“The Many Sides of Jesus: How Low Will He Go?”
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Text: John 12:20-26
His name was Jonathan and he broke my heart. He was a student at a school I attended in my early teens for those who are mentally and physically challenged. I was physically challenged because I had undergone operations on my legs, but I was only at that school for a short time, for I would get better. Jonathan's story was much different. At the age of 11 Jonathan had gone to bed and the next morning he woke up paralyzed from the waist down. After three years of examinations by surgeons from one end of Britain to another they had no idea why his nervous system had shut down, he had no feeling in his legs and therefore was unable to walk.
Jonathan had been attending this school for a while. The only way he was able to get around to classes was in a wheelchair. Here is why Jonathan broke my heart: He would try to get to the classroom where there was a laboratory and the laboratory required going up a ramp to get to it but Jonathan, as he got larger wasn't strong enough to wheel himself up the ramp. Every single day with determination and grit and courage he tried to get up that ramp on his own. His hands had bled so much that he had formed permanent calluses on his palms. He tried everything to get up the ramp to no avail. He tried to strengthen his arms but couldn't do it, people bought him gloves but he wouldn't wear them. Jonathan never made it to class.
I asked one of the other students, “Why don't we just push him up the ramp? Even I, with a walking stick, can still help him, surely.”
He said, “Whatever you do, Andrew, never offer to do that. If you did you'd have an enemy for life.”
So I didn't and every day I would watch the same scenario unfold as Jonathan's bleeding hands tried to get the wheelchair up the ramp. The more I thought about that over the years the more upset I became with Jonathan. Why? Because he never made it to class and he could have done. I realized that every conversation held afterwards was about Jonathan and Jonathan's world. Jonathan in his stubbornness, though seeming to have so many virtues, was in fact someone who was breaking our hearts. You could admire his courage, his independence, his will had no bounds, but he never made it to class and everything was always about Jonathan. We saw him suffer, we saw him in agony, we had compassion for him, no one felt more for Jonathan than I did and, “by the grace of God go I.” I thought. Still, his stubbornness meant that he didn't make it to where he needed to go.
I was sitting in the subway last week and next to me was someone reading a book about a piece of art entitled, “You are the centre of your life.” It was a depiction in modern forms about an individual who was at the centre of this painting. Now, I have no idea what the piece of art was or where it originated, I have no idea what the book said. But I thought, “Isn't it fascinating that someone would paint a picture that says, 'You are the centre of your life.'” It's not surprising, I suppose, there are even religious broadcasts that like to talk about the fact that this is “Your day.” Len Sweet, the great writer that I have been quoting the last couples of weeks suggests that what we are living in is a YOUniverse, that we as human beings in our culture and era always want to place ourselves at the centre of the orbit of the world, that the universe is something that is part of the mythology of our age. Maybe we do not construct the stories of Dionesys or Prometheus or Athena and maybe we do not create the myths that were so deep within Greek society but we still have our myths, we still have our prophets, we still have our philosophers who keep espousing the YOUniverse, advocating that we are the centre of our existence. And from that centre everything else should flow and into that centre everything else should feed.
I notice that in Facebook. I'm a newcomer to Facebook and am not that good at it yet. I think I've responded to some of you but if I haven't it is probably because I was on Twitter at the time. I don't know the difference but I've got all these friends that I haven't seen for ages on Facebook and it's just wonderful. I find something about Facebook that is deeply troubling: When I actually analyze what I write, it is all about me. Nearly everything that I have written is about me, what I've done, where I've been… the YOUniverse, the Andyverse. It's a great place for a while but it gets awfully boring after a while as well. You find yourself saying the same thing to every friend that brings them within your sphere, the YOUniverse, sounds nice but it is vacuous.
In juxtaposition to this is our passage for today from the gospel of John. If there is anything that stands in contradiction to the YOUniverse it is the words of Jesus himself. He talks about the depth of the love of God but does it in such a way that he shatters the: we, me, you centred-ness of our society and culture. He does it simply by an encounter with some Greeks who are probably visiting Jerusalem for the Passover and are of Jewish decent. They come and ask to see one of Jesus' disciples called Philip because Philip is a Greek name so would be the natural one for them to go to and say to him, “We want to see Jesus.” There was a buzz, something that this man, Jesus was doing. Philip went to Andrew, Andrew finally met Jesus and asked him, “Would you meet with the Greeks?” And he did, but then in a staggering passage, Jesus greets the Greeks, welcomes them in the same way as before he'd welcomed his own people and the Samaritans. His sphere of grace is growing even into the Helenistic world and Jesus says something absolutely staggering: “Now is the time for the son of man to be glorified.” Well that sounds nice, good things are going to happen but then he says: “But unless a colonel falls to the ground and dies it cannot bear fruit, it cannot multiply itself. T”his is clearly an illusion to Jesus' own death and resurrection.
