YES GOD CAN - EVEN IN US.

Lent 5b, Mar. 29, 2009 John 12:20-33 with Jeremiah 31:31-34 & Hebrews 5:5-10 in bg.

 

You may have heard this joke: "How many Lutherans does it take to change a light bulb? And the answer is one huge question -  CHANGE?

 

We who are Lutheran laugh, because we know that far too often, the joke has it exactly right. We so often don't like change. We will resist change either passively or very aggressively. And guess what, we are not alone!

 

The religious establishment of Jesus' day didn't like him. You see Jesus was bringing about change – BIG CHANGE.  Jesus would eat with anyone, ANYONE. Some of those people, well they weren't the kind of people that "good religious" people would sit near. Jesus would talk to anyone, ANYONE! Including women – even foreigners, He listened and spoke to them. Now the religious establishment couldn't help but notice that lots of people were beginning to listen to what Jesus was saying. Some of those listening to Jesus were even trying to act on what he was saying: to begin to love their enemies; to pray for others who didn't look like them or think like them. Where would all of this end?

 

To make matters worse Jesus displayed a kind of power that was unlike anything these religious leaders had ever seen. His abilities couldn't be, wouldn't be controlled. In some ways his words and love were like weeds. They just sprang up anywhere in peoples' lives. From tax collectors to prostitutes to foreigners, Jesus seemed to be able to touch anyone. As some encountered him their lives began to be dramatically altered. 

 

So, the religious establishment of Jesus' day wanted to put an end to all the change that Jesus' living and teaching was beginning. Nor are they alone in this desire. Reflect on our own lives. Have you ever tried to effect change in any place where you have worked or lived? If not, I invite you to try to bring about changes in your household. For instance did you manage to turn all the lights off in your house for one hour last night? Or have you ever tried to get different people to cook a meal or clean the toilets? Or have you ever decided to go outside of your comfort zone and invite the neighbors that you hardly ever say hello to over for coffee or a meal? Change isn't easy. It is often met with GREAT RESISTANCE.

 

Nevertheless change is often required. At the very least that's what Jesus is about. He linguistically employs common images that we know to be true. Unless a seed dies and falls into the soil it bears no fruit BUT if it dies and lies in the earth it bears much fruit. Similarly, a second image: those who try to hold onto their lives and control every aspect of their life will lose their life. I have observed this reality again and again with parents. They mean well but out of fear want to limit their children's exploration of the world. Such children while growing up are never allowed to consume alcohol at home, or study and explore different belief systems. The results of such clinging at attempts to control or limit exploration or even risk are often devastating.  

 

I remember an old song about love that goes like this: "Love is something that if you give it away, it only ends up becoming more". Here in John's Gospel Jesus is saying that this is true about life with Him, the very essence of who we are, as we trust Him. Trusting him means that we will generously share with others, giving from  the depths of our being in the different aspects of our lives. After all our time, our talents, our possessions, are not exclusively ours. As we so trust Jesus and give ourselves away new realities will emerge both within us and in others whom we touch. Such realities are incalculable until they begin to emerge. In fact we may only see the fullness of such gifts/fruits later, in the life after this life. Of course such generosity in sharing ourselves will lead us into more changes than we could ever imagine, certainly beyond any and all delusion of our being in control.

 

So I ask you, do you ever wonder about the changes that you need, that need to occur in our world? Do you ever wonder about the changes that we need to make regarding our own relationship with the earth:  including what we put into the atmosphere from our cars, our homes, our factories? Do you ever wonder about what we draw from the earth: oil and water, varying minerals, plant life animal life? Do you ever wonder about the impact of what we pump into the earth to have her produce or "hide" on our terms of convenience or profit? Additionally there is also what we do with our bodies: what we are ingesting in terms of food and drink. Is there a balance of fruit and vegetables, dairy products and protein? Do we drink enough water? And lastly what are we giving back to the earth so that the earth may continue to provide all people and creatures with the bounty we so desperately need?

