There’s a thin thread holding all of our passages together today regarding the questions that arise when we make the decision to follow Jesus. How much do the old rules apply? This Lent, we have seen God establish covenants with his people. Noah, Abraham, and Moses each received signs that God had not only chosen them but given them some rules to live by – and still remembered and followed by the Hebrew people.
But we have also seen evidence that those chosen people were often confused about the promises given to them. They chose the path of literal interpretation as the way forward. Ten commandments, Lord – that’s all well and good, but we want more – more rules, more regulations – tell us exactly what to do – give us a written guarantee. And as we journey through the Hebrew Bible, we realize over and over, that this was not what God had in mind.
The prophet Jeremiah spoke to a people in exile. Everything they thought they knew about their relationship with God came into question when their land was taken from them and they were captured and carted away. In the process, the remnant artifacts that they had to worship were lost. How do we follow those commandments when the very evidence that they were given to us is gone? Jeremiah says, God will make a new covenant with you, but this time he will write it on your hearts. No longer will we have to convince people to love and follow God – it will become the essence of who they are.
Today’s gospel lesson from John actually occurs in the hours following Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, which we will celebrate at the beginning of worship next week. This marks a turning point in Jesus’ ministry. It is no longer about gathering disciples or performing miracles. Now Jesus is intent on preparing people for the time when he is no longer around. Not only has a woman anointed Jesus’ feet with the kind of perfume used to prepare bodies for burial, but people have gathered because they have heard that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Is this prophet the One who will change the boundaries between life and death for all of us? It’s a question that seems to make the disciples want to keep Jesus hid for a little while longer.
But Jesus’ message stays consistent with his ministry. The decision to follow him will have lasting consequences. Nothing magic here, just a different way of understanding how life really works. Ironically, Jesus would begin today’s lesson talking about planting just as we are looking forward to getting our gardens ready for Spring. On our kitchen counters, or maybe on our window sills, we can see the truth of Jesus’ statement. The seeds that look dead are planted in the ground, and with the right combination of sun and water, die to self so that new life can begin. And then he tells them that this must happen for them, too.
When Jesus says that we must hate our lives, it’s not about hating ourselves. But it is about putting those lives behind us so that Christ’s new life can take root in us. What does it mean to hate your life? How do we live that out?
of people who follow Christ. Disciples were the 12 men traveling with Jesus in Middle East towns and villages… they were the women who stayed by his side, those people sent out in his name, and those who risked their lives for the church to be born and survive. Disciples are also people who have journeyed after Christ through the last 2000 years. Billions of people have followed Christ, not necessarily down Middle Eastern roads, but following Jesus’ teachings about love and service. This road we call discipleship – it is a road that leads us to places we never even knew we wanted to go.
Sometimes hating our lives is hard – it’s hard to give up the comfort of our own dreams and expectations. The good news is that when we give up the old stuff, we gain so much more. Through Christ, we gain identity and forgiveness. Through Christ, we begin to see the possibilities for our lives and for the world. All we have to do is trust Jesus’ word: Jesus’ promise of eternal life is not about going to heaven – it’s about being in Jesus’ presence even if he is no longer here in person. God will never abandon us.
The disciples, all of them, left particular lives for the one which Jesus offered them, lives which had many unexpected and precarious outcomes. The same is true for us. Today, a family came and recommitted their lives to Christ. And in the process, they claimed Jesus’ promise for their children, Phoebe and Kai. Today is an important step in their faith journeys. They won’t be able to remember what happened here, but we will remember, and the claim that Christ makes on their lives in baptism will follow them as they figure out what it means to lose their lives for him. =
When we witness a baptism, we are offered an opportunity to renew our own baptismal covenants. And every time we do that – every time we leave a little of our own expectations behind and take up the life that Christ calls us to follow, we are losing the things that hold us back – dying to our old lives so that we can take up our new lives in Christ.
Will Willimon once shared a story about a Duke sophomore who we’ll call Mark. A life-long Presbyterian, he felt called to work in inner-city ministry after hearing Dr. Tony Campolo, a famous evangelical preacher, speak at Duke Chapel on Palm Sunday. After a rigorous interview process, Mark was asked to join a summer mission team in Philadelphia and later described his first-day experience to Will.
