Sermon for The Fifth Sunday in Lent  April 6, 2003

 

The Rev. Dayle Casey

The Chapel of Our Saviour

Colorado Springs, Colorado

April 6, 2003

 

 

 

5 Lent - B

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Hebrews 5:1-10

John 12:20-33

 

 

 
C. S. Lewis’s book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is the story about a little girl named Lucy, and about how one day, when Lucy was playing in a wardrobe, she just sort of happened to fall through the back of the wardrobe into a land called Narnia.

Lucy wanders around Narnia for a while and makes some acquaintances there. When she returns to her own house and family, Lucy tells her brothers and her sister about her experience, but they are skeptical about her tale of a strange land behind the wardrobe. They say to Lucy, “We would like to see this land of Narnia.”

Lucy’s telling her brothers and her sister about the wonderful world of Narnia was not enough for them; they wanted to see and experience it for themselves. So Lucy takes them to the wardrobe to show them the new land she had discovered. But as everyone except Lucy expects, all they find is an ordinary wardrobe, nice enough to play in, but without any secret passage leading through the back into some new and wonderful world -- until, one day, when they are all once again playing in the wardrobe with the walls of their skepticism down, suddenly they all tumble into the world of Narnia, not so much because they find it, but more because Narnia and all its adventures sort of find them.

Just as Lucy’s brothers and sister wanted to see the land of Narnia for themselves, so some Greeks came to Philip and said, “Sir, we would see Jesus. We’ve heard about him, but we’d like to see him.” 

That’s the way it was with the Greeks. They were an inquisitive people, always wandering around the world and wondering about it, always looking for new things to see and know. And the Greeks who approached Philip in Jerusalem that day already knew a lot about gods, at least about their own gods back home in Greece, gods who were, for the most part, larger than life beings who lived somewhere up in the heavens or down in the middle of the earth, and who had little concern for human beings.

But these Greeks had come to Jerusalem at the time of Passover, and they had heard about the God of the Jews. They had heard Jews talk about God as a God who is concerned about human beings and human life. They heard talk of a God who created the world in the beginning and who had compassion and concern for the world and the people he created, a God who is so concerned about his world that he gets his own hands dirty working in it, like a gardener working his garden, a God who is like a father who loves his creation, and who rejoices with his children when they rejoice and weeps with them when they weep.

They had also heard about a Jew named Jesus, a man everyone was talking about, and about whom there seemed to be some controversy, because Jesus had some new things to say about God, things many people didn’t agree with. And it was said that he spoke and acted with authority. 

So the Greeks said to Philip, “We’d like to see this man who rode into town on a donkey the other day amidst all the cheering, this man who is said to have raised Lazarus from the dead and who seems to know a lot about God. We would see Jesus, Philip.”

So Philip told Andrew, and Andrew and Philip went to Jesus on behalf of the Greeks. And Jesus said, “Let me ask you a few questions.”

“Philip, do these Greeks who want to see me know that a grain of wheat remains alone and unproductive unless it dies? Do they know that only if a seed dies, only if it gives itself up, does it grow and bear fruit?”

“Do these Greeks know that anyone who loves his own life in this world too much will lose it, but that whoever doesn’t put too much stock in these sixty or seventy or eighty years of life in this world will keep it for eternity?”

“Do these Greeks know that I have got to die, and that death is not an end but a door, and that whoever wants to see me must look at the whole of my life, must follow me through the doorway of death to my true home?”

“Do these Greeks know, Philip, that this is the critical time of the world? Do they know that now is the time for the Son of Man to be glorified, the time for him to be crucified, to be dead to self and alive to God, which is his glory? Do they know that now is the time when the Son of Man is to be lifted up, secured with hammer and nails to a Cross, and that it is through the doorway of the Cross that I will draw the whole world to myself, because it’s only on the other side of the Cross that they can see and know the whole of life, and not just part of it?”

“Do these Greeks know that if they want to see me as I am, my whole person, then they must see me on the other side of the Cross?”

“Do your Greek friends know these things, Philip? Do you and Andrew know them? Do you in Colorado Springs know them?” Jesus asks.

