God of suffering and glory,
in Jesus Christ you reveal the way of life
through the path of obedience.
Change us today.
Create new hearts in us,
Hearts desiring to walk in in the obedience
Of Jesus.
Break all the things in us that need to be broken
In order that we might live fully alive.
Deal gently with us, Oh God.
Our Gospel reading for today is full of some really difficult questions. Jesus of course manages to ask all of these questions without a single question mark. He uses a farming analogy – how a single seed must die in order to bear fruit – and we are left wrestling with the question: Am I willing to die in order that I might live?
Then he goes a step further saying in verse 25 “Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.” Are you willing to give up all you love in this life, in order to have life to the full for eternity?
This morning we’re going to explore how suffering is an invitation from God to step into brokenness in order to be made new, that in the midst of our pain, we are able to participate with Christ in his death and resurrection.
Thomas Keating (a Trappist monk and priest) describes the “spiritual journey as,
…a series of small humiliations of the false self that become more and more profound. These make room inside us for the Holy Spirit to come and heal.”
I’m sure you have stories of these “small humiliations,” stories about painful experiences that seemed awful or embarrassing or too hard in the moment but looking back you can see how God was shaping you. I have stories too. And our stories need to be shared, because in talking about the ways we have been broken (even when they seem unimportant or insignificant, compared to someone else’s struggle), we begin to notice the ways room has been made in us for the Spirit to come and heal.
There are stories about tithing when we had only $67 in the bank. Stories about being called to serve the people who had wounded my spirit. Stories about letting go of my dream of motherhood and embracing a call to be Pastor Melanie. Stories about admitting defeat or confessing sin or asking for help.
Throughout our lives we will continually be faced with pain, physical limitations, spiritual temptations, and difficult relationships. And in each instance we have an opportunity to look to God and to let go of our old ways of coping. This is how we learn a little more about living cruciform, being willing to submit to suffering in order to be raised to new life in Jesus.
According to Jesus himself, in order for God to create something new, old things must pass away. John 12:24 says, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” In this almost-spring season we’re in, the store aisles are lined with packets of seeds. But a seed that just sits in its package on the shelves at Meijer is barren, lacking life and purpose. It must be planted in the darkness of the earth, broken open and formed into something new. In the death of the seed, come a beautiful and delicious harvest. Purpose.
This is what Jesus did for us on the Cross, his body broken, his blood poured out in order to reap a bountiful harvest of disciples, people who have chosen to believe in his name and are willing to live a life of submission to the will of God. It is through Jesus we become sons and daughters of God. It is because of Jesus’ obedience to death – even death in the most humiliating fashion (on a cross) – that we can “approach the Throne of Grace with Confidence, to receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Heb 4:16). Prior to Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection, the people were completely separated from the sacredness and holiness of God. This is what our Hebrews reading was referring to. Since the days of Moses all the way back in Exodus, God’s people knew that not even the high priest could go into the Holy of Holies, the place where the Ark of the Covenant stood, where the very presence of God was located. But because of Jesus’ submission to death on a cross permanent connection to God to all of us – any who would believe in their hearts that He was the Christ, the Son of God. This is the crux of the matter: Submission to suffering brings salvation.
In this season of Lent we have an opportunity to decide whether we are ready and willing to be broken in order that we might be made new. Do you have the courage to ask yourself this question: “What needs to die in me in order for the will of God to come forth in my life?” This was the question posed to me this week in the Lenten Reflections booklet by Ruth Haley Barton. Maybe some of you have encountered that same question. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t excited or encouraged when I read those words. I was even less comforted when I pressed into their invitation. What was God asking of me? What did I need to let go of, what thing was continually distracting from following God with my whole heart? Was I willing to submit to this little death in order to live fully alive?
I’m not going to lie to you. Nothing about submission is easy. It’s not fun or comfortable. It’s one small death after another. But like Thomas Keating, “These (small deaths) make room inside us for the Holy Spirit to come and heal.” And I could use some healing.
Maybe just hearing word “submission” makes you wince. Maybe you’ve used that word to control others or you’ve had that word hurtled at you in an oppressive way. Unfortunately, that happens far too often in our culture. We have all but completely lost what the Bible means by submission. We’ve made it about hierarchy and roles, asking, “Who’s the servant here? And who’s really in charge?” These are the wrong questions to be asking.
Months back we explored this icon of the Trinity and its depiction of the mutuality and submission of the Trinity, the invitation to join the Divine Dance. In The Spiritual Disciplines Handbook, Pastor Adele Calhoun help us to understand what submission really looks like.
“[Submission] begins in the very center of the Trinity where the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit all mutually honor and defer to each other…Submission is not something God forces down our throats – because forcing people to submit is oppression. … Submission is a way we allow God’s kingdom agenda to shape our choices, relationships, and vocations. And it always works in conjunction with our personal freedom.”
Christ’s submission to death on a cross was a choice He made out of his personal freedom. He chose life, resurrection life, over comfort.
And we have a choice today, too, and all throughout this season of Lent. Are we willing to submit to the suffering we will endure as we break old habits and and turn from sin in order to be made new? Are we willing to find the answer to that painful question: “What needs to die in me in order for the will of God to come forth in my life?”
I want you to know I’m not asking you to do something I’m not also doing. This has been one of my most painful and yet transformative Lenten seasons ever. A few weeks ago I encountered a choice to let go of something I had held dear in order to follow God more wholly. God asked me to consider “giving up” a relationship that was oppressive and continually distracting me from seeking God with my whole heart. Oftentimes we are so intertwined with our sin and enmeshed in relationships that we think they are the very things keeping us alive. It will be far more comfortable, far easier to stay exactly as you are today, friends. It’s easier to keep plugging along in mediocrity and sins that “aren’t so bad” and relationships that keep pulling our attention away from Jesus. Submission to the brokenness is really painful. I’m in suffering right now, too. But I’m asking you to do something hard along with me, in order that we might truly LIVE. Because as painful as the process is to cut away the old habits and the selfishness and whatever else entangles us, it is like taking a deep breath for the first time in years. It is the most freeing and life-giving moment. Submit to the suffering and live!
We’re going to come to the Table now, to commune with God and with one another. And I want to urge you to spend time wrestling with this question either before or after you partake in the Body and Blood of Jesus. “What needs to die in me in order for the will of God to come forth in my life?” The altar is open as a place to submit to God, to confess sin, and to answer this painful question.
