Harvest and Spring

Sermon as preached at Lambs and Evington UMC on 3/22/15



Read John 12:20-33

Image Courtesy of Vanderbilt Divinity Library

It is that time in the calendar when spring is finally here! This week we have already had some beautiful days, and even though we have seen some rainy ones as well, at least it is not snow, right? As spring begins to roll in there is so much that I look forward to. There is March Madness of course, but I really look forward to hikes in the mountains, grilling some hot dogs and hamburgers with friends, and just so many other activities of enjoying the beauty of creation as it begins to sprout from its hibernation in the dark cold days of winter. Although spring is here and all the joys that seem to go with it, our scripture from the lectionary this morning seems to miss this memo. In our scripture today Jesus does not talk about the joys of spring, but rather speaks about the time of harvest, and the death of plants. In particular Jesus speaks about wheat saying, “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.” At the time of harvest in the fall, what is called “Winter Wheat” dies leaving it seeds in the ground to grow throughout the winter and be ready for spring. Still growing up in the suburbs of Richmond not really growing up around farming, I have to admit when I think of harvest season, I don’t think of wheat, or any other produce for a matter fact but one; pumpkins.

            To me nothing signals harvest time like Pumpkins. This is probably because it coincides with Halloween and the tradition of making Jack-O- Lanterns. For our family, going to the pumpkin patch to pick out our pumpkins to carve was one of the highlights of the season. It was so much fun to bring them home, cut them open, and to cut crazy faces in to the side of them, and then light them up at night for all the neighborhood to see. I remember one year as mom was cleaning out the pumpkin and saving the seeds in order to roast them, I asked if I could have a seed or two to plant. Now no one in my family is known for their green thumb. We did not have a garden, but rather just patches of soil around the house for flowers. I asked if I could plant one of the seeds on the side of the house where there weren’t many flowers, and my mom said sure, probably thinking nothing of it. So I took that seed and planted it, and every other day I would come out and water it and check on it. To everyone’s surprise, a few weeks later a huge vine started to grow in the soil. Weeks later to the dismay of my mother that vine continued to grow, choking out the flowers all around it. Finally a little lump began to grow. Unfortunately the story does not have a happy ending for me; the exterminator came and sprayed for pest which I think ended up killing my pumpkin; but the joy that it brought me to see a pumpkin grow out of something that we had carved up and killed, stuck with me for a long time.

            And that was just from one seed. Imagine what would have happened if instead of roasting the rest of those seeds we planted them in a large garden. That one pumpkin, that was now dead, could produce a whole patch of new pumpkins. I think about my pumpkin as I read our scripture for today, and it begins to make so much more sense to me. For although the calendar on our walls may say that it is spring, time for new life, our Christian calendar tells us it is still this season of Lent. Whereas Easter, like spring, is the celebration of new life, in particular the new life Jesus Christ bring through his own resurrection; Lent is the time that prepares us for that new life. It is no coincidence that in the Northern Hemisphere then that Easter takes place in the joy of Spring, while Lent for the most part takes place in the dead of winter.  For us to understand the joy of Easter and new life, we must first grapple with the reality of death.

            As Jesus approached the end of his own life, this is the reality that he tried to share with those who would listen; that in order for there to be new life, there must first be death. Our scripture starts with some Greek Gentiles coming to Jesus. This is an extraordinary event in its own right since Jesus was Jewish. We know that Jesus came to save the whole world, but that wasn’t as obvious to the Jewish believers at that time. And so Phillip and Andrew go and tell Jesus of the Gentiles request. To this Jesus responds to the disciples in such a typical Jesus way. He tells stories and analogies of his own death and how the hour has come. In essence he tells the disciples that the gentiles, in fact all the world will get a chance to see him when he is lifted up; that is when he is killed, lifted up on the cross. This message of Christ’s redemption through death would seem totally unheard of for the disciples except for that short parable about the grain of wheat. Jesus uses something that the disciples are familiar with, and through it Christ’s death begins to make sense. For me it makes more sense in terms of my pumpkin. Unless that pumpkin is killed, taken of the vine and carved open, it will not bear the seeds needed for new life. Likewise Jesus can come and live and teach us about God, but through his death we are able to receive new life.

            This must have been a difficult message for the disciples to hear. This man that they loved so much, the one that they are following and learning from is telling them that he must die in order for there to be new life. This is even a tough message for Jesus himself. He prays, “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say--' Father, save me from this hour'? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.” Jesus was scared; it is not like he wanted to die. Scripture says that his soul was troubled, but Jesus knew what needed to be done. He knew that in fear he would want to ask God the Father to spare him, but that his whole reason for coming was in order to be lifted up. Lifted up on the cross for all to see, so that whoever sees and follows may have new life. That by being lifted up in his death, he may be lifted up and exalted for the life that he brings through his resurrection. As we prepare for Easter, for the resurrection of Christ, for new life, we are first confronted with death. We are confronted with the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, and at the same time we are also confronted with the reality of our own death.

