celebrate Passover in
Jerusalem. Or, they could have been what
we might call today religious seekers, Gentiles who worshipped Yahweh but who never
became, technically, Jews. They would have
been allowed to worship God in the Court of the Gentiles, one of the outer
courtyards of the Temple, but not allowed to get much closer than that. Either way – they’re religious seekers, there
to worship.
That’s about all we know. We don’t
know how they came to know about Jesus. We don’t know why they’re seeking after
him, what draws them toward him. What
about Jesus do they find attractive, what draws them to his message and, more
than the message, what draws them to him?
What we can say is that it’s the occasion of worship, informed by a holy
curiosity that draws them to him. Their
journey toward Jesus traverses through the way of worship, of adoration and
praise. It’s on the way toward the worship
of God that they seek out Philip, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew and then Andrew
and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus
answered “them,” the text says – Philip and Andrew – he never does speak to the
Greeks.
And the answer, you have to admit,
is a bit odd, starting at verse 23. “The
hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 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
died, it bears much fruit. Those who
love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep
it for eternal life. Whoever serves me
must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves
me, the Father will honor.” Talk about non-sequiturs! It’s a baffling metaphor
upon first hearing. Learning that “some Greeks” seek to see him, Jesus launches
into this mini-sermon.
From our vantage we know that Jesus is
talking with Philip and Andrew about his impending death and the meaning of the
death. Because the implied reference is to the cross a lot of ink has been
spent and spilled over the centuries trying to make sense of these verses –
and, for the most part ignoring the setting
for Jesus’ statement, the inquiry of Greeks on their way to worship
Yahweh. Commentators tend to reflect on
verse 23 and following.
The Church has come up with all kind
of theories regarding the meaning of the crucifixion, what theologians call theories
of atonement. The most pervasive theory
in Western theology, running from Ambrose of Milan (c. between 337 and 340-397)
to Anselm of Canterbury (c.1003-1109) right up to Mel of Hollywood, (although I
really shouldn’t place Mel Gibson in the company of Ambrose and Milan), is that
“God demands death in order for life to emerge, that only a violent sacrifice
of a perfect and sinless Jesus could appease a God whose honor has been
affronted and whose anger has been aroused.”
This is the prevailing view in the Church; many are not aware that there
are other views. So many Christians over
the years – including today – and many non-Christians believe that “God is
basically an angry Father who demands sacrifice in order to balance the injustice
of the universe caused by human sin.” Contemporary
theologian Michael Welker says this view is “nothing less than destructive of
faith.” It has, propagated a latent image of God that is deeply unchristian,
indeed demonic: This God is always
seeking compensation.”[1] I would agree with him. This view is so
ingrained into the Christian experience that when we hear a text like this, of
falling and dying, of a death required, we hear it with sacrifice in mind.
As it stands, this verse is
problematic. It’s problematic because
it’s so easy to think that a follower of Jesus must despise this world and that
we are to hate our lives within it. Many
Christians are running around with this view.
This was the view I had as a young adult. I’m not sure where I got it from – my parents
didn’t hold this view, my church didn’t, I can’t remember my church school
teachers saying this. I read a lot of
religious literature when I was in high school, which, upon looking back now, I
now know, was really more fundamentalist in nature. This did a lot of damage to my psyche.
Jesus seems to be saying that life
has no inherent value unless it dies. He
seems to be warning against loving life.
This has led some Christians to assume that loving the world too much,
having fun, taking pleasure in the world and enjoying the beauty of people and
creation is a sin, a threat, a temptation that needs to be confessed and
repented from.
Jesus’ statements here also appear
to be otherworldly. This, too, has led
some Christians to believe that this world means nothing, only the after-life
matters. These are generally the same
folks who argue that we don’t have to be stewards of creation, don’t have to be
concerned about climate change, or social injustice, or even the threat of
nuclear annihilation because this world doesn’t matter.
Some Christians believe that Jesus’
ministry and message have little to do with this world, it’s really more about
our eternal destiny, where we go when we die.
This view runs deep in our theological DNA; that Jesus had to die on the
cross in order for us to go to heaven.