 

Other change is also required. As human beings we have such an obsession with death and violence. If the money we are presently spending on armaments and the military around the world could be directed into health care, education, food production and distribution, each person would have more than enough to eat. Everyone then would have the opportunity for personal literacy. And everyone would have access to the bare rudiments of health care. Tragically all of this is far from reality. Millions of people are starving, the majority of whom are children. Millions of people have no access to basic education or safe drinking water. Health care is a pipe dream for over a billion people. What will happen if we continue on this path? How can we continue to resist the need for dramatic change while all around us people and the earth are dying as a result of our refusal to change both individually and collectively.

 

Change is essential! The change that is needed is not only external - in systems or governments. The change that is needed must first begin in the human heart, yours and mine, ours. We must be moved beyond the power of death and the fear that it elicits, to a new reality, new possibilities. We, all people and this earth we live on and from, are inextricably linked together. We are interconnected by the Creator, God. We must realize that what we do or don't do can and will either gravely or wonderfully impact many others.

 

JESUS COMES TO BRING ABOUT CHANGE!  Jesus comes to confront the forces of hatred, death, jealousy, envy and resistance to change. Jesus does this not by running from these powers. Instead Jesus in obeying God the Father allows these powers to do their worst to him. Even while these strong powers collaborate to kill Jesus, he continues to actively love and care for others.  He absolutely refuses to give into the temptations of violence, hatred, or escape for his own limited self-interest. Instead, Jesus stays the course. So, Jesus suffers and dies.

 

But his suffering and death are not the only word or even the lasting word, for him, for us or for creation. On the third day Jesus is raised not to laugh in death's face or chant, NAH, NAH, NAH – NAH, NAH, NAH, HEY, HEY, GOODBYE! Death is stronger than that. The power of death wrestles and struggles with all of its might to try to win people over. Indeed all such powers of self-interest, fear, hatred, jealousy, and resistance to any and all change continue to work their webs. But this suffering, dying Jesus comes to show us that any who are drawn to trust him, to follow him, will not, cannot  be held any longer by the powers of death, hatred, or fear. Change even transformation can and does come about within and without through what God does in Jesus' suffering and death.

 

By God's grace we can trust and follow Jesus. As we follow him we will see what can happen. To be sure the road is long and hard. But God's provision for all can and will win the day.

 

It may well seem impossible. The warheads, the countless tales of untold misery and violence among and by people on this earth continues unabated. MAY GOD FORGIVE US! But even now Jesus comes to move us to be convinced that God has a different way, a different plan, with new changing possibilities. Will we trust this God, whom we encounter working in Jesus of Nazareth? Will we follow His lead as we live in our families, work in different places, gather in our community of worship?

 

Be not mistaken. Christ gives his all in order to draw us and others into so trusting and believing him! Because of Him change is possible – even within, among and through us! Amen.

The Heart of the Matter

 

Lent 4, March 22, 2009

John 3:14-21 with Numbers 21:4-9 and Ephesians 2:1-10 in b.g.

 

I have had the amazing privilege of listening to people who are working at recovery from addiction as they do their 5^th step in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. During this 5^th step they share with one other person the moral inventory of the wrongs they have done to others that they can remember. Even compiling such an inventory stems from their personal admission that their lives are out of control. They have come to realize that what's in their hearts and minds needs to change if they are ever to stop engaging in the kind of destructive behavior that's been killing them. By the time they are in a position to do their 4^th and 5^th steps they realize that it's not just the boozing, the drugging, and all that comes with that, that's their problem.  Rather it's what's going on in their heads and hearts that literally drives them to do the boozing, the drugging, that is their problem. They also are beginning to realize that they need help from beyond themselves to change.

 

Alexander Solzhenitsyn came to a similar conclusion on a much larger scaled after ten years of imprisonment and enforced exile that were followed by 20 years of banishment to Europe and Vermont as the consequence of exposing the Soviet penal system: "When I lay there on rotting prison straw … it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil, passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties but right through every human heart … and through all human hearts."