            Recognizing that Jesus brings us new life, reminds us of why we need new life in the first place. We are sinners and have fallen away from God, and we will die. More than this however, is that in our scripture Jesus tells us that if we are to inherit this new life, then we must like Jesus lose our lives. He says, “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” Now this sounds a little backwards, if Jesus died so that we can have eternal life, why must we lose our lives as well? Paul explains this conundrum in the sixth chapter of his letter to the Romans, “ The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.  So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.”  In other words we must to die to sin in order to have new life. This is both literal and metaphorical. The result of sin ever since the Fall from the garden of Eden is death. This means that because of sin we will die, and in our death sin no more. But just as Jesus if died to sin and rose again, then through Christ we too can expect eternal life after death. This is the literal understanding of dying to death. Metaphorically, through Christ we are able to die to sin, to shred away it’s  hold over us and start a life anew with Christ. This is much like the conversation Jesus has with Nicodemous about being born again. Nicodemous was thinking literally, He couldn’t figure how one could physically be born again. But Jesus was speaking metaphorically, that one must start a new life with Christ through water and Spirit. And just as eternal life is brought through death, so too is New Life brought through death to sin. As Jesus says, we must be willing to lose our lives in order to save them.

            This again reminds me of my pumpkin. As we brought that pumpkin home to be carved, long before I even had the idea of planting a seed, there was first a messy job that had to be done. After cutting the top off of a pumpkin, are all of the seeds just right there for you to easily grab? No, especially in bigger pumpkins those seeds are mangled and intertwined in the goopy, stringy, nasty innards of the pumpkin. You have to scoop all of that nastiness out and then somehow separate the seeds from the goop. This is neither a fun, nor an easy task. Maybe we are a lot like those pumpkins. We have the potential for new life that Christ has given us, we have the potential to share it with others so that they too may grow, but our seeds of new life are surrounded, entangled in our stringy, goopy, messy sin. In order for those seeds to be planted, in order for that New Life to begin in and through us, we must allow God to hollow us out. To strip us of that nasty sin that entangles us and separates us from God.

            While this may sound easy, it is something that all of us struggle with. For some reason we love our stringy mess. We have become comfortable with the goop inside of us, and are afraid to let it go. It has become a part of us, just as the stringy innards are part of the pumpkin. But though they are part of the pumpkin, it is not usually what we need. We need the seeds. When cooking we need flesh of pumpkin so we can make pumpkin pie, and pumpkin bread, pumpkin soup and many other delicious foods. The innards are part of the pumpkin, but it is not what makes the pumpkin good. Sin is the same for us. Sin is part of us. There is no human on Earth that is without sin, if there were, then Jesus’s challenge of “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” might have gone a little differently. But just because sin is part of who we are does not mean that it is what makes us good. It is not part of humanity that God created, looked at and called good.  But we have become so used to sin being a part of us, that to give up those things that separate us from God, to have our sin scooped away by God makes us feel empty. And we hate to be empty.

            We as humans desire to be full. We gorge ourselves at all you can eat buffets so we can get that painful satisfaction of fullness. We pack our schedules so full that there is no time for anyone, especially God, and we celebrate this and call it a productive day. We pack our houses and pockets with whatever it is that television tells us we need, and then we go back out next we to get more, striving to have our lives feel full. We love to be full, in fact in our consumeristic society today it feels like we worship being full. We worship having everything, doing everything, consuming everything. It has become a ruler over us because we are so afraid of being empty. But Jesus says, “Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.”  Our need to be full, our desire to consume, our want to hold onto our sin will now be driven out and it is time for us to be emptied. And this is only possible through the God who emptied himself, taking on the form of a human,  humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

            In order to experience New Life we must like Christ be willing to empty ourselves and die to sin. We must be willing to let God hollow us out, to remove all of the messy strings of sin that somehow make us feel full, and in doing so reveal the seeds of eternal that once were hidden. As the sin is slowly scooped out of us, we may actually find that there is comfort in the emptiness. For the first time in our lives we may actually find peace and stillness. For the first time in our lives we may have allowed room for the Spirit to dwell within our very beings. Like a plant that must first die in order to bear fruit, we must be willing to die to sin, so that the seed of life may be revealed.