“Seeds and Sacrifice”
A Sermon Preached by the
Rev. Jean Niven Lenk
March 25, 2012
Fifth Sunday in Lent
First Congregational Church of Stoughton, United Church of
Christ
Text: John 12:20-26
As a
Field Education supervisor and also a member of the Pilgrim Association Church
and Ministry Committee, I do a lot of coaching of ministerial candidates. One of the biggest challenges candidates for
ministry face is writing their ordination paper, in which they must explain
their theological position on a number of Christian doctrines, including the incarnation,
the atonement, and the resurrection.
In my
experience, the question that presents the greatest theological challenge to
students is the one I myself had the most difficulty with: explaining Jesus’
death.
Why
did Jesus have to die? What did his
death accomplish? When we say “Christ
died for our sins,” what does that mean exactly? How does Jesus’ death reconcile God with
humankind?
I struggled
prayerfully with these questions as I tried to make sense of the
atonement. After all, Christ’s atoning
death is one of the central beliefs of our faiths, and the New Testament
presents several different images to interpret the meaning of Jesus’ death on
the cross.
In
one image, Jesus is the ransom paid to free humanity from the prison of our
sins. We see this image in Jesus’ words,
“The Son of Man came…to give his life as ransom for many” [Mark 10:45], and
also in Paul’s words to the church in Corinth “You were bought with a price” [1
Cor 6:20, 7:23].
There
is also the sacrificial image, which is perhaps most familiar to
Christians. Jesus makes a sacrifice to
atone – to make amends for – people’s sins.
But instead of sacrificing an animal, Jesus sacrifices himself, becoming
the “Lamb of God.” This image is
depicted in our communion liturgy in the words we say over the cup: “This is my blood of the new covenant, poured
out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
Even
though we use these images when we speak the words of our prayers, when we sing
our hymns, and when we read Scripture, through the ages theologians have
grappled with their meaning and their implications. Does the church’s proclamation of atonement
glorify abuse and violence? Does it
persuade people, especially women and other historically oppressed groups, to
endure suffering? Is God an angry father
who inflicts a kind of cosmic child abuse on his son? These are difficult questions; but Christ’s
death and resurrection are central to our faith, and it is important that each
one of us struggles with what Christ’s life – and his death -- means to us,
both as individuals and as a community.
In this
morning’s Gospel lesson, Jesus himself offers an agricultural metaphor of his
death and resurrection, and over the course of my ministry, this is the imagery
that has helped me understand Jesus’ death. He says, “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
members of Jesus’ audience would have readily understood this metaphor. A grain of wheat has a hard shell protecting
the wheat germ. The germ cannot grow
until the grain is put into the earth.
There, the moisture and warmth of the earth soften the shell, enabling
it to crack open, and the germ begins to grow, hatching new life. If you dig around in the soil looking for the
seed, you won’t find it. It has died –
but something new has happened, not just in spite of but because
that seed has died: a new stalk of wheat has sprouted that will bear much
fruit.
That imagery can be
applied to the way Jesus lived his life.
His message of love and compassion and inclusion was in direct
opposition to the powers and principalities of the day. It was a message that promised abundant,
joy-filled life – life in its fullest – to his followers. But to share that message fully, to enable it
to take root and grow and flourish and spread and bring forth new life, Jesus –
God in human form – had to be vulnerable, even unto death.
Jesus had to die so he
could rise, to show that God’s love cannot be killed. Because nothing is stronger than God’s
love. Not powers. Not principalities. Not even death itself.
Consider for a moment how the world would be different if
Jesus had not allowed the seed of his life to fall to the ground and die. He could have toned down his message and stopped
walking around in the open and gone underground instead, sleeping in a
different hideout each night. He could
have stopped eating with outcasts and started showing more respect for organized
religion. Imagine if Jesus had chosen
the “safe” route.
If Jesus had lived out
the full length of a natural life, how long would his message and movement have
lasted -- maybe a hundred years? But
because his message mattered so much to him -- because he was willing to show
people what it meant instead of just
telling them about it – his seed was able to bear much fruit.
“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.”
That imagery can be
applied to how we live our lives, too.
Every one of us wears a “seed coat” of sorts, a protective layer which
keeps us from being vulnerable. But our
seed coats also prevent us from giving of ourselves, from sharing our lives,
from taking chances and leaps of faith, from being and becoming what God has
called us to be.
I believe that, deep
down, each one of us has a hunger to live a life that is full and rich and
complete. But if we want to know the
thrill of love, the satisfaction of success, the joy of life in its fullest,
then we must shed that seed coat and take chances and risks; we must open
ourselves to getting hurt and experiencing failure and knowing sorrow.
If we do everything in
our power to protect ourselves – if we try to prevent change, avoid conflict,
avert pain – then in the end we will find that we have had no life at all; it
will have slipped through our fingers, and we will wind up hollow and empty. As Jesus says, “Whoever seeks to gain his life
will lose it, but whoever loses
his life will preserve it” [Luke 17:33 ].
Every seed has a miracle
locked up inside it waiting to spring forth.
But that miracle will never come to fruition as long as the seed stays
in its dry little packet on the shelf.
It has to get down in the dirt where it’s dark and damp; it has to let
go of being a seed in order for that miracle to happen.
Jesus came to show us
God’s miracle – a love so strong that it breaks the bonds of death. And he commands us to show that love to
others. When we open ourselves up to
loving and caring and reaching out to others, new and wonderful things can
happen – the new growth of healing, the tender shoot of compassion, the green
sprout of forgiveness, the deep roots of redemption, and the full harvest of
God’s love, which makes all things new, and which will always have the last
word.
God came to us in Jesus
to show us that kind of love, and Christ commands us to love one another in the
same way. When we give ourselves in this
kind of love, we will receive the blessings of the abundant and joy-filled life
he came to offer each of us.
A grain of wheat falls to
the ground and dies. And in dying, the
grain comes to life in new and miraculous ways, showing the love of God. By giving his life, Jesus offers us new life. That is the meaning of the cross. And that is the promise of Easter. Amen.
