At-one with God

sermon by Carrie Eikler
John 12:20-33
5th Sunday in Lent

Our family has had a real dose of Easter fever this week. Recently we have made a few trips to the store, Southern States, in search of onion sets, asparagus crowns, peat pots and the like. If you have been to Southern States in the last few weeks you will remember what is right in the middle of the entry way. Two huge tubs: one with tiny yellow chicks prancing around under a heat lamp, the other filled with baby bunny rabbits, each vying for seems be the premium spot to make ones bed: strangely enough, the food bowl. Sebastian was enthralled, wanted to touch, pick up, hug, cuddle, pet these soft furry creatures.

Unfortunately for Sebastian patrons aren’t suppose to touch the animals. Unfortunately for me, they were out of asparagus crowns.

Torin told me about the bunnies ahead of time. He and the boys saw them there earlier in the week. We thought when Sebastian is a little older, and he learns to stop tormenting Moses the cat, we might get him a bunny to take care of. So I joked as we got in the car to head to Southern States: “Are you sure you don’t want me to bring home a bunny?” I asked. We chuckled, but then I remembered a sad fact.

Somewhere, whether a newspaper article, or radio report, or a circulated e-mail…somewhere it was encouraging people NOT to buy bunnies and chicks at Eastertime.

Apparently, there is a huge demand for these fuzzy symbols of the season in the weeks leading up to Easter. But after Easter passes, and maybe around the time that school is out, children get bored with their bunnies and chicks and begin to neglect their pets. So this article, or e-mail, or whatever reputable source of information I had was discouraging people from contributing to the pre-Easter demand, practice a little Lenten patience, and if they still wanted a new pet, to wait till summer.

Trying to curb the cycle of consumer excitement and consumer neglect is a tricky task, especially with cute bunnies and chicks.

So we do not have any new pets at home. All in all, I thought it was a good practice in restraint. And while we didn’t purchase one of these non-religious symbols of Easter, it gave me a little dose of the emotional paradox we confront during the season of Lent. We begin the year with joyful Christmas proclamations, spend some time exploring the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, we’re feeling pretty good about faith and discipleship and then BAM! It’s Lent and we are forced to confront a difficult reality: the death of Jesus.

And if we scratch the surface a bit more, we also confront the entire topic of death: our own death, the death of people we loved, our fear of death, our close-encounters with death. Some sisters and brothers in our own congregation are facing this right now, either living in the shadow of the death of loved one, or anticipating the likely death of a friend.

The difference between Christmas and Lent is like having a child glowing with the possibility of bunnies and chicks, only to have an overly-conscious, and perhaps guilt-ridden, mother say “no” to all the fun.

Perhaps this analogy is a bit far-fetched. But who wouldn’t rather skip over Lent, and go straight from Christmas to Easter, birth to resurrection, light to light? But instead, we are invited to spend time in a dark period of reflecting on our mortality, contemplating the darker sides of our lives, sweeping out the dark corners of our souls so light can shine more clearly. We are invited to contemplate death, and even venture into the question that every parent of a toddler is faced with, whether or not they are asking for a bunny rabbit: the question “why?”

The day after Christmas this past year, two of our friends and colleagues, Phil and Louie Baldwin-Rieman, were killed instantly in a car accident. We were good friends with their children. Torin’s dad grew up with Louie, both missionary kids in Nigeria. They worked tirelessly for peace and spent much of their lives walking with brothers and sisters in Africa. When they died they were co-pastoring a Church of the Brethren in Indianapolis.

As we reflected on Phil and Louie’s death with a friend, it was evident that our questions about these deaths made us think anew about God’s working within death. Their deaths just didn’t make sense. There was no disease that took them. It wasn’t an end to any long drawn out-suffering. There was no martyrdom. There was no sigh of relief that the struggle was now over. Just a random patch of ice and bad winter weather. Our friend put it well. She said, “I don’t necessarily believe God caused it to happen. But all I could think when I heard about Phil and Louie’s dying was that God had to be stupid to take away two of his best hands he had on earth.”

We all ask these questions about death. But the painful reality is that we rarely find satisfactory answers. We often find temporary answers to get us through the immediate pain, but we never find the answers that make us feel deeply at peace with death.

We ask the question of death when thinking of our faith. The death of Jesus is such an important part of Christianity that we sometimes take it for granted. Of course Jesus had to die, that way he could be resurrected, we might think. It’s simple, right? But it’s not simple. Jesus’ death means a lot. Not just that he died. But we believe there was reason behind his dying. That there was some greater purpose. It’s a tricky theological question that many of us don’t want to dwell on for very long.

As I was thinking about the question of Jesus’ death this week, I was trying to think about how we often ask the question about Jesus’ death. I don’t think I’ve often heard people pose the question simply as “Why did Jesus die?” Generally, I hear the question asked, “Why did Jesus have to die?” When we move from the question “Why did Jesus die” to “Why did Jesus have to die” we are swimming in a deep theological sea called atonement.

Here’s your theological term for the day. Atonement is a scary word that looks at the questions of the cross, sin, suffering, and death. Atonement asks the question, Why did Jesus have to die?

