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Fifth Sunday of Lent
April 2, 2006
5 Lent Year B
Delivered by Reverend Sandra Stayner
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 51:11-16
Hebrews 5:1-10
John 12:20-33
This week I went to a PTO meeting at Matt's school. I joined the principal and twelve or more smart, well-dressed, witty women who were eager to discuss new and exciting ways to raise money for St Thomas' school so that our kids could have a new improved playground, and an even better library than the one we already have. I understood their desire. After all we all want our kids to have the very best we can offer them. These women were smart. They knew what they were doing, and they did it well. They came up with some great fund-raising ideas. After the meeting with glasses of wine in hand, the conversation continued with talk about trips to exotic countries - Paris in the Spring time, Lake Tahoe for off piste skiing, summer camps where kids could learn flips by jumping off a trampoline into a swimming pool, perfecting their skills to achieve more air when snowboarding comes round next year! I shared their enthusiasm. I remember wonderful vacations as a child in Marbella in the South of Spain, where the locals grilled fresh fish over an open fire and sold it to the tourists - and happy weeks spent at pony club camp where we learnt to wind our way through poles at break-net speed, and had to be sure to have our hair neatly put into a hair net when we presented our ponies and our selves for inspection at the beginning of the day. It was fun to listen to the exciting things that filled the lives of these families. But by the end of the meeting I had begun to feel strangely alienated by their chatter. I came home and worried about my seeming inability to fit in, to be "one of the crowd."
However, as I thought about the scriptures for this week I think I began to understand why the strangeness I had been feeling. The scriptures for our Sunday lessons are my constant companion from week to week. They fill my thoughts as I drive around in my car, or join the little band of people who faithfully gather every day for morning prayer. Folding the laundry is yet another time when the scriptures are mulling around in my mind. And the scriptures we are reading at this time of year are gradually preparing us to walk through the last events of Jesus life. Our hearts are being turned ever so gradually towards the cross, as we take in once more the enormity of the sacrifice Jesus makes for us.
I wondered what some of the women I had been meeting with the other night would make of the reference in John that God is somehow be glorified by Jesus' death on the cross. Or my friend who called me exhausted on his way home from Chicago, looking at a one night layover at home with a quick opportunity to throw out one set of dirty clothes and replace it with another, before leaving early the next morning for Texas. What time would he have in his already over burdened schedule to wonder about God's glory in the cross? What possible relevance can today's scriptures have for them and perhaps even for us?
When Philip and Andrew knock on Jesus' door, bringing him some Greeks who were asking to see him, Jesus responds very differently than he has ever done before. "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified." He says. How many times before has Jesus told his followers that his hour had not yet come? When his mother came to him at the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee because the wine had run out Jesus wanted to know why she was asking him to perform a sign before his hour had come. Then later when some people tried to arrest him they were unable to get near him, because "his hour had not yet come." Yet strangely enough it seems to be the presence of the Greeks, unbelievers, outsiders and strangers to the promised people that triggered something for which Jesus had been waiting, the moment for the Son of Man to be glorified.
You see, the Son of Man would be glorified not by the miracles he performed, not by his great oratory skills, not by getting the best air on the ski slopes, or by being named the top salesman in his company for the year, but in the horrifying process of being lifted up on a cross to suffer and die a tortuous death. How hard it is to take in that God could possibly be glorified in the death of an innocent man, yet that is what these scriptures tell us. That is what we are asked to take in as we walk the path with Jesus through the last events of his life. And if we allow these scriptures to penetrate our lives, we will find that we have already begun to participate in the works of salvation by which Jews and Greeks, believers and unbelievers, young and old, rich and poor will be miraculously drawn into perfect fellowship with God.
Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies it will not bear fruit. Actually, the principle of death and resurrection is not really a strange phenomenon at all. We see it all around us as we begin to uncover the garden that has been covered with mulch for the winter. The seeds and bulbs that were planted long ago have begun to push through the ground. New shoots are beginning to show. What looked as if it had died was preparing all the time to push new life out through the darkened soil, into the light to reveal a profusion of color and scent. This principle of new life coming through death is hidden within the very order of creation for all to see. But there is something more to Jesus' death something else that I think we all recognize. What made heroes of the firefighters and policemen and women who died on 9/11 was not simply the fact that they died, it was the fact that they died in the process of trying to save another. What made Jesus God's hero is that he went to the cross not because he had done anything to deserve it, but simply because of his love. He loved the Father completely and in his obedience to the call to love, the Father saw the counterweight to Adam's disobedience. It was Jesus' total dedication to love with every fiber of his being even those people who in his time were deemed dirty, sick, sinful and unlovable that caused the leaders of the Jews to bring him to his death. It was his anger at the unjust practices that caused such hardships to those without the means to care for themselves that caused the authorities to label him a troublemaker and seek the appropriate punishment that eventually brought him to the cross. In obedience to God, Christ loved the unlovely every step of the way. As a seed that falls in the ground and dies, he gives his life over and over again even to the point of death. We glory in the cross not because it is an instrument of torture but because it is the ultimate expression of love.
And we are invited to share in that same glory as we dedicate ourselves to love as Jesus loved. Because the secret of true happiness is hidden in the way Jesus lived his life, a secret that even my friends at the PTO meeting long to know if only they were aware of it. The fragrance that comes from the beautiful flowers that appear from seeds that have been sown in the ground is heady, exquisite, and the flowers are a delight to the eye. The joy of experiencing new life in the midst of situations that seem as desperately hopeless as death upon a cross is as heady as the fragrance of a hyacinth blossom, and it is this that God if offers to those whose lives are given to love. Jesus lived through the darkness because he had absolute trust that in his father's love. We live through the darkness because we already know the promise of God that the resurrection, new life is going to come.
This week has been a particularly difficult one for me. I seem to have shared an enormous amount of pain with many different people both from within this community and without. As the week came to the end, I found myself asking myself what is so great about experiencing so much pain. Then I received an e-mail from a friend who has suffered enormously in the last few years, a path I have walked with her by virtue of our friendship. The e-mail was the resolution of a very difficult situation. As I read her great news, I was so happy. It was exhilarating to share the moment with her. I felt quite heady with joy, deep joy that things that had seemed so bad, had worked out so well in the end. It was like smelling a beautiful bouquet of roses, and I was glad. My life is made up of moments like that, moments I could never share if I was not willing to walk through dark times as well. And you know, I simply don't think it is possible to find a more fulfilling way to live. I see God at work everywhere, everyday, and that's the secret of a happy life. It's quite simple, as simple as the first shoots making their way out of the earth to put forth their beautiful blossoms, as winter turns to spring.
In Christ's name
Amen
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