April's Sermon of the Month
Rev. Dr. Floyd W. Churn
April 2, 2006
First Presbyterian Church of Dutch Neck, NJ
LOVING AND LOSING
John 12:20-33
20 Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. 21 They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus." 22 Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23 Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 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 dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.
27 "Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say "”'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name." Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again." 29 The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, "An angel has spoken to him." 30 Jesus answered, "This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 31 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." 33 He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.
Sometimes it's just impossible to wrap our mind around things. Both the New York Times and the Trenton Times reported a few weeks ago on a new measurement of the beginning of the universe: the inflation theory. According to David Spergel, an astronomer at Princeton, speaking on behalf of a teams of scientists, the universe began this way: a speck of matter the size of a marble appeared within a sea of nothingness; then came the big bang and within a fraction of a second - a trillion-trillionth - the marble ballooned into the size of the observable universe. I know I can't get my mind around that! It was, according to another scientist, Charles Bennet, "the kind of growth spurt that would alarm any mom or dad."
As a person of faith and only a scientific lay person, I find this cosmic theory quite persuasive and congenial, for it seems to resonate with God's economy as we know it from scripture - an economy in which something as seemingly insignificant as a grain of wheat, if willing to give up it's life as a mere grain, explodes into something as great and grand as love, the many-splendored fruit of life.
The marble of matter must give up its life as a mere speck in Lake Nothingness to become the immense and immeasurable universe of creation.
The grain must fall into the earth and die before it can be reborn in fruitful abundance and nourishment for many.
Jesus must be lifted upon on a cross and die to the world that all people...all people... may be drawn to him and made alive to eternity.
And what of us? Jesus seems to be telling his followers that this incredible paradox is really the secret to gaining life...abundant life. It is so antithetical to our culture that most of us - believers and non-believers alike - still have trouble understanding it and more so, living it. Gaining by losing? Finding life by letting go of our hold on life? Loving our life too tightly and thereby losing our life? Yet Jesus says that paradox is exactly how God gifts us with that eternal life that is available in the present - right now - as well as our future: letting our speck of love be sown in the soil of God's grace, die to our own priorities, and be grown into a great garden of love...letting our little marble of life-energy die to itself and be expanded by God into a universe of light shining out of the darkness. Following Jesus is, from first to last, a matter of "letting go" rather than our culture's dictum, which is "hanging on," and "getting more." In the economy of our culture, things run out, get depleted, and we have to continually accumulate more in a world where there is never enough. In God's economy there is already enough for all and security enough in God's grace - and when we let go of our anxious need to bulwark our lives gain ever more, we discover we're on the "road to bountiful."
I don't pretend to know all that this divine paradox means for our day-to-day life, but I do believe it means such things as:
+ Getting ourselves out of the center of our universe; being in "the right place."
+ Putting other peoples' hopes and yearnings on a level with our own, knowing that we lose if they lose; it's not a see-saw we're on, it's common ground.
+ Not allowing our anxiety and fear and need for security to trump our freedom in Christ to risk life in order to find it, to explore new territories of the spirit.
+ Living in the servant mode, bent low in service rather than elevated in privilege - and thereby finding life's deepest joy and true dignity.
+ Breaking free of the lonely prison of the selfish heart.
Our passage today began with Philip and Andrew reporting that some Greeks "wished to see Jesus." Then it seems as though that request gets lost and is forgotten as Jesus begins speaking about grains dying to live, losing life by loving it, and glorifying God's name not by gaining a crown but enduring a cross. What about those Gentiles who want to learn God's truth by being with Jesus? I think Jesus was saying, in effect, you will know all you need to know and see all you need to see when you embrace this paradox...and when you see me hanging on a cross and realize the ugly instrument of death is the doorway to life. It's not a Pollyanna story - Jesus acknowledged that his soul was troubled and we will find our souls resisting the way of letting go and trusting God. I know I do. But if we keep our eye on the cross, we will carry the secret of life within us, and make our way through the agonies and ecstasies knowing that that which dies to itself is the marble of possibility that God explodes and expands into an immeasurable greatness of love. Amen.
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