Losing, Loving, Living

A sermon on Jeremiah 31:27-34 and John 12: 20-36 preached March 25, 2012

at First Presbyterian Church, Sterling, IL

(C) Christina Berry

Jeremiah 31:27-34

27The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals. 28And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord. 29In those days they shall no longer say: “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” 30But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge. 31The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 33But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

John 12:20-36

20Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. 21They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24Very 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. 25Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26Whoever 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. 28Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” 29The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” 30Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 31Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. 32And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. 34The crowd answered him, “We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?” 35Jesus said to them, “The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. 36While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.” After Jesus had said this, he departed and hid from them.

“Why did Jesus have to die?”

The question came from 8-year-old Alex. I was the children’s ministry director and it was Lent. We had just re-enacted the arrest, death and crucifixion of Jesus. Alex played Peter, so while Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying in agony, he was asleep. When Jesus was arrested, Alex-as-Peter cut off a soldier’s ear, and when Jesus was on trial, Alex-as-Peter pretended Jesus was a complete stranger to him.

Alex thought deeply about such questions. When he asked why Jesus had to die, it meant that he was not satisfied with an answer that simply repeated what he already knew: Jesus died to take away the sins of the world. But, given that Alex was eight years old, I couldn’t just replay for him the three most popular soteriological arguments or the Anselmian, Abelardian and Girardian theories of atonement for him.

The popular answers, the orthodox answers, would go something like this:

Anselm said that Jesus had to die as a substitute for us. Because we are all sinners and we all deserve to die, God demanded a sacrifice. So God sent Jesus to die in our place. It’s called substitutionary atonement. That theory imagines a God who is angry and bent on punishing someone, a God who sounds a bit capricious and mean-spirited. It suggests that violence is somehow redemptive.

But Alex was asking why? Why Jesus, and why did he have to DIE?

Abelard said that Jesus had to die because he was the “moral exemplar,” and his death demonstrated for us the great love that would lay down one’s life for a friend, the sort of love we all ought to have.

That still doesn’t answer Alex’s question. More modern theories of atonement suggest that our salvation began at the moment of Jesus’ birth, when God became the Word made flesh, who would learn to be human and learn how to die. Others point out that Jesus’ saving work took place when the soldiers came to the Garden of Gethsemane to arrest him. In effect, they say, Jesus’ refusal to resist, and his non-violent response to their violence, was saying “I will speak peace, stand for justice, and live in love, even if you kill me.”

But I can still hear Alex’s plaintive voice, asking “Why?” Eight-year-olds who ask questions like that want some answers, not a systematic theology lesson. So I had to think with the same depth Alex had. I had to try to unpack what Jesus himself said about his own death.

John’s gospel has Jesus discussing the matter quite often, and usually in a kind of paradoxical way. “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. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Or another way to say it: A grain of wheat planted in the ground has to die in order to bear fruit. You bury the seed in the ground, where it lays dormant. Then, as the seed awakens, the seed coat splits open and the first tiny root and stem emerge. But the seed itself is used up, and dies, in order for the plant to grow. The losing comes before the living.

And those who love self, who set themselves above all else – those people lose themselves -- right now, in this world. While those who do otherwise, who do not put self above all, gain life, right now, here, in this world. The losing of self and the loving of others leads to living.

Still, none of this answers the question Alex posed. It’s really several questions.

One question in the query is “Why would they want to kill Jesus?”

I told Alex that Jesus’ friends and followers all had different ideas about who he was.

They had expected that he would be the one who would free the Jews from the oppressive existence of Roman occupation. But he wasn’t, and their disappointment turned to bitterness, and the bitterness to betrayal. Jesus’ opponents needed to get rid of him, to be certain that he would stop undermining their power and authority. They, too, thought he might become a powerful king. They themselves wanted to be the heirs to the promise, or the recipients of God’s power, or the rulers of the kingdom. They didn’t want someone walking around reminding them that God is the creator and sovereign of all they have. They didn’t like Jesus’ message about giving away all they had – they weren’t pleased by his statements about the oppression of the poor, and the great privilege of the rich-- so they were quite happy to see him murdered.

