SUNDAY SERMON

April 6, 2003
5 Lent, Year B

Church of the Holy Communion
The Rev. Gary D. Jones

Gospel: John 12:20-33

While traveling recently, I happened to notice that a great number of people are reading a pretty amazing variety of self-help books, from How to be a more effective leader, to How to manage change, to How to get the love you want, to How to get in touch with your inner Buddha.

I suspect there are a number of reasons for the popularity of these books. Naturally, we all want to live up to our potential, and we want to learn from people who have made a name for themselves, maybe discover the key to their success. We want to feel as if we are living healthy and productive lives, and we want to be fulfilled in love relationships that are life-giving and mutually supportive.

There are so many good reasons for reading and even studying the advice others have to offer us about living more successfully.

Of course, there's another reason some read these books so voraciously - many people are tired and frustrated. Many of us feel as if we have worked hard to live a successful life, and we've tried so many ways to make our relationships work, from being more assertive, to retraining ourselves in cognitive therapy, to protecting ourselves as we learn to tend to issues about personal boundaries. I guess some people end up feeling as if they've found the answer, which accounts for how people like Neal Macdonald Walsh, Stephen Covey, and Scott Peck all become gurus, ... and millionaires. But the steady stream of new books and new gurus suggests that most of us are never completely satisfied. And so the quest continues for new and better ways to live a good and fulfilling life.

We don't know why the Greeks in this morning's lesson approach Philip and say, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus," but it seems likely to me that these Greeks are our restless forebears. Maybe they were simply doing what we continue to do today. They were hoping that this renowned teacher could tell them how to live, in the same way that we are constantly seeking out renowned teachers today.

But Jesus' response is strange: "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." The New Testament scholar Robert Farrar Capon liked to say that what Jesus taught was "Death as a way of life."

And what I think he meant by that is that Jesus was constantly teaching that it's not about something you are supposed to do, it's about something God wants to do in you. In a sense, the harder you try to make yourself acceptable in God's sight, the harder you try to make relationships work out on your own, the more of a mess you are likely to make of things.

We've all heard athletes talk about the phenomenon of being "in the zone." When you are in the zone, you are capable of doing things that seem almost superhuman, from a string of three-pointers that are nothing but net, to perfectly unreturnable serves, one after another, in tennis.

There's a forgetfulness of self, when you are "in the zone." It's no longer you, it seems, but something much greater working in you. And the sure way to mess it all up, is to start thinking about what you are doing. Which is why the coach tells the pitcher, don't try to guide the ball over the plate, just "rock and fire." Don't start thinking about it or inserting yourself in the process, just go with it, let it fly.

The message is, it's not about you. In fact, if you want to operate in the zone, in a sense you have to get out of the way. My friends in AA put it this way - they say, you have to "let go and let God."

I wonder if there is some sense in which this is what Jesus was saying in the Gospel lesson this morning. Death as a way of life. The Christian life is not about something you accomplish by learning a new skill or technique for living. Instead, like a grain of wheat, each person here has hidden within you an almost unimaginable potential, a fullness and abundance of life, a peace which passes understanding, a well of water gushing up to eternal life.

The problem is that each of us has a husk which encases our potential, a shell that both protects our potential and at the same time keeps us from growing into the whole plant.

Another way of talking about this is to say that the human heart is a mighty fortress, and as someone once said, sometimes it's only when our heart breaks that Grace is able to drop in. As Psalm 51 says, God takes no delight in burnt offerings, "The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit, a broken and contrite heart."

It's the dejected and broken hearted with whom God does his best work, which might account for why the failures and sinful of the world were most attracted to Jesus. It's the stiff-necked, hard hearted successful people whom God doesn't seem to touch on any meaningful level.

The Grace of God has given rise to incredibly moving and beautiful art, music and literature. But if you're fairly proud and well-to-do, you can walk away from the Louvre, or the Prado, you can walk away from Bach's Mass in B minor or Dante's Divine Comedy feeling aesthetically enriched and eager to talk about your experience with others at the cocktail party, butyou remain thoroughly unconverted.

On the other hand, if you are dejected and sorrowful, weary and perhaps frustated with yourself for some moral shortcoming, then gazing at Rembrandt's Crucifixion or listening to Faure's Pie Jesu could change your life. And you probably won't want to talk about it at the cocktail party, because it's too precious. And how could even the most eloquent person begin to put into words something that has gripped you so profoundly, so deeply beneath your protective shell?

The often-told story about the medieval scholar, Thomas Aquinas, illustrates the point. After dictating volume after volume of scholastic theology that is still regarded as among the most brilliant theological writing ever, Aquinas awoke one morning and told his scribe that he had had a vision and would not be writing any more. The scribe protested - how could the world's greatest theologian stop, when it was clear to the greatest minds in the world that Aquinas's depth of insight surpassed anything anyone had known? But Aquinas was unyielding. "Reginald," he said to his scribe, "I have seen things that make all my writing nothing but straw."

Far too often, Christians believe it is their job to make themselves pleasing to God. But the Christian way is not about human effort. It's not about guiding the ball over the plate. The Christian life is about so relaxing in God's presence that our protective shell, our ego husk, is allowed to break apart, and the abundant life that has lain dormant is allowed to flower.

A modern theologian named James Alison says many seem to believe the Gospel goes something like this: God says, "I would like to love you, but I can't love you as you are. You'll need to change." And thus begins a life of many starts and stops, the search for gurus and techniques for living that will make us more pleasing to God. But the end is always the same, always frustrating - the grain of wheat remains a single grain, unable to change into something God can love.

But the Gospel of Jesus goes like this: God says, "I love you." We respond, "But I'm a mess, how could you love me?" "I love you." "But you can't love me, I'm part of all this muck and grime." "It's you that I love." "How can it be me that you love? I've been involved in bad relationships, in dark rooms, in connivings against other people..." "It's you that I love." "But..." "It's you that I love."

And it is only in learning to let go in the presence of the truth of God's steady love for you, it's only in allowing this love steadily and repeatedly to break apart, our ego husk, our need to make our lives better on our own, that the abundant life within each of us can emerge and we can begin to live in the zone.

Like anyone else, I want to live a healthy and productive life. And like many of you, I often find myself turning to the latest successful guru in hopes that he or she will have the key. But more and more I'm convinced that the Bishop of Massachusetts has it right when he says so very simply, "Put yourself in the way of Grace." Maybe what he means is, relax. Let go, don't pray so much that you'll do better next time but that you'll increasingly yield to God and take yourself, your failures and your successes, less seriously. And then one day we will come to say with St. Paul, "Glory to God whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we could ask or imagine."

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