March 21, 2021
John 12:20-33
Again & Again: We Are Reformed[1]
I can’t hear this passage from the Gospel of John without thinking of now Oscar Romero, who became a saint in the Catholic Church in 2018. Romero was a priest in El Salvador and 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 41 years ago this week, while celebrating Mass, just as he finished preaching. His final sermon was on this passage from John that we just read. “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.”[2]
Now, this is something y’all know because we witness it every year in our community. The seeds get planted in the ground. Those seeds apparently die in order to become a plant: corn, soybeans, hay, flowers. Then, the crops are harvested. The seed dies, and is transformed into a plant. The plant grows and is harvested, dies and becomes food. The stalk, eventually, is plowed under to make way for new crops. And it all starts from that single seed. “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.” The seed has to be reformed in order to bear fruit. It can’t bear fruit as a seed. It has to change into a plant.
Change is hard. Even when planned. Even when we’re in charge of it. Even when change is welcomed, it is still hard. You know why? Because it means death. Something has to die in order for change to happen. If your New Year’s resolution is to lose weight, then your old eating habits have to die so that you can change to new eating habits. The old way you used your time has to change in order to make time to exercise. Something has to die in order for us to change. And death means grief. It means sadness, it means anger, it may mean feelings of betrayal or denial, it may mean bargaining and all the different stages of grief, including acceptance. We can accept the change and still be sad about it. We can appreciate the weight loss and still be upset that we can’t binge on a bag of chips. This is why change is hard. There are strong feelings attached to it. Maybe it was your favorite seed, perfectly formed, beautiful coloring, but you know that if you hold on to it, then it will not fulfill the purpose for which it was created, which is to become a plant. Change is uncomfortable, and we Americans have made comfort our favorite pastime. But God calls us, invites us, expects us to continue growing, to continue changing, to continue in the process of sanctification.
Sanctifying grace is one of the three types of grace that John Wesley talked about. The others are prevenient grace, the grace that is there before you even know God, before you’re even aware of God’s grace; and justifying grace, the grace that saves us, the graces that makes us right with God, that justifies us. This is the saving work that Christ did on the cross: saving grace. Sanctifying grace, then, is for those of us who are Christians, for those of us who have accepted God’s love, for those of us who are committed to following Jesus. This is the grace that sustains us, sanctifies us, makes us holy, perfects us, continues to work within us to make us ever more like Jesus. This is because even after we are saved, God is not done with us. The process of sanctification never ends because it’s a process of transformation. “Sanctifying grace is where we figure out that it’s not ‘all about me’ and we begin to participate in God’s redemption in the world.”[3]
It’s not “all about me,” because it’s about my brother or sister who is hurting and in need of redemption and healing. It’s about the Asian American and Pacific Islander community, of whom we have some in our community, who were on the receiving end of acts of violence this past week. It’s about African-Americans and Blacks, who are also members of our community, who again felt like their lives are valued less than others when the Black Lives Matter sign at Glenwood Middle School, our local middle school, was vandalized last weekend. It’s about the LGBT community, again, some of whom are also members of our local community, who again felt ostracized when Pope Francis reiterated longstanding Catholic doctrine. As Christians, we serve a God who loves, includes, and wants justice for all people. Justice isn’t helping a drowning person get out of the river, that’s relief work; justice is going upriver to prevent so many people falling in the river in the first place.
A colleague and seminary classmate who serves in West Virginia shared a quote this past week from an author and poet in the Midwest, Lori Hetteen: “You keep pairing me with quiet,” Peace said, “but my true companion is the mighty clamor of chains being ripped clean from the wall.” That is a just peace. Peace is not the same as silence, because you can have silence filled with tension. But Jesus came to set the prisoners free. This is what he says in Luke 4, after he spends his 40 days in the wilderness. Then Jesus goes to his hometown, Nazareth, and goes to the synagogue like usual, and he’s invited to read the scripture. He’s given the scroll for the prophet Isaiah. Jesus unrolls the scroll and finds the place where it’s written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Here’s the good news: the Spirit of the Lord is upon you, too. You are anointed to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free. Jesus invites us to join him in releasing the chains that are keeping you and your brother and sister in captivity. Remember, good news to someone who is hungry is a loaf of bread. We do the relief work of providing the bread, and then the justice work of figuring out what systems need changing so that all have access to bread and we’re not gatekeepers of the bread. That changes the world. We are all part of God’s family, by virtue of our baptism, and the family business is working together in the process of transforming our world.
Again and again, God invites us and calls us to continue in the journey of sanctification, to continually be refined and perfected and more like Jesus. Again and again, God calls us to be in relationship with our neighbor, because that’s how transformation happens. Again and again, God invites us to be uncomfortable so that others can see and feel and know the love of Jesus through us. Again and again, God invites us to continue on the journey of letting the old fall away for something new to emerge, of returning to God’s words over and over, of being drawn into the heart of God, of remembering that it’s not all about us. Again and again, God invites us to participate in his redemption and transformation of the world, for both your sake and your neighbor’s sake. Will you say yes?
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