We Would Like to See Jesus--Sermon 3/29/09

We Would Like to See Jesus
Sermon preached 3/29/2009 at JoyMCC
Thank you, Choir and Cindy/Sing for Joy, for your wonderful singing. You make me proud to be a part of the music ministry at Joy. Please pray with me as we turn our hearts and minds to God’s Word: Holy Creator, speak through me, help me to get out of the way and allow Your words to flow through me. Touch the ones who need You the most today. In the Name of all that is Holy, Amen.
There is a certain overpriced brand of paper towels that has a deceivingly simple marketing slogan: Life is messy! Clean it up! Now that slogan has been around for years, and, quite frankly, it has bothered me for years. Oh that the appropriately decorated paper towel could actually “clean up” all the messiness of this experience we call life. I fear that the motto for my life has often been “Life is messy, and I can’t clean it up!” And as I have now entered into what is unquestionably the second half of my life, I have come to the grand conclusion, that you can’t always clean it up, at least not in a timely fashion. And, in that realization is the freedom to embrace all of my life, not just the neat and clean parts.
Our gospel lesson today forces us to begin to look at the “messy” theology we have been left with. This is the last Sunday in Lent except for Palm Sunday, and we are getting closer and closer to the cross. We don’t really like to think about getting closer to the cross—at least not the hurting, groaning, painful part of the cross. For centuries, our Catholic brothers and sisters (well mostly brothers until recent time) argued over what “image” of Christ should be depicted on the crucifix. Creators of religious icons used writhing Christs, Christs with downcast eyes, draped Christs, Christs with graphically depicted wounds, etc. It was difficult to get comfortable with any image of Christ either dying or already dead hanging on the cross. The reformation changed all that for those of us with Protestant roots—why we don’t put Jesus on the cross at all and prefer nicely polished “clean” crosses simply or ornately decorated to match our outfits du jour. And we have watched as the cross has become more and more a popular symbol of Jesus’ sacrifice and less and less something we are drawn to in meditation and prayer.
But Jesus Himself insists that we gaze at the cross and embrace the agony and pain that lay ahead in His earthly journey. Gone is the gentle “Suffer the little children” Jesus. Gone is the compassionate teacher and healer. Even gone is the likable, though slightly scary, angry Jesus throwing the thieves out of the temple. I always liked that Jesus, particularly when I needed an excuse for losing my cool over something. What we have now is the strong, leader Jesus—the Jesus who says, if you want to follow me, here’s what’s going to happen.
What makes this lesson even more interesting is that Jesus reveals these truths in response to the seeking of outsiders—the Greeks who came saying “We would like to see Jesus”. We would all like to see Jesus, I think—but most of us are more comfortable with the Jesus who speaks with outstretched arms and offers solace and comfort. In other passages such as in Luke, this transformation in Jesus’ speaking and persona is accompanied by the words, “He set or turned His face towards Jerusalem.” And as He did so, He sees the cross ahead of Him. If any of us would see Jesus then, we must do so, not just in the shadow of the cross, but at the foot of the cross. Hear His words again: “Now the hour has come for the Chosen One to be glorified. The truth of the matter is, unless a grain of wheat falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest. If you love your life you’ll lose it, if you hate your life in this world you’ll keep it for eternal life. Anyone who wants to work for me must follow in my footsteps…” Jesus’ words are somewhat difficult for us to understand in this passage, but I want to take a stab at looking at Jesus’ call for discipleship in terms of my earlier somewhat random thoughts about the messiness of life.
Somewhere in my 30’s I came to the conclusion that life was never going to be easy. Somewhere in my 40’s I realized that no one ever promised it would be. Somewhere in my 50’s I found the gratitude for all of the “uneasy” parts of my life—for all that makes me who I am.
And, therein, may lay the understanding that gives meaning and purpose to seeking the life that Jesus calls us to in these seemingly difficult words. If we hold on too tight to the certainty of our narrow lives, God has no room to work. But work is messy and uncomfortable and, sometimes, painful. Just ask anyone who has answered God’s call to some change, whether momentous or incremental…allowing God to work in our lives is rarely clean and it takes more than a pretty paper towel to “clean it up”. What it takes is allowing God to finish. An example from this week may assist us in understanding where I’m going here—early this week, Jody, a faithful choir member and friend noted that my office, aka “O just put it in Carol’s office”-space had gotten to be a mess. So she offered to come and help. Well the first day, she got as far as pulling everything out and getting the scattered paper into piles. Briefly, my office looked worse than when she started. But the end will be worth the dis-ease of the present. I believe that God’s work is like that. We allow for the work to start and then when it gets “messy”, we rush in and clean it up instead of staying with the process. Look closely at Jesus’ words—now a single grain is a nice, neat little package. But once you plant it, something messy happens—for one thing—it basically lives in the mud—then it begins to sprout—sprouting breaks through the skin and tears apart the shape and texture of the original grain—but without that tearing apart, nothing will ever get above the ground. Sometimes life is like that grain which, in its original form, is somewhat pretty—depending on what kind of seed it is—we can roll it around in our fingers, we can admire it symmetry, we can analyze its color and feel—but Jesus says. “Enough, plant it!” Once we plant it, we can’t see it at all and must trust nature to control the process of sprouting and growing. It may take weeks before anything at all appears—most of us don’t like to wait weeks for anything. And we have no real trust in the process in the first place. It sometimes feels as if every time God plants a new seed in my life, my impatience and frustration overcomes and diminishes the wonder of the blossoming flower that occurred the last time God planted a seed in my life. But even more importantly, Jesus tells us we have no choice but to embrace the painful process if we are to follow Him into eternal life.
