Journey into Abundance (Can these words of Jesus fix our Distorted View of Everything?)
by Griff Martin
by Griff Martin
A Sermon for the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith
On John 12:20-33
For the Fifth Sunday of Lent (March 21, 2021)
*This document comes from an oral manuscript.
Now Incarnate and Present God, we ask that you once again take the Word and transform it into a living and breathing reality we can all together experience. Make us attended to your presence here in this space and in these words God for if we are aware of your being here then nothing else will matter, but if we are not aware of your being here then nothing else will matter. In the name of the Creator, the Christ and the Comforter.
Maps are problematic, they get us places but they do so in distorted ways because geography is almost impossible to put into something as formulaic as a map.
If you have given up on the news recently, I understand you are probably in a better head space than the rest of us, but you have missed a major breakthrough in mapping. I might have missed it too but the headline caught me, “Can this Map Fix Our Distorted Views of the World?” The headline caught me because that question is central to almost everything going on in my professional life right now, it’s almost a thesis to my sermons and calling: to fix our distorted view of things.
An astrophysicist at Princeton and a cosmologist at Drexel want to fix our distorted view of the world so they started with a major problem, they have developed a scoring system that looks at maps and their short comings, they found six major types of map distortions- like for instance most flat mats distort the size of things and you end up with Greenland the size of Africa, which it is not, and of course the developing world is way underrepresented on the map- so they listed the problems and they began to work on how to correct and adjust those for a better clearer picture and then they selected the biggest map of all to try and fix, the globe.
Instead of the normal basketball like globe, they reproduced the world on what is essentially an old vinyl record, with the Northern Hemisphere on one side and the Southern Hemisphere on the other. It gives us a clearer picture of our world.
I want to propose a similar question this morning for us, Can these words of Jesus fix our Distorted View of Everything?
The text you just heard read might just might tell us everything we need to know about the days ahead. It’s as clear as Jesus is ever going to get about it and it’s about as clear as Scripture gets about it… and for something as mysterious as atonement and death and resurrection, it’s actually quite clear.
It’s human beings that have muddied this up a great deal. We took this and we tried to flatten it out and create a map of it and that has distorted everything. And I am not going to get into all of it this morning but just a quick picture of what the map we created looks like should be enough, we created a map with God as a really angry judge who is keeping score of all we do and don’t do and he is not happy with us, so to even all that out the only thing that seemed fair was for God to send the only person who had nothing to do with all of this mess down here and to have his only son Jesus killed in a horrific manner because they only thing that could appease God was death, but no fears Jesus would rise again and all we have to do is accept that and we do that we say the sinner’s prayer which is so very important to this- like it’s the password but Jesus never actually gave it to us, he must have forgotten- so we say that magic prayer and we get a get out of hell free card.
Now that is a very distorted version of the Gospel, it takes away God’s goodness, justice and Love, there is nothing just about it, there is no real grace, it does not add up, it has no truth and we must refuse to settle for it.
Can these words of Jesus fix our distorted view of everything? Let’s see….
Our story begins today with some outsiders who want to be insiders, which is essential to the Gospel, folks who we think don’t belong and suddenly they belong. The story opens with these Greeks who are worshipping at the festival where Jesus is and they want to see Jesus, obviously they have heard about him and they want to take that a step further now.
So they go to Phillip and they offer one of the best prayers we have in all of the Gospels, “Sir, we want to see Jesus.”
The text then plays telephone…. Think of a 1980’s comedy with little square boxes as Phillip goes to Andrew who in turn goes to the other Phillip who in turn goes to Jesus. It’s an odd detail here that we are given but maybe it’s to remind us how often we have folks in front of us who want to see Jesus and instead of taking them straight to Jesus we instead turn that into committee meetings or a gossip prayer chain or we say “hold on, let me call a minister."
What would you do? If someone showed up in your life today and they said to you, “I want to see Jesus” what would your response be, where would you take them? What would you show them? What story would you tell them? What evidence in your own life could help them see Jesus? It’s important we know this.
