5th Sunday in Lent
March 22, 2015
Psalm 51; John 12:20-33
I
can’t hear this passage from the Gospel of John without thinking of Archbishop Oscar
Romero, who’s now on his way to being declared a saint in the Catholic
Church. Romero was appointed the new
Archbishop of San Salvador in 1977. He was considered a safe choice,
one who would stick to his books and not rock the boat in the already rocky
Salvadoran society. Well, “rocky” is an understatement, if you
remember that time in Central America. Serious oppression, terror,
and violence was going on, all sanctioned by the government and enforced by the
military. People were mysteriously disappearing, elections were
rigged, the press was censored, and you never knew if soldiers were about to
start a massacre. Archbishop Romero decided to start speaking out
after his good friend, Rutilio Grande, was murdered. Padre Rutilio Grande
was the first priest of many to be killed during this time, and while in
the U.S. a pastor’s murder may not seem so dramatic, in a Catholic
country, priests are sacrosanct. Archbishop Romero himself was assassinated
35 years ago this week, while celebrating Mass, at the conclusion of his
sermon. His final sermon was on this passage
from John. “I tell you the truth, unless
a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it can only be a single
seed. But if it dies, it bears much
fruit. Those who love
their life will lose it; those who hate their life in this world will keep it
forever.” One of the things he said
about this passage was that “one must not love oneself so much as to avoid
getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us, and that
those who try to fend off the danger will lose their lives, while those who out
of love for Christ give themselves to the service of others will live, like the
grain of wheat that dies, but only apparently.
If it did not die, it would remain alone. The harvest comes about only because it dies,
allowing itself to be sacrificed in the earth and destroyed. Only by undoing itself does it produce the
harvest.”[1]
The first thing to note here is that brokenness is ok. The seed
dying is ok, in fact, it’s necessary to produce a plant, which leads to the
harvest. Last week we mentioned one
response to brokenness, which is to think that it means that we’re unlovable
and no good and it confirms our own self-rejection. However, there is another response, and that
is to embrace it. Don’t fear it, don’t
dread it; accept it and recognize that something good can come out of it. We break
a horse in order to be able to ride him.
The seed must break open in order to become a plant, which is what it
was destined, or created by God, to become.
You can’t be a butterfly until you first stop being a caterpillar. Since some of you are firefighters, you probably know that some forest fires are set
on purpose. “Fire is an important
element in the natural renewal and regeneration of our forests” and since we no
longer let Mother Nature do it for us, the Forest Service, National Park
Service and Bureau of Land Management now have fire management plans.[2] If we don’t do some intentional burning,
“then forests become full of brush and dead trees and become even bigger fire
hazards to neighboring communities.”[3] The underbrush has to be cleared out in order
for new growth to occur and the ashes help nourish the soil. These are the positive benefits of fire.
It still hurts, because it’s fire, it burns; but it can create some
good, as well.
To
put it in church terms, there was an article this week in Christianity Today
called “Toss the Old Sweater.”[4] It cites a rule by decluttering experts that
before you add a new item, you toss an old one.
For example, in your closet you may have some old clothes that you
haven’t worn in years that are taking up valuable space. So before your next shopping trip, you toss
your old sweater or faded blue jeans.
And, the author suggests we do the same thing with ministries in the
church. Some programs are thriving and
they’re the ones we love to tell other people about. Other ministries, however, we spend a lot of
time on and they aren’t working very well.
How do you know what to toss?
Well, what ministries cost more time, money, or energy than they're
worth? If we were starting this church
today, is this a ministry we'd be sure to include? Can this ministry be revamped and renewed, or
should it go? And what are we doing that
we wish we didn't have to do? This isn’t
strictly about getting rid of the old to make room for the new, like in an
intentional forest fire, although the author suggests following the closet rule
and don’t add a new ministry until you’re willing to lose an old one. Mostly, though, this is about effective v.
ineffective. And if something has become
ineffective and no longer reaches people for Christ, if it has become broken
and it might be time to let it go, then that’s ok.
