Don’t Leave Without Living

March 18, 2018

Fifth Sunday in Lent

After three years of itinerant preaching, teaching and miraculous healing, Jesus has really done it now. Under the increased scrutiny of the religious authorities, Jesus called his friend Lazarus forth from his tomb in which he had lain – four days dead and decomposing. When Lazarus stumbled out of that cave, wrapped in his grave clothes and the glory of God, he carried with him Jesus’ death warrant. For the Pharisees and Chief Priest would have none of this sort of disruption of their status quo.

Sure, they lived under an oppressive Roman occupation, but they had carved out their place and they were determined to preserve what they could—for the sake of their people and for themselves. A wandering rabbi from some back-water town and a nobody family wasn’t going to upset their world or lead others astray with…whatever it is he that was up to.

The crowds are following him now, and on top of everything to be done in preparation for this year’s festival of the Passover- he’s here, as we knew he would be. There was even some ridiculous triumphal parade down the side of the mountain on a donkey and with palms and hosannas strewn along his path.  Calling him a King. The Messiah. “Give us a break”, they said. “We’re shutting this down.” And so they called for his arrest and his execution.

This is the context into which we drop in this morning’s portion of John’s Gospel.  Jesus has just arrived in Jerusalem for the last time. Since the raising of Lazarus, he has been in hiding with his disciples; he’s a target of the Temple authorities. But like any devout Jew, Jesus has come to the annual festival of the Passover. And he isn’t hiding anymore.  

We have reached the turning point in John’s Gospel, where we go from the Book of Signs to the Book of Glory. Beginning with the raising of Lazarus and ending with the resurrection appearances of Jesus, we are confronted with the divine nature of Jesus, his unity with his heavenly father, and his absolute fearlessness in the face of his confrontation with the powers of this world.

In a world shaped by an obsession with power, worldly accomplishment, and status, a world marked by grinding poverty and income inequality, where violence was employed by the state and religious authorities to silence dissent, Jesus’s Gospel of love—and his singular focus on the one who has sent him – has brought him into his inevitable clash with the religious and political authorities of his day.

In his teaching and healing, he has been the relentless bearer of one simple, unifying message: I, and my Father are one. And in me, you, too, are one. Believe in me. Believe also in the one who has sent me. I have come that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. Live in my love. Love one another as I have loved you.  Those who cling to their earthly lives will lose it. Those who bind themselves to me in this life will save their life and will live in the one who sent me”

It is distinct in the Johannine account of the passion that in this moment, Jesus does not shrink from what lies before, but rather fully embraces the work that lies ahead of him. John’s Jesus is different than the one we find in the other three Gospel accounts. The Jesus of John’s Gospel has no agony in the garden; no “Father let this cup pass from me”; No wrenching cry from the cross “Father, why have you forsaken me?” No, John’s Jesus, instead, offers an implacable: “I came here for a reason”. And, from the cross, “It is finished.”  

The most churning that we get from Jesus in this Gospel is a tossed-off admission that things are about to get ugly - and he’s going to die. And then a batting away of any outcome other than the fulfilling of his mission: revealing God’s glory in this world and raising himself, and all of us along with him, into eternal life --  dealing a death blow to Death, in all its forms.

Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.  Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”  The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.”  Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine.  Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. (John 12:27-31)

These words come as Jesus is giving his last public teaching before he heads off with his disciples into his final discourses with them. Here we have “some Greeks” who have heard about him, and have come seeking him, even at this hour as he is being pursued, they come sensing and reaching out – as most of us were doing, you and I, when we first stepped across the threshold of a church under our own steam, and not dragged by a parent. We came in order to encounter and touch the glory of God.  Because somehow we had heard about this Jesus. And we wanted to see him. Wanted to be part of him. To be emboldened by him.

Jesus is blunt: the world as it is, is not the world as it should be. “I am coming to confront the powers of this world”, he says, “And I am going to win”. Jesus is not afraid of death. And, he says, neither should you or I be.  Or to put a finer point on it, Jesus is not afraid of the death of the body, but he cares very much about and cautions you and me against the death of our souls.

This happens, he says, when we let our lives be ruled by fear – and cling too closely to the powers and privileges of this world. Seeking safety in all the wrong places, and refusing to see what is right before us: the signs and wonders of a God who has come into our world, joined us to Godself, and set us free.

Those earthly things that we think make us safe, do not, in fact, make us safe. Neither do they preserve our life.  For the religious authorities of Jesus’ day, their particular idolatry was in appeasing the political power of the Romans and preserving the Temple (though we see how well both of those things worked out. Both -within decade or centuries – eventually collapsed or were torn down.) We cannot, of our own power, live a safe enough life to secure our future, or even our present, in this world.

Everything in this life: political systems, religious ideologies, societal and familial legacies --- all of these are passing away. And as we observed at the beginning of this Lenten season, all created beings, including our own bodies, will turn to dust. Beautiful, divinely created and redeemed dust.  But, all the same, dust.

There is no question about whether or not you and I will undergo bodily death. The question is:  Are you going to truly live while you are in that body? What will you do with the remaining time granted you on this earth?

None of us leaves this life without dying. Jesus just wants to make sure that we don’t leave it without actually living.

We are to be like him. We are to be as he was -- not shying away from what lay before him, but fully embracing love and life in the face of treachery, betrayal, and even his own death. We are to be like that. We are to be courageous like that. We are to be alive like that.

Will you live in fear, or will you truly live? Jesus asks. And, as always, he tells us how. Jesus shows us how. Over and over again with sign after sign.  He tells us that it is as simple and as difficult as this: you must believe. Believe in him. Believe also in the one who sent him.

We have one more week in this our Lenten journey, before we enter once again into that holy and mysterious drama of Holy Week, and walk closely with Jesus the final days of his earthly pilgrimage among us. One more week for us to contemplate and pray and identify the places in our life where our fear is stronger than our love. That goes for our individual lives and for our collective life, in our nation’s life. Where are the places in our life where our fear is stronger than our love? Where we are not living lives worthy of the calling that God has placed in us?

One more week. It’s late in the game, but don’t give up! Make this week count! We have one more week until we join Jesus at the top of that hill just across the valley from the Temple, waving our palms, and joining with our sisters and brothers who are seeking to touch the Glory of God, gathering with him in that upper room for a meal, following him to the foot of the cross from which he will raise us all up. Again and again.

My dear sisters and brothers, none of us is getting out of this life without experiencing the death of our bodies. I beg you, do not leave this life without actually living.

Amen.