John Chrysostom (c.347-407) wrote, “Since, if anyone look to heaven and
see the beauteous things there, he will soon despise this life, and make no
account of it.”[2] For him, God’s Kingdom is the afterlife. To focus on this life is, as he put it, “a
kind of chain.” One of my professors at
Princeton, Diogenes Allen, reminded us that the Christian life is about more
than geography – worrying about
whether one goes “up” or “down” after one dies.
It’s easy to believe that this is what Jesus was concerned about because
he refers to “eternal life,” which we assume (incorrectly) here that Jesus is
referring to the afterlife – which is most clearly not the case.
And there are other questions. What does it really mean to hate one’s
life? What does it means to die to
self? How does one lose one’s soul? This is a tough one. Here, too, a misreading of this text has done
considerable damage. If one’s soul or
self (the Greek here is psyche) are
lost, then what is left? Does Christ
become everything and we becoming nothing?
Is this what it means to be a Christian, losing our individuality, our
uniqueness? I’ve met a lot of Christians
who said they are trying to become nothing so that Christ can become everything
in them. It’s as if they’re describing a
kind of spirit-possession. This isn’t
healthy. Imagine how an interpretation like
this sounds to someone who’s been emotionally or physically abused, who has a
poor sense of self, who was taught that they don’t matter, the trauma of their
experience belittled, their trust betrayed, their soul broken and diminished;
and what about women and men who have had to struggle throughout their lives to
find their souls, to regain and reclaim their souls, who have learned to care
for their souls, to love themselves, honor themselves, respect themselves? Hearing Jesus say they must “hate their life”
is not good news! In fact it’s really
bad news, terrible news.
Surely Jesus knows all of this. I can’t imagine that Jesus, teaching in love,
would have meant us to read or hear the text this way! There has to be a still more excellent way.
Psychologist Mary Tennes suggests
that it’s important for us to differentiate between submission and surrender. “Submission means giving over what is true
and authentic about ourselves, giving it up because another demands it – even
though it may crush your spirit. When we
submit, we do so out of fear that the person who demands our submission will
hurt us or abandon us if we refuse. Submission
always means diminishment of the self.
It’s the opposite of abundant life.”[3] It’s worth highlighting this reference to
abundant life here because abundant life
is actually a better way of translating “eternal life” – or life touched by
eternity. It means overflowing life,
“life that spills over the edges like a sloshing water bucket.”[4] It’s eternal in the sense that it has no
limit, it’s unending, and therefore God’s life is abundant, vital, creative,
full to over-flowing.
“Surrender, on the other hand, is
not giving ourselves over to another out of fear, but rather, giving ourselves
over to a larger vision of what we are most deeply meant to be and do in God’s
world. Much of what we cling to and
strive for in our daily lives comes from a restricted range of
possibility.” Submission is motivated by
fear, but surrender is motived by hope, she suggests.[5] Tennes is very helpful here. Surrender calls us to risk, to give up the
familiar, to strike out for unknown territory.
Isn’t this what Jesus did on the cross?
What Jesus is getting at here in
this text is really about surrender, not submission. The ability to surrender is motivated by
hope; we might also call it faith. I
would modify this slightly and suggest that there’s something deeper that
motivates surrender within us. Surrender is motivated by love.
This is why I think it’s critical
for us to hear these verses about dying and rising within the larger setting of
the text that begins with “some Greeks” making their way into worship with a
desire, a passion, a love for God. It is
the context of love that these Greeks desire to see Jesus. If my reading of
this is correct, we then discover that there is a kind of knowledge of God, a
type of insight, awareness, perception of God that can only be found by following after the desires of our hearts and
adoration – doxology. I’m talking about
a knowledge of God that can’t be achieved or accessed by our intellect or by
living a good life. What if there are things about God that we discover only in
and through worship rooted and grounded in love and not apart form it?[6]
I believe that it’s the context of
love – drawn by the love of God, called by the love of God, claimed and
affirmed to the core of our being by the power of God’s love – that allows us
to see Jesus, to see the God who shines through face of Jesus. And within love we can hear in this text
something profound. A deep and
mysterious wisdom is found here, friends, a wisdom takes us a very long time to
fathom: in order for a life to truly glorify God, to fulfill its purpose,
something within us has to die. Something has to die. We don’t want to hear this. But the part of us that doesn’t want to hear
this is not the true self, but the ego
or the false self.