The good news is that when we are broken, or feel broken, God can use us then, too. In fact, if you look closer at Psalm 51,
near the end, it says, “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a
broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”[5] God wants
our brokenness. He wants us to bring our
broken spirits to him. Whether it’s
disease or death or the consequences of a bad decision or whatever it is that
breaks our spirits, God invites us to come to him. He says he will not despise our brokenness,
he will not reject us, he will not step on us when we are down. I want to be clear that God does not cause our brokenness. And he
does not deliberately cause us to suffer.
However, God promises to be with
us in our suffering. We’re
about to enter Holy Week next week and all of our readings will show how God
understands suffering, because he’s been there, too. Lost a loved one? God lost his only son, Jesus, on the
cross. Been ridiculed? Jesus was spat on and mocked while he hung on
the cross. People not followed through
for you? Even the disciples deserted
Jesus in his hour of need. God gets it.
And if we bring all our brokenness to him, all our grief, all our shattered
dreams, all our disappointment, all our failings, all our fruitless strivings,
our search for attention, our broken hearts, well, God will take it and hold us
close and weep and grieve with us that things are not as they should be. And then, he gets the opportunity to use them
for something good. The grain of wheat
that is offered to God gets planted and watered and transformed into a whole
plant of wheat, with lots of grains. The
horse that is broken becomes rideable.
And did you know? Broken glass
reflects a lot more light than a single pane of glass. A loaf of bread is beautiful to look at, but
you can’t eat it, and you certainly can’t share it if it’s whole.
My friends, as we have journeyed through Lent,
not just these forty days but I think also the recent history of this church, I want to say to you this morning: we have reached the end of our season of brokenness. If you remember the model from Henri Nouwen
in “The Life of the Beloved,” the journey is from being taken, to being
blessed, to being broken, to being shared.
Beloved, it is now time to be
shared. Our season of brokenness is
over. We have not just become the
beloved of God, we already are
beloved by God. And the last step is
being shared. Who will you share the
loaf of bread with? The butterfly that
was once a caterpillar doesn’t stay put.
It flies, extolling the beauty of God's creation with every beat of its
wings. Butterflies are not stationary,
and neither should we be. Whatever
brokenness you’ve gone through, whatever circumstances have changed the course
of your life, they have also changed who you are as a person and who we are as
a church. They are the linchpins of time
– without them, the person you are today would not exist. The question is how you allow them to change
you and what you do with them.
I’ve shared some before about my rheumatoid arthritis,
which did feel like being broken, and how, in offering it to God, he changed my
course. I grieved the lost dreams and I
grieved leaving a place I had grown to love.
In its place, God gave me a new dream and a new place to love. My becoming a pastor is completely bound up
in a disease. Re-meeting and marrying my
husband is bound up in a disease.
Because when it happened, I offered it and myself to God, it became a
linchpin that completely altered my life.
I went seminary. I got married. These are completely life-changing events that
came about because of brokenness. In
death, because we are Christians, we also find resurrection.
When Archbishop Romero started speaking out against
the violence and oppression in his country, he, also, was threatened. Just days before he was killed, he told a
reporter, “I have frequently been threatened with death. I must say that, as a
Christian, I do not believe in death but in the resurrection. If they kill me,
I shall rise again in the Salvadoran people.”
And this is true. I have visited El Salvador a few times and there are signs of Archbishop Romero’s legacy everywhere among the people. But
how about that line, “as a Christian, I do not believe in death but in the
resurrection.” Death does not have the
last word. Brokenness does not have the
last word. Despite the snow on Friday,
spring is coming. More importantly, Easter is coming. Christ
defeated death. We do not have to fear
it, whether it’s the death of a person or the death of a dream. Christ has overcome death and is about the
resurrection business. Our season of
brokenness is over. It is time to come
out from the cocoon and spread your wings.
Beloved, it is time to be shared!