Back to the text, Phillip goes to Andrew who goes to the other Phillip who goes to Jesus and Jesus offers a riddle of sorts: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”
Now don’t miss what has not happened here, Jesus has not gone out to meet the Greeks. They actually never reappear in the text. The request comes to Jesus, folks want to see you and Jesus tells us this: folks will see me then they see sacrifice, when they see a single seed turned into many seeds, folks will see me when there is abundance and not scarcity, folks will see me when you all do the things you are called to do and be in the world, this is how it all works.
And then he gets into his most often preached sermon: following me means losing your life and paradoxically losing your life is the only way to save your life.
Which is what the Gospel of Jesus is all about, it’s not about an angry God demanding a blood sacrifice of his only child so that you can confess a magical prayer and get off Scott free, the Gospel is about losing your life so that you can save your life, the Gospel is about knowing that the most important work you do is taking your individual life and turning it into something bigger and more.
The Cross is not a one time event, the cross gives us a pattern to life: The only way to get to resurrection, to get to abundant life for all, is to follow the mystery of Jesus and the process of transformation which is probably going to involve some sacrifice and denial and maybe even a cross.
Hear that again because my soul needs to hear it again: The Cross is not a one time event, the cross gives us a pattern to life: Theo only way to get to resurrection, to get to abundant life for all, is to follow the mystery of Jesus and the process of transformation which is probably going to involve some sacrifice and denial and maybe even a cross.
And when you put it like that, it makes complete sense that the church tried to change the process up and make it easier because you know what does not sell things- dying, surrender, self denial. It’s much easier to say a magic acceptance prayer than it is give things up and surrender and deny yourself.
Which is why Jesus said over and over, accept me and worship me. Oh wait, no that is our distortion… what Jesus said over and over again was follow me, deny yourself take up your cross, lose your life and become part of something More.
It’s what in leadership circles right now is known as finite mindset or infinite mindset, or scarcity thinking and abundance thinking. Are you in this only for yourself or is it about something bigger?
Jesus following means letting go of any and everything that gets in the way of the bigger story, of Love for all.
We are about to get to the hardest part of the story, the Cross and this year we can’t afford to be observers only, our world right now requires participation. We can save our very broken world by following Jesus’ words.
Which means right now the question you need to be thinking through every day is what are you nailing up on the cross this year? What is the single seed that you need to let go of so that it can grow into something bigger for the entire world and the next generation? Where are you being scarce and you need to be abundant?
It’s pretty important to the entire conversation we are having right now about this church and our future, what are we willing to surrender and sacrifice today so that we can let that seed grow into something so much more for our children and their children, for Austin in 50 years? Because the hardest truth to accept is that if we are not willing to sacrifice somethings for something bigger in the future, we should not call ourselves Jesus followers.
And if you think that is hard… well that is the same conversation you need to be having in your own heart right now. What are we willing to surrender and sacrifice today so that we can let that seed grow into something so much more for Jesus? Because the hardest truth to accept is that if we are not willing to sacrifice something now for something bigger in the future, then don’t call yourself a Jesus follower.
Its developing the mindset that we know we are just a small piece of a big puzzle and that our life can be saved if we give it up to the part of the bigger puzzle, if we take off the individual lens and put on the communal lens, if we learn to see the world not as our story but as God’s story, if we learn that our single seed if surrendered can be part of something so much more than we ever imagined possible.
It’s a new map for Christ following… not accept the sacrifice, but be the sacrifice… be the sacrifice and experience the resurrection of More.
In the words of Saint Francis, “it is in giving that we receive; it is in dying that we are born again.”
We have work to do, some dying and some birthing…. Because the next time someone shows up and says to me I wan to see Jesus, I want to be able to show them the places I died and was born again and became so much more than I could ever have been on my own, I want to show them a church that has died and been born again and has become so much more than we could have ever been on our own.
That is atonement. That is what the cross is about, that is what our very lives are about.
I believe with all of my soul, following this map from Jesus will fix our distorted world.
Amen and Amen.
*artwork: Tree of Life with Peacock, 2019, Kalamkari Traditional Indian Art
0 comments:
Post a Comment