Falling Into Glorified Love

“Falling Into Glorified Love”
Jeremiah 31:31-34        John 12:20-33
Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year B, March 21, 2021
First Presbyterian Church, Sandpoint, Idaho
Andy Kennaly, Pastor

          “The church was not called into existence to promote institutional survival.  The church was called as a movement of faith to reach out to the nations, to teach and baptize, to share about God’s claim on this world and in the process invite people into transformational experiences where they stop living for themselves and start living for God.  God’s New Covenant, sealed in Christ, is there to change us from the inside out.

“Jesus, through the cross, ushers in a Kingdom that reigns in people hearts.  Jesus never used a sword, never sat on an earthly throne, didn’t have a house, a church, or any building, and he never killed anyone to get his way.  Yet, it’s his kingdom that knows no end.  Jesus, the Son of Man, the unconquerable hero of God’s people, establishes a new covenant through the triumph, the conquest, of the cross.  Jesus is a suffering servant.” (from my Fifth Sunday of Lent sermon, 2012).

Those words concluded a sermon nine years ago on the Fifth Sunday of Lent, 2012.  I’ve preached through the lectionary cycle several times as it repeats every three years.  This morning’s verses, from Lectionary Year B, talk about a New Covenant in Jesus the Son of Man in terms of a suffering servant.  That’s usually news we don’t like to hear.  A suffering servant saying, “Come, follow me.  Lose your life to save it.”  We prefer to hear about “success, we like prosperity, we like liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Especially for those raised in a culture promoting rugged individualism, we don’t like to admit dependence or rely on others, let alone be a servant.  In practice, we prefer to be served.  Suffering is often seen as failure, [weakness], a symptom that something went wrong rather than right.” (2012 sermon).

But as the lives of saints and mystics show us, suffering is transformative and teaches us things we would not have learned otherwise.  Like St. Francis of Assisi, a young man from a fairly wealthy Italian family in Medieval Europe.  He goes off to fight against neighboring Perusia and he’s taken prisoner.  He’s tortured and spends time in horrific conditions.  Finally released, he returned home but didn’t speak for quite a while.  Now we would call it Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, or PTSD.  But through imprisonment, he entered into a process of letting everything go, position, power, pretense, and humility taught him about the depths of love, the unity of all things in Christ, his true, inner identity, and the beauty of God revealed in nature as relationships among creatures and our shared, inherent goodness as created beings.  His imprisonment was tragic but pivotal.

St. John of the Cross, a Spanish mystic during the time of the Inquisition, was involved with reforms to one of the Catholic orders.  The establishment didn’t like that very much so some monks nabbed him, put him in their prison, starved him, beat him, and for nine months his life was horrible.  Somehow he escaped, although eventually he died from infections from wounds sustained through the whipping.  The Christian brothers would whip him while they ate their meals in front of him.  Despite the hardship of imprisonment, and through the suffering, St. John of the Cross entered a state of unity and peace not known to most people.  His poetry and insights continue to inspire people as he helps beginners to understand what God’s mystery is doing in the depths of their soul.  His “dark night of the soul” is one example of a suffering servant falling into grace, giving glory to God.

Glory is an interesting word.  Glory usually involves thoughts of strength, triumph, and victory.  To die in glory often means giving your life in a war, like a valiant soldier fighting for a noble cause to the end.  Maybe glory means being in your prime, the height of quality.  Like a bride “in her glory” on her wedding day or a graduate receiving their credentials after years of hard work; glorious events are memorable, marking us somehow changed for the better.

But it seems like Jesus glorifying God is more than this, especially when we consider the cross.  Its in the context of teaching about a grain of wheat that dies in order for fruit to grow, this is how Jesus invites God to glorify God’s name.  As Jesus fulfills his purpose, God is glorified.

What is the purpose of Jesus?  It depends on who you talk to, but in this passage, one of the things listed is to be lifted up from the earth, and draw all things to himself.  This is in reference to the cross, and in saying “Jesus” John is also meaning, Christ.  Jesus the Christ takes the cross and transforms it into an instrument of unity.  But even these verses have an asterisk.

