Good Friday Sermon Thoughts

From John 12: “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain. But if it dies, it bears much fruit."

Frank Thomas wrote about congregations and change. The title of the book is “Spiritual Maturity”. Sounds like an unattainable goal! Actually he wrote about the Christian life of individuals and how that relates to congregational life. One insight of his was that the only thing that really brings about change in a person, is pain. Real pain.

Think about it. Pain comes in many forms. There is the physical pain that comes with an illness, or a treatment for an illness (just think of how difficult it is to go through chemotherapy, or walking again after a knee replacement). Pain tells the body to stop what it’s doing, and to do something else!

In a sense it goes back to that word of wisdom about how children learn what the word “hot” means. The stove-top is hot. Curious children will learn as soon as their fingers brush across those coils, what the word hot means. From that point on, that word has a very different and deeper meaning. In fact, it changes reality for the kid, this time for the better.

There is the pain of the death of someone you love. Many people talk about a pain they can feel in their chest when they grieve someone’s death. And now, with that pain, there is a very different outlook not only on life, but on the way those who remain even see themselves. Pain involves the loss of something, whether it’s health, happiness, or even a certain way of interpreting the world.

My grandma hoarded buttons. You see, she quilted. And when she cut apart old clothing for blankets she would toss the buttons into a deep cookie tin. That’s something I’m sure I teased her about when I was too young to know better. But she had managed to live through the emotional pain of the Great Depression, doing her part providing for a family of six, and that experience changed her. Gave her new habits that she never grew away from. Grandma saved every little item, thinking about how to use it someday for something else.

Christians could so easily be accused of being part of a feel-good religion. And there’s a lot to feel good about. When you get involved with a congregation like St. Paul I hope you make some friends. I hope that when you come on Sundays, you get to catch up on what’s been going on in each other’s lives throughout the week. That feels good.

I hope that when you’re sick, or when you’re alone in your home, or when you have a new baby, there are offers from your congregation, offers to help out, to baby-sit, to simply have a conversation in order to ward off loneliness, keep isolation at bay, to bring meals to you until you are healed. All that feels good.

And our Bibles are the source of incredibly rich and wise words for how to live in this world. There’s a lot of good advice in the Bible, we can even call it moral teaching, and we would have a more peaceful and happy community if more of us would take those teachings seriously, rely on one another and be willing to be relied upon.

All of those things are great marks of the Christian life, of the body of Christ, of the living, active Spirit of God who is deeply and lovingly involved with the smallest details of our lives. Jesus comes to us every day saying “I forgive you,” and “the life I’m giving you is better than the life you have to manage on your own,” and “I’m bringing about a new creation, and you’re involved with that.”

But on this night, the New Creation is so far away. The Gospel reading finished with these four little words, “they laid Jesus there.”

They laid his body in a freshly dug hole in the ground. They placed him in a garden, they planted him like a single grain of wheat. He had died before the two others who were crucified that day. His legs didn’t have to be broken by the soldiers. He had already given up his spirit.

The only teaching he’s doing now is that his life has been poured out entirely, painfully. No words of wisdom about how to hold our temper, how to love one another, how to parent our children, or even how to forgive someone or seek forgiveness. The one who last night had bent down and washed feet is now a lifeless body. Soon tonight we’ll have the words of a hymn, “love to the loveless shown, that they might lovely be”.

Jesus died about 2,000 years ago, on a hill about 7,000 miles away. He spoke a language other than English. His skin was darker than most of ours. It feels far away and long ago, because it is.

But the good news is that he died for you. This was the worst day of his life, but the best day of yours. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. The pain of the cross is on your behalf! This single act of love is how God loves the world, how God loves you. His pain puts you and me on a different direction in life. Through all of this, God is saying to us today, “all that you were, all that you are, I am covering over with love, forgiveness and new life, because of my Son, the Word made flesh.”