Sermon: Dying to Live

Delivered at Piedmont Park United Methodist Church in Greenville, South Carolina on March 22, 2015.

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Dying to Live

Audio Version

Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks.  They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus."  Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus.  Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.  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.  Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.  Whoever serves Me must follow Me, and where I am, there will My servant be also.  Whoever serves Me, the Father will honor.

"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.  Father, glorify Your name." Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again."  The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder.  Others said, "An angel has spoken to Him."  Jesus answered, "This voice has come for your sake, not for Mine.  Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.  And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to Myself."  He said this to indicate the kind of death He was to die.   

John 12:20-33 (NRSV)

Lead me to the cross

Where Your love poured out

Bring me to my knees

Lord I lay me down

Rid me of myself

I belong to You

Lead me...

Lead me to the cross

From "Lead Me to the Cross" by Brooke Fraser

A few years ago, in early 2010, I had a dream in which I was dead.  Specifically, I dreamed that I was a ghost and that only one person, my mother, could see me.  (Though, I have no knowledge about what lies beyond this life, I suppose my subconscious was able to construct this dream by drawing from various ghost movies I had seen.)  I remember that, in this dream, I wanted to find a way to let my friends know that I was gone and say goodbye to them.  I also remember telling my mother that I needed to figure out where the other ghosts hang out - apparently, I wanted to be with my own kind.

I would wager a guess that a dream analyst would tell us that a dream about death is not necessarily a dream about death, for death is sometimes symbolic of change.  At the time I had my strange dream, I had been out of college for several years, yet I was still involved with my college religious group.  I think that, deep down, I understood that my time with that group was coming to an end.  In fact, in my dream, it was that particular group of friends to whom I wanted to say goodbye.  I never felt as though I was unwelcome with that group, but I knew that I didn't really fit in.  I didn't have any peers at my home church, so I clung to my college group like a ghost clinging to his earthly residence.  I was already aware of a Bible study group for young adults at a church downtown, and, a few months later, when I could no longer bear the feeling of being half-in and half-out, I decided to visit this group.  I can honestly say that, over the past four years, it has been a joy and a blessing to share the journey of faith with my own kind once again.

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Jesus has just ridden into Jerusalem on a donkey to the accolades of the people, as if He was in a royal procession.¹  Passover is drawing nigh, and among the people gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate are some Greeks who want to speak with Jesus.  These Greeks are perhaps God-fearers, in other words, Gentiles who have not fully converted to Judaism but still believe in the God of the Jewish people.²  Two of the disciples go to tell Jesus, and Jesus says, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified."  He knows that something significant is about to happen.  Whatever looms on the horizon is apparently dark and ominous, for He begins to speak about very heavy subjects like life and death.

At this time, Jesus makes a seemingly paradoxical statement: "Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life."  Writer Shane Hipps makes the comment that Jesus' mysterious statement sounds less like a paradox and more like a bummer or a buzzkill.  If you love your life, then you're sure to lose it; however, if you hate your life, then you'll have it forever and ever.  Whether you love your life or hate your life, you're apparently straight out of luck.³

Typically, when we read the Bible, we do not think about the fact that we are actually reading English translations of ancient Hebrew and Greek writings.  Whenever a piece of literature is translated from one language to another, there is a risk that some meaning will be lost in translation.  This seemingly paradoxical statement by Jesus is one example in which an important nuance is lost in the translation from Greek to English.  What we cannot see in our English translations of the Bible is the fact that Jesus is actually using two different words for life.  The word for the life Jesus calls us to either hold loosely or else lose entirely is psuché, which could also be translated as either "soul" or "self."⁴  The word for the life Jesus says we might gain is zóé,⁵ which is often coupled with the word aiónios to form the phrase zóé aiónios which is translated "eternal life."⁶

Considering the fact that Jesus is actually speaking about two different kinds of life, perhaps Jesus' statement is not really a paradox or a bummer.  Perhaps what Jesus is describing is really more of a tradeoff.  In the book Selling Water by the River, Shane Hipps describes psuché life as "a life encased in time and destined to die, marked by the churning waves of rise and fall, health and sickness, gain and loss, joy and pain."  By contrast, he describes zóé life as "a life that has no birth or death date, one that does not fail us or leave us, but one that endures in endless radiance and simple serenity."⁷  Psuché, Hipps argues, is like the weather, while zóé is like the sky itself.⁸  When our focus is set on the temporal things of life, we live at the mercy of our ever-changing circumstances; however, when our focus is set on the eternal, abundant life God offers us, we can enjoy our lives in peace in spite of our circumstances.