There are multiple theories of atonement that attempt to answer that question. The early Christian church believed Jesus had to die because he was paying a ransom. Humanity was in bondage to the devil, and so Jesus had to die in order to free us from the powers of evil. It was a popular theory in the middle ages that Jesus’ sacrifice satisfied God’s need for justice. Essentially, Jesus had to die to pay a debt humanity owes to God. And others around that time believed that Jesus had to die in order to show us how to love one another.

Ransom, satisfaction, love. Do these ideas sound familiar to you? Maybe you would use some of these words to answer the question why Jesus had to die. Did Jesus have to die to act as a scapegoat? To act as a sacrificial victim? To be an example of how much God loves us?

These are three common answers, but after all the time and energy and mind-numbing debate that went into these three theories, John’s gospel takes a very different approach. In my mind our scripture for today speaks to the meaning of the English word atonement, which simply means “at-one”: to “atone” means to reconcile, to bring together, to meld, to be as one. “At-one-ment” refers to all the ways in which divisions between God and creatures are overcome and brought into harmony.

Commentator Gail O’Day suggests that the gospel writer of John understands Jesus’ death differently than the three popular theories. John expresses that Jesus’ death is necessary because of the community that was formed as a result of his death. Jesus speaks of dying and bearing much fruit. O’Day says, “The faith community is the fruit of Jesus’ death; it is what shows forth Jesus’ love to the world….It is critical to believe in Jesus so that one can share in the gift of his life—the gift that leads to eternal life, to the confident assurance of God’s[…]abiding presence.” [1]

“Very truly, I tell you, 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.”

In these words, it seems like Jesus is broadening the scope not only of his death, but about the life of his disciples and how they participate in the work that God was doing through Jesus. It’s not about being a single grain, It’s about growing fruit. It’s about breaking out of singularity and living into ripe fruitfulness. It’s not dying in order to become something completely different, but falling out of our solitary state into the earth--“dying” if you will to those things that are not fruitful.

As John’s scripture says, Jesus said these words to indicate what kind of death he would have. He said them to indicate what kind of resurrection he would have. But we can also receive these words as invitations to do the same in our lives. The fruit of Jesus’ bodily death was the faith community that followed on his heels. It is that same community that carries each one of us as we strive to bury those things that keeps us from being at-one with God, and grow the necessary fruit that reflects God’s love.

Some of you may have given something up for Lent. Others of you are taking things up for Lent. Rather than denying yourself some guilty pleasure, you are adding something beneficial to your life, something that brings you closer to God, or closer to others. In the past years, this is the route I have preferred to take for Lent—adding into my life new spiritual disciplines, being more intentional about writing letters, things like that.

This year, Torin and I have taken something up together that is difficult for many of us. In Torin’s words, "we have decided to look for the best intention in people’s actions and approach our reflections on those actions with a positive and compassionate attitude."

To break it down…we’ve decide to stop talking about people behind their backs.

Now, don’t get me wrong, we aren’t people who regularly talk behind people’s backs. But, just like everyone of you, I’m sure, we have used each other to express frustrations about people in our lives be they friends, family, even church family, I’ll admit. When things get frustrating, we all need to talk about it and sometimes people’s eccentricities get the better of us. Generally it’s the people we love that drive us the craziest. Sometimes, all of us need to vent.

But Torin realized that by doing this, it made him a more negative person in general. As he shared with me his Lenten covenant, I asked to join in with him. After all, we can help each other, right? So we talked about what happens within ourselves when we “talk behind someone’s back.”

It makes us angry. It makes us righteous. Even if we love the person, it puts up tiny bricks, even pebbles, like a wall between us. And lets face it, it is easier to build up the pebbles that knock them down. We realized, “talking behind people’s backs,” just made us angrier people, more jaded in our love, and more guarded in our interaction.

So we needed to bury it. We needed to take that grain that alienates us, use our spade of confession, dig a hole in the dirt of God’s forgiveness, let it rest in peace for a little while and sprinkle it with the water of compassion. And what has happened? Well it hasn’t been easy. If either of us starts going down that “griping” road, we lovingly, but pointedly ask one another questions like: “so what do you think was really behind that statement that your mother said?” or “what is going on in that person’s life right now that might have caused that reaction?”

We have tried to step back and bury that seed that alienates us and find ways to let it bear fruit. Even though it may have died, or been buried, it is still there. We don’t bury it to forget about it, to let it die and wither away. We bury it so it gets nourishment from God. Throughout Lent Torin and I are trying to bury our irritation and frustration, so it may live as something else that is productive, that brings us closer “at-one” with others… “at-one” with God. We bury it so it gets the feeding that we can’t give it ourselves, so that it might to bear fruit.

What is it in your life that needs to die in order for it to be fed, transformed, and resurrected? What keeps you from feeling at-one with God and the community of faith? While Lent might seem to be a time of denial and focusing on death, Jesus reminds us in John’s gospel that it’s so much more than dying. It’s about preparing our lives for a powerful rebirth.

“Very truly, I tell you, 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.” May it be so. AMEN.

[1] Gail O'Day. The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, "John."