The Heart of the Gospel

March 29, 2009

Fifth Sunday in Lent
Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33
The Reverend Stephen P. Bauman

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In my first year as an ordained minister, I came to know an older woman of quiet serenity, deep, sensible wisdom, and abiding faith. The serenity was especially poignant after I heard a piece of her story one day over coffee. She told of a very bright and ambitious young woman, destined for great things. Driven and competent, she broke through the ranks of a corporation known for its hard glass ceilings. Along the way she married a supportive man, delivered two beautiful children and achieved great material success.

But she had secrets, some of which she kept even from herself. Secrets about fear and self-loathing, and well, fear. One secret she did know about was the bottle of vodka in her desk drawer which was never allowed to run dry. Eventually her alcoholism caused her to lose it all – her career, her marriage, even her children for a time. She reported that her need to control, her desperate attempt to make life conform to her world view, and what she now saw as her consummate arrogance drove her to a state of humiliation and despair.

She couldn’t really say what finally caused her to take the hand of a friend who drove her to her first AA meeting. But she began to rebuild her life into something that more nearly approximated, as she put it, “the truth”. Along the way she found God, or better perhaps, God found her. She said to me, “I don’t know what you’ll think about this but I knew I had found my center when, surprisingly, I heard myself saying one night at a meeting that I thanked God I was an alcoholic. I didn’t mean I was thankful for the pain and ruin, but instead, that by smacking up hard against my limitations and failure my spirit cracked open and I found myself.” The prodigal daughter home at last.

That would be the first of many similar statements I would hear from people in a wide variety of contexts over the next three decades, right to the present moment. Honest, sincere people thanking God for all manner of difficulties of one sort or another, some for which they were personally responsible and others that came at them sideways out of nowhere. The gratitude was never for the actual failure, loss or disruption, but for the new person or the new faith that wound up emerging on the other side.

Now I do not subscribe to the sentimental “God never gives us something we can’t handle” school of thought. I’ve seen too much bad stuff go down in the world to imagine that this stripped-down theology summarizes the human situation. On the other hand, it is often the case that a gift is hidden within challenging circumstance, regardless of its origins, that without the challenging circumstance the gift could never be realized.

I know from my own version of the dark night of the soul that, but for the stunning desperation I experienced, I would never have really understood the limitations of my own powers and subsequently how to truly and for real rely on a power much greater than my own. And while I would never want to go through such a thing again, I am profoundly grateful and utterly changed as a result. I would tell you that prior to this time I dabbled in the outer rings of faith. After that time, I had a visceral sense of what it might mean to die in order to live. The heart of the Christian message transformed from a flat two dimensions into three, or maybe even four.

I’m well aware that others have had far grittier, grimmer circumstances to endure than me. But as for that, who’s to say which circumstance for which person has the greater claim on authenticity? What I can tell you is that at some point along the way something happened, something I hadn’t expected, something that came at me sideways from out of nowhere – so far as it seemed to me at the time – and I had choices to make about whether or not to let go and fall into the arms of God.

In the passage from John’s gospel we just heard Javier read, we’re told that some Greeks wanted to “see” Jesus and by that I suppose the writer means they would like to meet him, perhaps speak with him. Evidently these Greeks had heard of Jesus and they were intrigued.

John’s interest in the telling, however, is not on these seekers, but on the one they wish to see. In the presence of his disciples Jesus states, “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” But this glorification has nothing to do with becoming either a political savior on the one hand, or a celebrity teacher on the other. It has nothing to do with success in the ordinary meanings we attach to it. His next words are shockingly distant from what we might think of as a great accomplishment – he speaks of his death. “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….”

Life, death and life again is the heart of the Christian gospel. We’re now moving into the season in which this theme is displayed in its full archetypal glory. Jesus the seed will be sown in the earth which will in turn bring forth an astonishing fruitfulness, a great flowering of life abundant. That’s the story of Holy Week. A stunning, nearly incomprehensible revelation about how the world has been fashioned.

Of course, if this were only a story, say, a colorful legend from a long time ago in a land far, far away, rather than a searing description of how the life of the world has been wrought in the hands of God, there would be no places like this for the sharing of it 2,000 years later. It’s an incredible mystery for certain, how lifting a man upon a cross – an instrument of torture and capital punishment – could draw millions, no, billions to himself. How does that make any sense at all?

Honestly, I don’t know how we are to make full sense of this mystery. The man on the cross remains stunningly charismatic. The church has posited a number of theories about this over the centuries, explanations, doctrines and dogmas about its meaning. Yet none of these finally stand fully on their own, none completely hold the truth of it within the bounds of their theological frameworks. It remains tantalizingly just beyond human comprehension.

But then, you see, along comes a woman who tells you her story about dying to her old self and rising again to a brand new self, and she knows for certain that this has come to her as a mysterious gift from God. And the story of Jesus’ last days begins to resonate in a very deep place within, a place that is less comfortable with words and more comfortable with flat out reality where certain decisions are made, such as whether to let go, risking what seems like death for certain, only to fall into the arms of God. Or perhaps perceiving a seed that falls into the ground and dies, as it were, to become the miraculous thing that was always latent within.

Or, along comes a man who has suffered a heart attack two years earlier who tells you it was the best thing that ever happened to him. Nearly died in the emergency room. In fact, he was told that he had died. Turned his world upside down and inside out, first causing a profound depression but then, miraculously, somehow, some dark night he gave up. That is, he threw in the towel on his puny powers and he awoke the next day knowing he was different, new. Everything was the same, but very, very different too. He realized it was his sight – he saw things in four dimensions instead of his normal two. And he saw that he wasn’t alone. In fact, he was held by something, no someone, who loved him more than he could describe. His words cannot capture the experience.

Or, as the story is told, along comes a man who betrayed his best friend, in fact, watched as his friend was led away on trumped up charges that would lead to his death. The man was afraid for his own life. Just flat out afraid. He would have betrayed his own mother at that moment. Indeed, it was as if that is just what he had done, betrayed everything he ever thought he really honored in his life. And then one night in a sweaty anxiety his friend somehow came to him mystically and he knew that an overwhelming, life-transforming forgiveness was offered. The man he had been fell into the earth and died that night; the next morning a brand new shoot had sprung up from the fertile spot where the seed husk had fallen.

Or along comes persons like you and me who have heard about this Jesus, similar to the Greeks in our Gospel lesson. The Greeks are us. We’re intrigued by the stories we’ve heard, by the buildings that have been erected in his memory and the communities dedicated to serve the world in his name. Many have said they’ve thrown in their lot with him so far as they’ve understood it. Yet, maybe the seeds of their lives have yet to fall to the earth and die so that the latent fruitfulness can finally be released. I don’t know. How does anyone really know the heart of another, let alone their own heart? What do you think? How is it for you?

In the mystical language of John’s gospel a voice from heaven speaks as Jesus asks for his Father’s blessing and some hear a ratifying thunder as he asserts, “Whoever serves me must follow me and where I am, there will my servant be also…When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself…”

And the mystery looms large and the mystery sounds like thunder, sometimes rattling and resonating our cellular membranes, the essence of our material and spiritual selves. Though we hadn’t thought of it like this before, its almost as if the seed is being put on alert that the time is near for its transformation. Time for the life God has intended for us all along. And the voice says, “Watch this Jesus. Listen to what he says. Let him stay with you for a while and see what can happen....”

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