If we want to experience and enjoy the life God desires for us, then we must not hold the temporal things in our lives with a white-knuckle grip: we must learn to hold these things loosely.  Immediately before Jesus makes His mysterious statement about life, He says, "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 the Christian faith, when we speak of death, we are not always referring to literal, physical death.  Death is sometimes a metaphor for surrender.  Elsewhere, Jesus says that His followers must take up their crosses every day in an act of self-denial.⁹  St. Paul, in one of his letters, writes about being "dead to sin,"¹⁰ and, in another letter, he writes about "putting to death" the sins within oneself.¹¹  When we speak of "dying to self," we refer to the act of putting aside one's own plans and desires for the sake of something greater.

Of course, the death of which we speak is not meant to be the end of the story, for Jesus speaks of a great potential resulting from this death.  Something on its own could be compared to a mere seed, but, when it is surrendered to God and metaphorically buried, it bears fruit, becoming much more than it is on its own.  In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis suggests that what God takes away with the left hand God gives back with the right and that what God gives us is greater than what we surrender to God.¹²  In other words, when we surrender something to God, putting it to death, God gives it back to us resurrected, redeemed, purified, and magnified.

This concept is illustrated quite vividly in another of Lewis's books, The Great Divorce (a book that has been on my mind a lot lately).  This strange and fantastical novel tells the story of a group of ghosts from Hell who take a bus ride to Heaven, where they are met by spirits who plead with them to stay.  Though they are all more than welcome to stay in Heaven, many of them, of their own free will, get back on the bus for the return trip to Hell.  Those who truly want to stay in Heaven must surrender - or perhaps I should say, "die to" - the one thing that would keep them in Hell, the one thing they might make themselves miserable to keep.¹³

One of the ghosts who made the trip from Hell to Heaven is seen walking around with a small, red lizard perched on his shoulder.  This lizard flicks it's tail against the ghost's back like a whip and whispers incessantly into the ghost's ear, refusing to settle down until the ghost agrees to do what it wants him to do.  When the ghost finally gives in and does what it says, it shuts up and goes to sleep.  The ghost is not particularly proud of the lizard: in fact, he seems to be rather ashamed of it.  The lizard is not merely a pet but rather a physical manifestation of something in his life - something that nags him constantly and seems to have a measure of control over what he does.

At the lizard's insistence, the ghost agrees to go back to the bus to return to Hell.  On the way, he is met by an angel who offers to silence the lizard for him.  At first the ghost is quite grateful that the angel would do such a thing for him, but then he learns that the angel is not offering to merely quiet the lizard but is instead offering to kill the lizard.  At first the ghost refuses the angel's help.  Though the lizard is a source of constant misery for the ghost, it is, in fact, a part of him, and he fears that the angel's killing the lizard would destroy him as well.  The lizard wakes up and begins to plead for it's life, and it even tries to bargain with the ghost.  Having finally had enough, the ghost relents and accepts the angel's help.  With flaming hands, the angel grabs the lizard, wrenches it until its back breaks, and throws the dead lizard to the ground.  The ghost passes out from pain.

Then something remarkable happens.  The ghost begins to transform, becoming bright, solid, and healthy like the residents of Heaven.  At the same time, the dead lizard begins to move again.  It grows and transforms into a magnificent stallion.  The reborn spirit mounts the stallion and rides it into the mountains to continue his journey in Heaven.  The man's lust, represented by the lizard, was put to death and resurrected as a holy, God-given desire, represented by the stallion.  The corrupted part of himself that he once served was redeemed and transformed into something that would serve him greatly in his journey.¹⁴

---

Jesus knows what lies ahead of Him: He knows that what looms on the horizon is a cross.  He has ridden into Jerusalem as if He was a king, and He has made a scene in the temple in protest against the corruption of the religious establishment.¹⁵  He has angered the wrong people and crossed the line too many times, and the wheels are already in motion to bring Him down.