In mid-June, Mark met about a hundred other youth in a Baptist church in Philadelphia. They sang for about an hour before Dr. Campolo arrived, and when he did, the youth were all worked up and ready to go. Dr. Campolo preached to them for about an hour, and people were shouting and clapping and standing in the pews. Then Tony said, “OK gang, are you ready to go out and tell them about Jesus?” “Yeah,” the kids replied, “let’s go.”
So, he loaded them up on buses, singing and clapping. But as they began to enter the poor neighborhoods of Philadelphia, the kids gradually stopped singing, and the bus Mark was on got very quiet. When they pulled up to one of the worst housing projects in the country, Tony stood up, opened the bus door, and said, “OK gang, get out there and tell them about Jesus… I’ll pick you up at five.”
The young people slowly made their way off the bus, and they stood in little groups as the bus drove away. Mark walked down the sidewalk, faced a run-down tenement building, said a prayer under his breath, and walked inside. There was a terrible odor. Windows were out. There were no lights in the hall. Babies were crying behind thin, scrawled walls. He walked up one flight of stairs and knocked on the first door he came to.
“Who is it?” a voice called out. The door cracked open, and he could see a woman holding a naked baby. He told her he wanted to tell her about Jesus. With that she slammed the door, cursing him all the way down the stairs and out into the street.
“What made me think I could do this,” he thought. “What kind of Christian am I?” He sat down on the curb and cried. When he looked up, he noticed a store on the corner and remembered the naked baby in the lady’s arms. So, he went in and bought a package of diapers and a pack of cigarettes, and went back and knocked on the lady’s door again.
“Who is it?” the same voice called again. When she opened the door, Mark slid the diapers and cigarettes into her arm. She looked at them and motioned him in. He put a diaper on the baby, his first, and smoked a cigarette, his first and last, and sat there talking to the lady and playing with the baby all afternoon. About four o’clock, the woman looked at him and said, “Let me ask you something. What’s a nice college boy like you doing in a place like this?” So, he told her all he knew about Jesus. It took about five minutes. And she replied, “Pray for me and my baby that we can make it out of this place alive.” And he so prayed.
That evening, when they all got back on the bus, Tony asked, “Well, gang, did any of you get to tell them about Jesus?” And Mark said, “I not only got to tell them about Jesus, but I also met Jesus. I went out to save somebody and ended up getting saved myself. Today, I became a disciple.” [1]
This morning’s Gospel opens with some Greeks wanting to see Jesus. They see Jesus giving his last teaching on his way to his death on a cross. And maybe that’s the way the truth of Jesus’s crucifixion and death ought to be rendered. Maybe this is not something that we are meant to explain or rationally understand. Rather we are to look upon it, to see this mysterious drama unfolding before us. We are to see Jesus, rather than attempt to understand or explain him. What we see is the mystery of glory coming from an ignominious death. We see the one who is lifted up on a cross being exalted as the savior of the world; we see the innocent victim somehow forgiving and dealing with our sin; we see the God whom we rejected and pushed away from us drawing us near.
Look upon the cross. Don’t try to understand it; gaze upon it and know that somehow God is transforming the cross—an image of our horrible inhumanity to one another and our rebellion against God—into the mysterious, wonderful sign of our salvation.[2]
Thanks be to God.
Peace, Deb
(c) Deb Luther Teagan, March 2021
Let us pray:
O God, who makes all things new, new stars, new dust, new life; take my heart, every hardened edge and measured beat, and create something new in me. I need your newness, God, the rough parts of me made smooth; the stagnant, stirred; the stuck, freed; the unkind, forgiven. And then, by the power of your Spirit, I need to be turned toward Love again. Amen.
~ by Pamela C. Hawkins, in
The Awkward Season: Prayers for Lent (Nashville, TN: Upper Room Books, 2009),
30. Posted on Prayer and Creeds, https://prayersandcreeds.wordpress.com/
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