It seems to me that this is what
Jesus is talking about here. It’s our
human egocentricity that needs to die, to be knocked off dead-center (and I
mean this literally), so that Christ can become the center. It’s the false self (which is often
fear-based) that needs to die so that the true self, feeling loved, grounded in
its identity in Christ, may emerge. And
this can’t occur without some kind of assault on our sensibilities and reason (like the crucifixion itself), without something
that destabilizes the ego, a force that throws us into conflict, what I would
call a kind of gracious violence –
with an emphasis on gracious.[7] Either way, Jesus’ call to die can only be
“heard” or received or accepted by the ego or the false self within the wider
framework of God’s love – when fear is replaced with love – when we come to acknowledge
that God does not ultimately seek to destroy life, but to give life, abundantly
– Jesus said, I have come that they might have life and have it in abundance
(John 10:10). We come to know this truth
and welcome it – dying and rising and bearing fruit – within a trusting
relationship, within the context of worship of a God who came “not to condemn
the world, but that the world might be save” (John 3: 17).
The ego or false self within us –
often full of fear – hears these words of Jesus as submission. The true self, on the other hand, – grounded
in love – hears Jesus’ words as surrender, a joyous surrender, as an opportunity to embrace one’s destiny and
purpose.
Last year I came across these words
of the poet Kathleen Raine (1909-2003), so simple, yet so profound: “Unless you see a thing in the light of love,
you do not see at thing at all.”[8] It’s worth praying and meditating on this for
a long time. Implicit here, of course,
is the opposite; without the light of love, we don’t see a thing, including
Jesus.
In order to see Jesus – and to see who he really is – requires a change within us. Something
has to die within us; something has to shift; something has to give way. The change, the shift doesn’t occur through
fear, only love. There’s not much
gained in this world through living a life of fear. Fear doesn’t motivate this change, love does.
It’s finally love that motivates us to surrender. We are not asked to submit, but we are called
to surrender – and we can –
because the one who calls us is love,
and the one to whom we
yield is love,
and the one into whom we
fall
and fall
and fall
and discover abundant life is love.
Image: K E. Kovacs, Path to the East Lomond, Kingdom of Fife, Scotland (May, 2009).
[1] I’m grateful for Thomas
G. Long’s succinct summary of substitutionary atonement theory and for the
Welker quotation, “What God Wants,” Christian
Century (March 21, 2006), 19.
[2] John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of St. John and
Epistle to the Hebrews, LXVVI, http://www.ccel.org/ccelschaff/npnf114.iv.lxix.html.
[3]Pamela Cooper-White’s
summary of Mary Tennes’ article, “Beyond Submission and Toward Surrender: The Evolving Female Self,” unpublished paper,
cited in Cooper-White, The Cry of Tama:
Violence Against Women and the Church’s Response (Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 1995), 93.
[4] Mary H. Schertz,
Exegesis notes for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, Lectionary Homiletics, XXIII (No. 2, February/ March 2012), 57.
[5]Cooper-White on Tennes,
Pastoral implications for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, Lectionary, Homiletics,
XXIII (No. 2, February/ March 2012), 59.
[6] Kenneth E. Kovacs,
Theological themes for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, Lectionary Homiletics, XXIII (No. 2, February/ March 2012), 58.
[7] Kovacs, 58. This notion
of “gracious violence” is heavily informed by the novelist Flannery O’Connor
(1925-1964), especially her short story “Revelation;” as well as the
convictional theology of James E. Loder (1931-2001) and C. G. Jung’s
(1875-1961) understanding of ego-transformation. There is no transformation without conflict.
[8] I’m grateful to Melanie Starr Costello for
introducing me to Raine’s poetry. This quote is cited in John O’Donohue’s
(1956-2008), Anam Cara
: A Book of
Celtic Wisdom
(HarperCollins, 1989), 65.
: A Book of
Celtic Wisdom (HarperCollins, 1989), 65.