As you probably know, in the Bible, there are four interpretations of the story of Jesus.  Most Biblical scholars agree that the Gospel of Mark was the first of the four Gospels to be written and that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke draw heavily from it.  It is believed that the writer of the Gospel of John was aware of the Gospels already in circulation and set out to write something a little different.  It could be said that the first three Gospels, which are often called the Synoptic Gospels because of their similarity, tell us what Jesus did, while the Gospel of John tells us more about who Jesus is.¹⁶  The Gospel of John, from which we are reading today, often serves as a minority report to the other three Gospels.

As Jesus nears the time of His death, the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke portray Him "deeply grieved, even to death," praying, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me," before surrendering His will to God, saying, "Yet not what I want but what You want."¹⁷  The Gospel of John, by contrast, portrays a totally unshakable Jesus who says, "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.  Father, glorify Your name."  To Jesus, the road that leads to the cross is the road to God's glory, for, as we all know, what lies beyond the cross is an empty tomb.

One might expect a movement to fizzle out if it's leader was tragically killed, but this is not the case for the work Jesus came to earth to start.  Jesus once compared the Kingdom of God to a mustard seed.¹⁸  Shane Claiborne, in his book The Irresistible Revolution, points out that the power of a mustard seed is released when it is crushed.¹⁹  Mustard, that pungent stuff some of us like to put on our hamburgers and hotdogs, is a paste made of ground up mustard seeds.  The work Jesus started did not end after He died.  On the contrary, it exploded, spreading like wildfire.  After the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, the Spirit that fueled His ministry was unleashed on the world.

As Christians - people who follow in the footsteps of Christ - we do not need to fear death, be it a physical death or a figurative dying to oneself, for we believe in Resurrection.  St. Paul compares Christ to a firstfruits offering,²⁰ meaning that the Resurrection of Christ is a taste of things to come.²¹  We have the assurance that the pain of death, whatever form that takes, will give way to the joy of new life in the same way that Good Friday gave way to Easter Sunday.  As Paul writes, "For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain."²²  We can be confident that what we stand to gain is so much greater that what we might lose.  In the words of writer Jesse Turri,

Life is only death, or death is life disguised

We endure this time of death until by life we are surprised²³

Christ came that we might have life and have it abundantly,²⁴ but we will not experience what God has in store for us if we are holding with a death grip our lives as they currently are.  If we want to experience the rich, abundant, eternal life God desires for us, then we must learn to hold on loosely to the things in our lives, and we might even need to die to certain things.  As Christians - people called to take up their crosses daily and follow Christ - we do not need to fear dying to ourselves, for we believe in the promise of Resurrection.  We can hold on to the hope that what God offers us is far greater than anything we might surrender.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.


Notes:

1. John 12:12-19
2. Wikipedia: God-fearer
3. Shane Hipps.  Selling Water by the River: A Book about the Life Jesus Promised and the Religion That Gets in the Way.  2012, Jericho Books. p. 153
4. http://biblehub.com/greek/5590.htm
5. http://biblehub.com/greek/2222.htm
6. N.T. Wright.  "Going to Heaven?"  Published in The Love Wins Companion.  2011, HarperOne.  p. 34
7. Hipps, 161
8. Hipps, 156
9. Luke 9:23
10. Romans 6:11
11. Colossians 3:5
12. C.S. Lewis.  The Screwtape Letters.  ch. 14
13. C.S. Lewis.  The Great Divorce.  ch. 1-9
14. The Great Divorce, ch. 11
15. John 2:13-22.  In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus cleanses the temple shortly after he rides into Jerusalem.  In John, it happens much earlier.
16. Adam Hamilton.  Making Sense of the Bible: Rediscovering the Power of Scripture Today.  2014, HarperOne.  ch 11-12
17. Matthew 26:38-39 (NRSV)
18. Mark 4:30-32
19. Shane Claiborne.  The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical.  2006, Zondervan.  p. 337
20. 1 Corinthians 15:20-22
21. N.T. Wright explores this at length in his book Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church.  2008, HarperOne.
22. Philippians 1:21 (NRSV)
23. This couplet was taken from a poem within Jesse Turri's short story "The Desecration."
24. John 10:10 (NRSV)

The photograph of the peanut sprout is public domain.