Throughout the whole of the gospel of John there is this message that Jesus had to live his life and die in order that something greater might come, that the glorification does not come by everybody bowing down and saying, “Oh, great Jesus.” This occurs when Jesus offers himself as a sacrifice for the world and then the church blossoms, then Christ is glorified, but not before his condescension, not before his death and self-giving. The universe of God is a universe of the self-giving love of the son. It is not the elevation of the YOU and this reveals to us so much about Jesus and most especially that Christ's love has no boundaries.
I think it is fair enough to say that from where we sit that there is something mysterious about the suffering of Jesus and the relationship with the Father. It is a paradox really that runs throughout the whole of the New Testament: Those who want to live must die and those who want to be glorified must serve, those who want to receive must give. This paradox also deals with the mystery of the suffering of the son. As Soren Kierkegaard, the great Danish philosopher once wrote: “Even in Jesus God does not discard his incognito.” There is still a sense, even with all that Christ reveals, there is still something about God that is mysterious and what's mysterious is the suffering relationship between God and the son.
A lot of people get turned off by Christianity and say, “Hold on a minute, a crucified Lord, trying to appease a father, this is not for me. I cannot understand that.” Well, there is a part of it that is mysterious but from where we sit we can simply gaze upon what has happened. We might not know fully the dynamic relationship between the Father and the Son but we hear from the son what he has to do, we read in the gospels what he did and this is what happened, this Jesus gave of himself for the sake of the world, that the world might be lifted into the presence of God, that by sharing the burdens and sins of the world God gave of himself in a sacrificial way for the sake of the life of the world. By living you die, by serving you are glorified, by giving you receive. In the cross and the resurrection of Jesus there is this profound relationship between the self-giving depths of God's love in Christ and ultimately the joy and the glory of humanity.
I love what Len Sweet wrote in a wonderful sort of poem that sums up the majesty of Jesus:
The mystery of God is this: That the one who is the visible image of the invisible God, the one in whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells, the one who is the living residence of the trinity, the one in whom all eternity lives, breathes and has its being, the one who is before time, the a to zed, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the firstborn of the created universe who rose from the dead never to die again, the conqueror of sin and the grave, the one who holds creation together in himself, died that you might live in him.
“That you might live in him,” it is not just he who is glorified, it is he who condescended in order to share glory with you. How different that is from the YOUniverse which continually wants to puff itself up in the pride of the individual and elevate oneself to the centre when it is Christ who has taken the centre by his suffering and said, “Here, now, you may share in the glory of all mighty God. ”Is that not a beautiful thing? Is that not a better way to live and to conceive of life? Let me ask you this question: Would you rather be the centre of your own universe or would you rather have God as the centre of the universe and have God invite you to join him? That is the difference between the New Testament message of good news and the mythology of our age.
The problem with the first is that just like my friend Jonathan it's like a humanity that is continually trying to wheel itself up a ramp, continually trying by elevating the self, by glorifying the self, by relying on the self, having bleeding and wounded hands but not getting to the kingdom. In all our brokenness and all our pride and all our pushing surely we need someone to give us a hand. It's more than that, when Christ has given us that hand, when Christ has promised that he will live in us, when Christ has promised now, as the glorified son, that he will encourage us, will lift us up on wings, when he will do this he says to us something else and it is what he said to the Greeks: “If anyone now serves me, he must follow me. And where I am, there my servant will be. If anyone serves me, the Father will honour him.” Why? Because that is exactly what Jesus Christ, himself did. That is exactly the service that Christ gave for humanity, the depths to which he would go in order that the world might be saved.
For those of us who were at the prayer breakfast this week to hear the interviews of Larry Stout (a former television anchor) and Brian Stewart (A CBC foreign correspondent), I think it is fair enough to say that we were all absolutely amazed. One story by Brian was particularly moving, and I leave you with this. He talked about when he was a reporter in El Salvador during the civil war. It was a time when the army was shutting down the country and seeking out refugees and imprisoning them, even killing them. As a reporter, he wanted to cover this story but he found himself caught on a road, mid-way between refugees and the oncoming military. He knew that if he stayed and covered the story he would face danger and he had no idea what he was going to do. For awhile he stayed with the refugees, he looked at them, he knew that they were in danger and he wanted to cover the story when suddenly a van arrived. Out of the van came four Christian workers who had been working with the poor. They went to Brian and spoke to him saying, “We are here to protect the refugees.”
Brian said, “I can't go, I can't leave these people, they are in dire need.”
The Christians said, “Don't worry, you go and you tell the story because the world needs to know what has happened here.” Then they said, “But we will stand between the military and the refugees. They will have to go through us to get to them. Have no fear, we will be here.”
My friends that is not the YOUniverse, that is the world of God, that is the giving of the son, that is the serving of the Lord, that is the depths to which Jesus went and calls us. Amen.