Christianity is full of well-meaning folks who try to make everything “make sense”—to keep it clean. I came across one such poignant example. Rev. Kate Braestrup is a minister in the Unitarian Universalist Church. Her husband and father of their four children had been planning to attend seminary. He was killed in an automobile accident. Soon after the accident, Kate decided to fulfill his dream and become a minister. Just as he had wanted to, she chose to become a chaplain working with law enforcement teams. She felt that working with the police and, specifically, with search and rescue efforts would take her “right up to where the theological rubber meets the road.” She relates the following story to illustrate what she calls her “despair of Christianity’s ability to respond in any helpful or sensible way to the reality of death” and other tragedies. “Once in a conversation with a seminary classmate, I admitted I probably would not have become a minister had Drew lived. ‘You see!’ she responded brightly. ‘God knew what he was doing!’” She acknowledges responding icily, “Surely God was not so urgently in need of Unitarian Universalist ministers that he had to kill a father of four in order to make one?” She notes that living through the unbelievably painful death of her young husband altered every aspect of her life—no part was left untouched. However, she notes that her life was also changed in profoundly good ways by her husband’s death and that those changes made her increasingly grateful for her present and changed life.
This is the messiness of which I speak—the “both-and” parts of life which inhabit our waking moments. Henri Nouwen speaks regarding Jesus’ words. In a brief essay entitled “Embracing the Pain”, he states, “In the world about us, a radical distinction is made between joy and sorrow. People tend to say: “When you are glad, you cannot be sad, and when you are sad, you cannot be glad.” In fact, our contemporary society does everything possible to keep sadness and gladness separated. Sorrow and pain must be kept away at all cost because they are the opposites of the gladness and happiness we desire. Death, illness, human brokenness…all have to be hidden from our sight because they keep us from the happiness for which we strive. They are obstructions on our way to the goal of life. The vision offered by Jesus stands in sharp contrast to this worldly vision. Jesus shows, both in his teachings and in his life, that true joy often is hidden in the midst of our sorrow, that the dance of life finds its beginnings in grief. He says: “unless the grain of wheat dies, it cannot bear fruit…unless we lose our lives, we cannot find them…Here a completely new way of living is revealed. It is the way in which pain can be embraced, not out of a desire to suffer, but in the knowledge that something new will be born in the pain. The cross has become the most powerful symbol of this new vision. The cross is a symbol of death and of life, of suffering and of joy, of defeat and of victory. It’s the cross that shows us the way.”
To this I would add, “You can’t clean up the cross!” It is the very messiest of life and to try to clean it up not only negates its awe-ful wonder, but also illustrates our inability to live with ambiguity that Jesus calls us to in this passage. We must die to live, just as Jesus died to rise again. We sanitize the old hymns, eliminating references to the “blood”, the “dying lamb” and “piercing nails”. But those old hymns call us to gaze upon the cross, to take it in, to bring the reality of Jesus’ death to the newness of our lives. I struggle with this ambiguity, every day, every moment, every time I seek to find the right words to share with a hurting brother or sister. The ability to embrace pain and joy in the same breath is a gift, not lightly earned. The willingness to hold both agony and rapture in our hands points us in the direction of the cross. The cross, itself horrific in the torture it inflicted upon the man Jesus, is at the same time the vessel of transformation that God used to place Jesus in readiness for resurrection. Our personal and collective agonies, horrific in the heaving sobs of our sisters and brothers are, likewise, vessels of transformation and healing.
Jesus, this strong leader Jesus, calls us away from the miracles and parables and calls us to the trials and tribulations that He was about to face. In contemporary language, I believe that Jesus might well have said: If you’re looking for the easy way out, don’t look here! If you’re looking for answers that spring off the page, don’t look here! If you’re looking for a life of ease and leisure, don’t look here! If you’re looking for a pretty paper towel to clean up your life, don’t look here! But do look here, if you are looking to follow me to change the face of the world. Do look here if you are willing to open yourselves to transformation and uncertainty. Do look here if you’re not afraid to get and keep your hands dirty. Do look here if you can live in the uncomfortable place between dying and living, between yes and no. Do look here if you are ready to hold pain and joy together in your hands and lead others to do the same. Do look here if you’re ready to see the real Jesus.
And, so, I believe that we would like to see Jesus this Lenten season; that we are not afraid to turn our eyes toward Jerusalem, to view the cross head on, to embrace both the groans of agony and the thrill of resurrection. And God’s people said, “Amen.”