Sermon - 5th Sunday in Lent - Year B

 

John 12:20-33                 

                                                    He Meant to Do It

     I don’t mean to get ahead of myself, but it is next to impossible to separate the two liturgies which will occur here within a couple of hours.  For the third time in eight days, the St. Michael community will assemble in order to acknowledge the death of one of our beloved.  The tone and tenor of this afternoon’s service involves holding in tension the grief of death and the promises associated with Resurrection.

 This afternoon we will read from John, chapters 10, 11 and 14.  This morning we read from John chapter 12.  Throughout all of these chapters, Jesus is trying to convince his listeners that even though what is about to happen should give them every reason to question whether he is who they hope he is – they should not lose their confidence in him.  Jesus is trying to assure them that even though they are going to be disappointed with the turn of events about to befall them, they should not loose heart.  They should continue to believe.

     Rather than condemning the disciples for abandoning Jesus, we need to remember that they were living through the events rather than reading about them.  Unlike the first followers of Jesus, we know the ending even before we retrace the beginnings.  Our churches are adorned with empty crosses.  Empty crosses designed to remind us that nothing, not even death, can stand in the way of the marvelous thing our God is going.  We are fortunate.  We know the ending to the story.  We have read and studied how it all works out.  This was not true for the first of Jesus’ disciples. 

 Jesus had to at least plant the thought in the minds of his twelve closest followers that his death was an interruption or disruption of what he came among us to accomplish.  

We have turned the cross into a beautiful piece of furniture or jewelry.  We set it in our homes or wear it around our neck.  We collect crosses from different parts of the world, and we make them look unique and nice.  But there is nothing pretty about the cross.  It was an instrument of torture.  And it was reserved for those who deserved to be publicly tortured and humiliated.  There were other ways of putting to death those convicted of capital offenses.  Jesus wasn’t simply condemned to die; he was condemned to death by crucifixion. 

I was in a bible study with a group of campus pastors.   The leader was trying to drive home the same point I want to make now.  He searched for some way to communicate to us the shame that went along with the death that Jesus suffered.  In the end, the best that he could up with was to say that it was as difficult for those who followed Jesus to hold their heads up high as it would be for those who thought that Timothy McVeigh was a national hero.  For his bombing of the Murrow Federal Building in Oklahoma City, McVeigh received this nation’s most sever penalty.  After his death, who would have had the chutzpa to stand up and say that he was their hero? 

Our bible study leader wanted to suggest that it took that much courage for Jesus’ followers to emerge from the shadows once their leader had been condemned by the Chief Priests and hung on a cross by the Roman Governor. 

Jesus didn’t just die.  He wasn’t merely executed.  He was paraded around and condemned.  He was lifted up as an example of everything that was despicable.  If his followers were going to continue to believe that he might indeed be their Messiah, they had to come to terms with the death that he died and the condemnation that he receives. 

In John, Chapter 12, Jesus is making his case.  “And what should I say – ‘Father, save me from this hour’?  No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.”  Jesus wants to make it clear that in dying he isn’t being defeated; in receiving the most sever of all condemnations he isn’t being dethroned.  This is why he came, and this is what he meant to do. 

We know how the story ends, so we don’t find it so disturbing.  We have come to accept the cross; it no longer serves as a symbol of humiliation and shame. 

But we haven’t overcome the tendency to disassociate God from failure. 

Think for a moment about how we react to small, struggling congregations.  No one wants to be part of a congregation that is shrinking.  How do we respond to a coach who loses basketball games?  And what army, upon taking the field of battle, can overcome the temptation to claim that victory is ours because God’s will and our will is one? 

No less than Jesus’ first disciples we associate God’s favor with victory.  How are we to react when Jesus tells us that his way is the way of service and sacrifice? 

What happens to Jesus happens because those running the world wanted to make him look like a failure.  In order to prevent his disciples from losing heart and falling away, Jesus needs to disassociate himself from the ruler of this world and that ruler’s means for determining success.  

It is not an easy disassociation to make. 

Jesus had a lot of convincing to do.  If he was going to get the disciples to stick by him - he had an uphill battle.  It would be difficult for them to believe in his words even after everyone else had condemned him to die. 

He still faces quite a challenge.  Jesus has a long way to go, in rooting out from among us those who wear emblems of his victory as the last vestiges of the ruler’s deceit.  We want to be part of a church which serves – but we generally mean one that serves coffee after the 11 o’clock service.  We are eager to take up our cross and follow Jesus – so long as that cross doesn’t have splinters.  

Jesus meant to do that.  He meant to die on the cross.  He meant to say that “those who love their live will loose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”  He meant to do that.  And he means for us to do it to. 

Amen.