Another piece of Alex’s question is “why did Jesus have to suffer?”

The answer, not fully comprehensible to me, much less to an eight-year-old, is that Jesus had to assume our suffering in order to redeem it. In the same way that Jesus took on our humanity, he took on our suffering. The way to bring us back into the circle of God’s mercy was to demonstrate that even in the worst moments of our lives, God is present with us. The way to show us the way was through losing and loving, then living. The classic illustration of this truth is the story that Elie Wiesel tells in Night:

In a Nazi concentration camp, Wiesel witnessed the hanging of three of his fellow Jews. One of those hanged was a mere child, of insufficient weight to die immediately. So all night, he hung, moaning, on the gallows. As Wiesel listened to the child suffering through that long winter night, He asked the question in every Jewish heart. “Where is God?” Within his own heart, he spoke the answer: “God is here, hanging on the gallows.”

That’s a hard story to hear, much less to imagine. We look away from suffering. We don’t put a huge cross in our living room – it doesn’t really go with the décor. And if we put a cross like this out in our front yards, the phone would be jangling and the doorbell ringing almost at once with complaints from the neighbors. Suffering is something to take to the hospital, or the therapist’s office, not something to be lifted high for all to see. Suffering in and of itself does not redeem us – if it did, we have all suffered enough to have been saved without Jesus dying. But human suffering is redeemed by the suffering of Christ, who has demonstrated God’s great mercy to us by joining in our suffering. When Christ assumed our humanity, he took on suffering, sorrow, grief and death.

Why? Because God loves us, and wants to be in relationship with us. From the first breath baby Jesus drew – even from the first instant of creation – God was working out a plan to draw us back, to restore us to relationship with God and one another. This is not a God who demands a blood sacrifice. It is the God whom Jeremiah describes, a God heartsick for love of us, who wants to write on our hearts, who says, “I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”

The cross --this Latin cross especially -- represents the fullness and grace of the incarnation: that Jesus was fully human and fully God, that he was betrayed by his friends and persecuted by his enemies. He was convicted of blasphemy and sedition, and brutally and unjustly executed by a violent world. He was hung on the cross, and he spoke words of forgiveness.

He died, then, because death was out there, waiting, all along.

But Jesus is not on this cross anymore, for God’s grace dominates death.

God’s love prevails over the powerful. God’s benevolence overcomes human violence.

This cross represents the promise of resurrection, the glory of Easter, and the assurance that love wins.

This, then, is the decisive moment. The future has already begun. God’s kingdom has been set in motion; the possibilities are realities; the grain of wheat has sprouted. Like the grain of wheat, in his incarnation, at his birth, his death began. In his life there was death, but in his death, there was life. Jesus took on our full humanity, including death, so that death shall have no dominion, and we would have hope.

So when Alex asked his heartfelt question, what I answered was this:

Jesus’ friend Judas thought that he would be a powerful king, and get rid of the mean king that ruled over everyone. And the king that did rule over everyone was jealous of how much people loved Jesus. He was worried that Jesus was going to kick him out and take over. Judas was disappointed when it turned out that Jesus was not a powerful king in a golden palace. So he turned on him, and betrayed him, because Jesus wasn’t what Judas wanted or expected. Judas was sorry later, but it was too late, because Jesus was already dead.

“Things like that still happen,” I said. “People think their friends are going to do a certain thing or be a certain way, and when it turns out different, they betray them and tell other friends bad stories about them, even if the stories aren’t true. And maybe they are sorry later, but sometimes it is too late, because the person moves away, or won’t forgive them, and they never get to be friends again.”

Alex nodded solemnly.

“Have you ever known of something like that to happen?” I asked, thinking of a friend of Alex’s who had turned on him.

Alex nodded again.

“Who do you know like that, who would betray a friend like that?”

Alex dropped his head and answered softly, “Me.”

Why did Jesus have to die? He didn’t. It could have gone another direction.

But he would have, even if it were just for Alex,

even if it were just for me …

even if it were just for you.