“If Jesus goes with me, I’ll go, anywhere.” So goes the old Gospel hymn. But like much of our thinking, this line puts the cart before the horse. It puts things the wrong way around. It’s no use hoping Jesus will just follow along with us; it’s not use hoping that we can just take a peek at him wherever we might go. If we want to see Jesus, if we want to be with him, then we’ve got to look for him where he is. And that is on the Cross, and beyond.

Jesus is here with us today, as Lucy was with her brothers and her sister, to lead us where he walks -- through the Cross to a new world and a different life. “Give up the life you have,” says Jesus, “and take on mine. It’s the same for you as it is for a grain of wheat; it’s only when you’ve died to self that you can grow into the life you were intended for. If you try to live to save yourself, you’ll just die alone, and remain alone.”

We can see Jesus fully only when we see his whole life, only when we see him glorified, only when we see his life fulfilled and completed on the Cross, and beyond. That’s the message of Lent and Holy Week, including Easter.

The disciples didn’t want to see that. It was a scandal to Jews, and it was foolishness indeed to Greeks. And we have our difficulties with it as well. “The Cross is not for you, Lord,” insisted Peter; “that would be the end.”

We have such fear of the end, such fear of death, such fear not only of the Cross, but just of getting old, and of old age. Don’t we? Don’t our habits of life betray a faith different from the faith we profess with our lips, as we pursue the look of youth everywhere, dressing our lives and our bodies as if we should never change, as if we should remain eternally twenty, or at least eternally thirty-nine?

Death, Carl Jung once observed, is psychologically just as important as birth. “As the arrow flies to the target,” he said, “so life ends in death, [and] shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.”

We fear death, fearing that it is the end. We fear the end of meaning and purpose as well as of flesh, so we try to keep our lives as they are rather than to live them and to spend them, rather than to give them up in gratitude and love.

But fear of death is not our faith. Our faith is hope. Our faith is trust and confidence in the promise of God. That, at least, is our prayer at the Eucharist at every burial, the prayer we offer “through Jesus Christ our Lord, who rose victorious from the dead, and comforts us with the blessed hope of everlasting life. For to your faithful people, O Lord, life is changed, not ended; and when our mortal body lies in death, there is prepared for us a dwelling place eternal in the heavens.”

Jesus knew -- and this was his faith -- that his life was not an end in itself, but part of a greater destiny, part of a plan God has for the redemption of the world. He knew that the Cross was where he found the purpose of his beginning, and that the Cross, too, was not an ending, but another beginning. Jesus knew that the whole point of his arrival was his departure, so that in dying he might bring larger life. Jesus knew that Advent is fulfilled and completed on Calvary, or rather, through Calvary, the doorway to life redeemed. Jesus knew that in order for one to live, he must die, and that how ones dies makes all the difference in how he lives and how he lives makes a difference in how he dies. So, wrote Robert Browning:

Grow old along with me! 
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith, “A whole I planned.
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, 
nor be afraid!”

Trust God; see all, nor be afraid, for a whole is planned, and the best is yet to be.

“Tell the Greeks, Philip, that they may see me,” says Jesus. “But they must see all, or they will not see at all. If they would see, they must see the last of life for which the first was made.”

“Now my heart is troubled,” said Jesus. “And what am I to say? ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ No, it was for this that I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” And a voice spoke from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’

We aren’t told if the Greeks ever saw Jesus. What we are told is that while there were some there that day who said that an angel had spoken to Jesus, others said they just heard thunder.

What we are told is this -- that if we really want to see Jesus, then it’s at the glorified Jesus, the crucified Christ, that we must look. We are told that we must look at the last of his life for which the first was made. We are told that if we would see God as he is, then it’s through this man, Jesus, secured with hammer and nails to a Cross, that we must gaze, a seed who died to himself, that the Church of God, you and I and all the faithful of God, might know the true end, the true purpose, of our beginning, and live.

And the promise of the Gospel is this -- that if we allow ourselves to be brought close enough to the Cross, close enough to that doorway to new and different and greater life, then the One we are looking for will pull us, too, out of the land of the dying into the land of the living.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.