Preached on Sunday, May 17, 2015 at the Church of the Holy Trinity on the Upper East Side. The Scripture readings that today's sermon is based on can be found by clicking here.
Someone stopped me on the street in front of the church and told me that I needed to be praying for the end of winter and the beginning of spring -- that I needed to be praying harder. I told them that I had given up on praying for an end to this winter, and had just given over to begging, and pleading with God to end this winter, and let spring come!
And lo, it just may finally be here. It feels like it a bit today. Lent is drawing to a close and soon we will celebrate the mysteries of Holy Week which culminate in the joy and hope of Easter when all is made new, and our faith is renewed yet again.
In our Old Testament reading this morning, the prophet Jeremiah tells us of a time to come, a time of hope, a time of a new covenant. This new covenant will not be a covenant that is written in stone, on tablets brought down from Mt. Sinai as was the last covenant. It will not be a covenant of laws recorded on scrolls and policed by priests and Pharisees. This will be a covenant that is written on our very hearts. Imagine that for a moment. Written on our hearts, so that God’s law, God’s will for us pulsed within us with every beat of our hearts. Jeremiah’s new covenant in our hearts will mean that no longer will we have to admonish one another to “know the Lord,” because we will already know the Lord. With God’s law written on our hearts we will always know God and know God’s will for us -- from the inside out.
We find something, or rather someone, new in our gospel reading this morning as well. Philip and Andrew come to Jesus with a message, a request. The conjunction of Philip and Andrew and Jesus is worth noting in itself. Philip and Andrew were among the first disciples called by Jesus and more significantly; they brought others to Jesus to become disciples. Andrew brought his brother Simon Peter, and Philip brought Nathanial. We might think of Philip and Andrew as disciple head-hunters; they identify and recruit likely candidates for ministry. And that’s exactly what they’re up to in our reading from John today.
In today’s gospel, Philip and Andrew bring two Greeks to Jesus. These foreigners, likely visitors to Jerusalem for the Passover, want to see Jesus, to meet him, to find out what he’s all about. The Greeks want to know the Lord. An important event for the Greeks, I’m sure. But far from the most prodigious event in John’s Gospel. It’s just a sentence or two in our reading. A seemingly innocuous event, a small, perhaps insignificant moment really. Just Philip and Andrew saying, “Hey, Jesus. Couple guys here from out of town who want to meet you. Maybe take a selfie with you…” No big deal.
But somehow this occurrence kicks something into gear. The Greeks arrive seeking to know Jesus, and then Jesus declares, “The hour has come!” Just like that.
And true to form, the first knowledge Jesus imparts to the Greeks comes in the form of a parable. He recounts the parable of the single grain of wheat. A parable that evokes an all too common concern in the agrarian society of the Roman Empire, where crop failure and famine were not unknown. Wheat was a vitally important staple, ground into flour to make bread, the staff of life, as it, of course, still is today. A grain of wheat isn’t much wheat, it’s a small, perhaps insignificant thing. But it has such potential. It encapsulates so much hope.
For as everyone would have known, a single grain of wheat is also a seed. And unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single, solitary grain. But if it dies, then it will come to bear much fruit, so Jesus says. A seed sown in the soil does not literally die but it does germinate; it becomes something more than just a single seed. A new plant begins to take form, and to burst forth from the buried seed. The seed ceases to be a seed; it ceases to be one thing in order to bear fruit as a new thing. This is death and resurrection, this is redemption, and new life, this is hope realized.
Jesus goes on speaking to the newcomers. And he tells them that those who love their life will lose it, but those who hate their life will gain eternal life. This one statement of Jesus is one of his best-attested statements, it appears throughout every gospel in one form or another. We heard the Markan version of this saying just three weeks ago, on the second Sunday in Lent. It is a central truth. And the Greek word translated “life” here is psyche which also has overtones of “soul” or “self” so that the saying is not so much about physical life and death as it is about the vital energy of personhood being diminished by self-centeredness but then expanded by self-offering.
So, in order to grow, in order to live, we must reject our self-centered selves, and find a new way of being that encompasses so much more than just what we have known.
But where lies that new way? In which direction are we to go? Do we travel from Greece to Jerusalem? Will we find what we’re seeking there? What is God’s will for us? How do we find it?
Years ago, I had a nun as a neighbor. Sister Arlene Flaherty was a Roman Catholic Dominican religious, and she lived down the hall from us in Jersey City. Now, Not many of us have nuns living down the hall from us. Typically, they are gathered in convents and monasteries, to live in community, such is there vocation. But Arlene had a particular job in her order. She was head of the collected Dominican communities’ advocacy efforts for peace and justice. She played a very public role, and traveled extensively, to war-torn places of the world to witness the suffering of God’s people and then to place like Geneva to give testimony to that suffering on behalf of the Domincan orders throughout the world. All that coming and going would have been very disruptive to a convent, so Arlene lived in the world, so she could come and go as she needed to.
Arlene loved our dog Molly and often dog-sat for us, and sometimes, just had Molly over for an afternoon’s visit when she wasn’t traveling. She stopped to talk with me once when Molly and I were out for a walk. She asked how my discernment for the priesthood was going. She caught me just at that point when the process itself had barely begun, but when all the steps that lie ahead of me had been carefully enunciated. Approval by as discernment committee, psychological testing, approval by the canon for ministry, meetings with committee members, approval by the commission for ministry, meeting with the bishop, approval from the bishop, seminary, ordination exams. More psychological testing. repeat approvals by the commission and the canon and the bishop…
I confessed to Arlene as she petted Molly, “I don’t know how I’m get through it all. What if I don’t’ make it? What if I trip over one of these gates? Now that I have admitted that I feel called to the priesthood, now that I’m willing to admit to myself and declare to others that I want this so badly.
Arlene stopped petting Molly and stood up and looked me in the eye. She said to me, “Pay attention to what you want, Mark. The desire in your heart is God’s will for you. You’ll make it through, if you stay in that desire; and if everything you do is rooted in that desire.”
Just as Jeremiah promised, God’s law, God’s will for us, is written there ion our hearts. It can bring us from Greece all the way to the Jerusalem in search of greater knowledge of the Lord. More than that, it can get you through seminary -- a far more arduous journey, I can assure you.
The beginning of this morning’s service is really the proper conclusion to my sermon, so if you’ll indulge me for a moment, I’d like to pray again the words of our collect for this Fifth Sunday in Lent.
Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. +Amen.
© The Rev. Mark R. Collins