 

Or as astronauts sometimes said when things had gone seriously awry during the heady days of the Apollo space program, "We have a problem Houston".

 

But unlike their statement our problem isn't with our external equipment, it's with us! Hatred, violence, envy, jealousy and apathy all arise from within us, individually and collectively. Unbridled, these forces from within us lead us consciously or unconsciously to exclude and even eliminate others, while carrying out rampant damage much of creation.

 

We need to know this about ourselves! If we refuse to acknowledge the sickness of our own hearts and minds we will act as if the symptoms of our behavior or of others' behavior are the problem. Then we lay the blame on others or simply on our behavior, as if were external to ourselves. We eat too much. We buy too much. We don't exercise enough. Sometimes we even "doctor" the truth a bit – a little white lie here and there. Sometimes we get too angry. But when these symptoms are all we see and blame we aren't wrestling with our reality, of the causes of our behavior.

 

God sees our reality. God seeks to help to change our reality. God sends prophets to show us the truth. But we have often paid them little heed. Eventually God chooses to fully enter our reality. God takes on flesh as Jesus is born. Jesus lives honestly, lovingly in His interactions with others. Because of his actions we human beings could not let him continue to live. So, He is "lifted up", executed cruelly on a cross. We need to see Him there,  for what we as human beings can do to God.  God wills to show us ourselves as we are. But we don't want to see these important parts of ourselves. We wish to carry on our pretense. We don't want radical change, even though radical change on so many levels is needed, both within ourselves and beyond ourselves.

 

If you don't think that you need radical change I challenge you to monitor your thoughts and feelings about others, about yourself for one week. Monitor your actions or inaction towards others and creation for one week. And if you still doubt that you need change read some history beginning close at home in your own family and spreading out to Canadian history: the unjust interment of Japanese Canadians during WW II, to the treatment of so many aboriginal Canadian children in boarding schools. And if you think that we Christians are somehow exempt from this need for radical change read the history of the Crusades, the Inquisition. Even attend a church meeting. We all need transformation.

 

Seeing Jesus hanging on the cross can cause us to see ourselves as we are. But the reality of Christ's horrific death is also intended to lead us through that to another very important reality. The cross of Jesus also allows us to begin to glimpse God for who God is. On the cross God empties himself because God loves the world. Observe what Jesus does while He is dying at the hands of those who hate Him. He asks the Father to forgive those who are executing him. He refuses to hate or blame them. He refuses to act in violence towards them. Jesus even calls upon his followers to love their enemies, to pray for those who persecute them, and love themselves. This is a different kind of life from ours. This is what John's Gospel calls eternal life. This is a quality of life that comes in and through Jesus that begins now and affects all the parts of our living.

 

We need this gift of eternal life. This is the essence of following Jesus. Not to escape this world to another –but to follow the One who loves this world so much that he was willing to even die, so that in Him all people could see themselves and God and be brought to trust in God to live in new ways.

 

The Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall writes in the book, 'Why Christian':  "the object of God's love, according to Biblical faith, is not first of all the church. It is the world. God so loved the cosmos (that is the world). The church is only a means to the end, not the end as such. The end – the goal that this faith envisages – is the 'salvation' of the whole world." And Hall notes that the world translated salvation in English is the Greek word "sozo" which means that God wants to make the world whole, to fulfill its promise, to mend its torn and tattered life.

 

So then "If God so loved the world" is in anyway about "me" as in an individual way, its about me in relationship to the world that is loved by God. How will I, as a child of God, relate to the world – its people, its resources, etc.? This indeed is THE question for all who will follow Jesus.

 

We don't need to worry about the next life for we can trust God for that in Jesus Christ. Instead our energy, our focus is to be living from the presence of Christ here and now as part of God's call on our lives for the whole world. This is what will take our energy, our gifts, our all. The energy, the ability to live such life comes from the One who goes to the cross out of love for all people and all creation. May we trust Him as we seek to live even as He calls us. Amen.