March 25, 2012
Fruitfulness
- Jeremiah 31:31-34
- Rev Ruth Chadwick Moore
Today is the 5th Sunday of Lent. Our goal this Lenten season with our studies, devotions and sermons has been to discover for ourselves what is required to be disciples of Jesus Christ. And I don't know about you, but for me it has been a long and sometimes difficult journey. And as we move closer and closer to the cross – which is what the Lenten journey is all about – I can feel the enormity of it beginning to creep into my shoulders and weigh me down. My heart is becoming heavier and my mind is becoming crowded.
Years ago, when the Betty Crocker Company first began selling their cake mixes, they offered a product that only required the baker to add a cup of water – nothing else. All you had to do was add the water, pour the batter in the pan, pop it in the oven and you would get a perfect cake every time. But no one bought these new cake mixes and the Betty Crocker folks couldn't figure out why. So they commissioned a study to figure it out – they were probably Presbyterians who of course knew that a committee and a survey and a study are all that's required to get the right answers! But what they found out really surprised them. The reason people weren't buying the cake mixes is because they were too easy. Bakers didn't want to be totally excluded from the work of baking a cake – they wanted to feel like they were at least contributing something to the process. So Betty Crocker changed the mixes and required the customer to add an egg along with the water. Somehow that egg made the baking experience more real – more authentic. Immediately the new cake mix was a success.
The Lenten journey seems similar to me. Sometimes people try to make the call of Jesus as easy as possible because they're afraid people won't "buy" into it if it's too hard. But journeying to the cross is not an easy walk. It forces us to reevaluate who we are and what is required to follow this Jesus into the kingdom of heaven. Jesus said that unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it won't bear any fruit – it just remains a seed. And a seed can feed someone one time, but a planted seed has the potential to be fruitful and feed many. If a seed dies it bears much fruit. It's the same way with our lives – "the man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it." That's true in our own lives too isn't it? If we're going to get anything out of it we have to invest ourselves in it. If a grain of wheat dies it has the potential to be fruitful. Its life is lost to become something more. We have to die to our love of our own lives in order to be life giving and fruitful disciples. And even though the Lenten classes this week didn't like the idea of losing the life we love, disciples of Jesus are always being called to look for ways to focus themselves outward in service and love of one another.
The Greek seekers who come to find Jesus also learn that lesson. Jesus tells them they will see him glorified through the experience of pain, death, solidarity, humility and resurrection. They will see in the events of the passion the suffering servant who embodies both the agony and the ecstasy of God's redeeming joy. They will see that being an authentic follower of Jesus requires a servant mentality and life, and that it will require sacrifice. As the season of Lent rushes toward the inevitability of the cross, scripture calls us to play the old game of Truth and Consequences. Not the game show from the 1960's, but the old time religion game of suffering and salvation. And as hard as it is to do, the appropriate focus on this last Sunday before Jesus rides into Jerusalem with shouts of Hosanna and the waving of palms – the appropriate focus for today is Jesus' death and its implications for the church. Because the grain of wheat has left the stalk and it is making its descent into the soil below. Its death is a certainty – but what about its fruitfulness?
This is going to show my age, but one of my favorite movies is "Mr. Holland's Opus." Mr. Holland wanted to be a composer, but a new baby with medical issues caused him to look for a real job with a salary and benefits. So he found a job teaching music and directing the band and orchestra. He thought he would still have time to compose in his off hours from school. But the reality of fatherhood and teaching forced him to choose – his dream symphony or encouraging his student's in their musical education. He tried to keep writing the symphony, but slowly the great composer dream died to the joy and satisfaction of teaching. He was still disappointed but he found a new and fulfilling purpose for his life. Out of the death of his dreams came a new way to live – a life of service to others. He had composed his symphony – his opus – it just wasn't on paper. Instead it was in the lives of his students. Through his teaching, patience, love and dedication to his students he composed a brilliant symphony – a symphony composed of the individual lives he encouraged and nurtured through his teaching. Isn't this what Jesus is saying? "When a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it surrenders to new life and bears much fruit."
Of course the truth is that parts of us are dying all the time. Humans lose about 100,000 cells per second. But fortunately that same number of cells is being reproduced in a healthy body. There is a constant cycle of dying and rebirth going on within our bodies. It's the cells that don't die that are the problem. Those cells cause cancer and other diseases and get in the way of the healthy development of our bodies.
Isn't this true of our spiritual and emotional lives as well? "Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life." Our failure to let go and let some things die is a spiritual disease, because new life can't come without some death. The failure to forgive leads to the death of a relationship and anger and bitterness devastate the spirit like a cancer. Holding on to regrets strangles hope before it can lift us to new life. And here is one scenario that is spot on for me - trying to control events and other people leads to frustration, stress and exhaustion. Forgiveness and letting go of control can be spiritual exercises in the art of dying so that new life and fruitfulness can grow and thrive. So you might not like the idea of losing this life that you love, but surely there are aspects of your life that would be healthier if you could let go and let die what is destroying your relationships.
Our Jeremiah passage and the Psalm we sang today can also encourage us to die to self and grow in fruitfulness and new life. Jeremiah reminds us that despite all the ways we have broken faith with God and with each other – God does not break faith with us. Instead of judgment we instead receive a promise of good news and a new covenant. God will bring newness out of destruction. God will bring hope where there is no hope. God will bring life out of death. Because God loves us God will make a way where there is no way. God can help us forgive, help us to not hold on to regrets, and help us give up the control that we only think we have anyway. Our hope is in the new thing God is about to do. We may not see that new way, that new life, or that hope right away, but as faithful people we strive to live and grow into the faithfulness of hope and new life. Dying to old ways of life takes practice, but the Psalm we sang earlier in this service offers a beautiful prayer to help us; "Have mercy Lord, blot out my sin, release me from the path of death – create a clean and upright heart in me O Lord." This prayer can be on our lips as we continue to practice dying.
Lent is traditionally a time for confession and penitence. It's a time when we challenge ourselves to authentic faith and realize that life requires more than just a cup of water into the mix of life. It is a time to consider dying to self and emptying ourselves so that we are prepared for the good news of Easter. Hopefully the Jeremiah text invites us to confess and make some purposeful changes in our lives because of the promise that God remembers our sin no more. The Psalm provides the prayer to help us. All of our biblical texts for today remind us that the shadow of the cross and death fall over everything and that in the end there is no path around the darkness. We must die in order to truly live. That is a very sobering thought – a real wake up call for how we live our lives.
Yet as Christians, as people of faith, there is always the certainty of hope – the promise of the already and not yet promise, that the days are surely coming when even the cross gives way to life. Death never has the final world in God's kingdom. A seed that dies goes on to bear much fruit.
Let's listen once again to this story of the seed. This translation from the Message by Eugene Peterson helps me to understand it a little bit better. It encourages me to surrender to new life, to a new way of living, to a way of life that looks for the light and moves toward fruitfulness.
"Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried under the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in love, you'll have it forever, real and eternal." (The Message)
Sources:
Feasting on the Word – Year B, Volume 2, Fifth Sunday in Lent
Sermons.com – "Planting Seeds" by Keith Wagner, "We Are Dying all the Time" by Todd Weir, "When A Grain of Wheat Falls" by Brett Blair
The Christian Century – "Practicing Dying" by Russell Rathbun, "Suffering and Salvation" by Susan Andrews