The Bible is written over many centuries, translated, using Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and all sorts of other languages.  Scholars look at ancient manuscripts and compare them because sometimes one word or phrase gets interpreted one way in some and another way in others.  That’s the case here, as Jesus is lifted up on the cross and draws all.  Our English version this morning settles on the word, “people.”  All people are drawn to Jesus as he’s lifted up from the Earth on the cross.  But other manuscripts use the word, “things.”  All things are drawn, not just people.  Because John is talking about Christ, the Word of God, then all things are drawn together in Christ.  Jesus shows us this is fulfilled.

We live in the Anthropocene Age, which focuses on the centrality of human beings on this planet.  Anthropods are humans, people.  No place on Earth is unaffected by the presence of humanity on this planet.  So to hear that Jesus draws all “people” to himself resonates with the human-centered context we’re swimming in.  But to see the word “things” expands this vision to include all creatures great and small.  John’s message that all things are created in and through Christ reaches it’s culmination as all things are brought together as Christ is lifted up above the Earth.  This univite vision of cosmic proportion gets us back to the word “glory.”  “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”  Only after the grain of wheat falls, the fruit comes.  The suffering servant follows Jesus, abiding with Jesus, honored by the Father.  That’s the sense of glory that carries through as God’s name is glorified.  This has to do with Presence, abiding, being with, serving through love.

Remember I said earlier: “The church was called as a movement of faith…to share about God’s claim on this world and in the process invite people into transformational experiences where they stop living for themselves and start living for God.”  Suffering servants embody this experientially, but are often rejected or misunderstood by the world and even the larger church.  An institution can only go so far toward spiritual growth.  Like those brothers whipping St. John of the Cross, throughout history and to this day, religious structures get caught in cycles of self-perpetuating protection which stifles growth in mystery, and smothers trust of inner experiences that are inexpressible.  Yet if inner expereinces were expressible, they would fail to fulfill our deeper desire to connect with mystery, with the Divine, the eternal.

The domesticated church is quite familiar in the attempt to accommodate the request of the Greeks coming to Philip, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”  Showing Jesus, living as Jesus would live, doing what Jesus would do, these are classic callings of Christians and expressions of our sense of mission to the world.  But Greeks were known for their thoughts, for exploring ideas, and perhaps they represent our desire to see Jesus, but on our terms, with our ego fully in tact.  Losing our own sense of self is not what we have in mind, generally.  That grain of wheat falling into the earth and dying is symbolic of the importance of dying to the self so our True Self will emerge.

This Lent, maybe we can learn more about those who have discovered lessons taught through suffering?  We can do this historically.  One place I’ve turned is James Finley’s podcast series, Turning to the Mystics, now in season three with a look at St. John of the Cross.  Teachers througout the ages become voices of encouragement as their lessons are translated to help us learn.  We can also join in solidarity with those suffering today, in our world, in our community.  Coming alongside those who are poor, hungry, and thirsty both in economic or physical terms, but also spiritually.  Giving of ourselves, sharing our life energy through volunteering, donating, and working for better policies and practices; these are ways we take our cross upon us and follow Jesus, ways to glorify God by embodying loving presence, care, and concern, even while sharing hope.

“The New Covenant, which shapes God’s love through Christ within us, invites us to a new way of perceiving reality and awakening to Unity.  By consenting to God’s Presence, in desiring God’s will, we affirm what has been true all along; that in Christ, right relationship is hardwired into our human experience, and for the many ways we deny that reality intentionally or not, we are forgiven, cleansed, and called back to wholeness and blessing.” (Another of my sermons, Year B, Fifth Sunday of Lent, 2018).

Thanks be to God, the Glorious, Mystery into whom we fall.  Thanks be to Christ, the suffering servant living as our life.  Thanks be to the Spirit, enlivening all things with the breath of life.  And thanks be to God, whose humble, vulnerable love is glorified, now, even as forever.  Amen.