5 Lent
B March 22, 2015
Jer. 31:31-34 Ps. 51:11-16
Heb. 5:1-10 John 12:20-33
How would do you think that a loved one of someone who had just died
would feel about me saying, "Well, just think of your dear Henry's life as
a seed planted in the ground in his death; and soon he is going to bear much
fruit in his future life?"
A person might say or think, "Well, Phil are you comparing my dear
Henry to plant life now? I am rather
offended by you comparing my dear Henry to the seed of a tree, or a vegetable,
or even a flower."
Some people do talk to their plants but does that mean plants attain a
level of sentient life so that we can make death seem rosy by comparing dying
to the planting of a seed?
Today, we have read the way in which the writers of John's Gospel
believed Jesus to be speaking about his death.
The writer of the Gospel John used metaphors from agriculture and animal
husbandry in various places. Jesus is
the shepherd who has sheep that must be kept safe from wolves. Jesus is the vine, God the vine dresser, and
people are branches of the vine. These
sorts of metaphors are common to John's Gospel.
What I find amazing about the Gospels is how the dying and death of
Jesus became such a glorious and wonderful event even though it is presented at
the same time as an event of great suffering.
The death of Jesus has undergone quite a makeover when we encounter it
in the New Testament writings. John's
Gospel was the last canonical Gospel to come to textual form and so it comes
after some decades of the success of the Christian message. Many forms of Christ being known by people in
His Risen life had come to the experience of Christians.
And after many years of looking through the rose colored lenses of the
resurrection of Christ known through his post-resurrection appearances and
manifestations, the Christian community could present the death of Jesus as
both gloriously necessary as well as a horrifying event. As we approach Holy Week which begins with
the reading of the Passion Gospel and then we move toward Good Friday with another
reading of the Passion Gospel, from John's Gospel, we need to appreciate how
the death of Jesus was understood and functioned within those early Christian
communities.
The death of Jesus on the Cross was an embarrassment if one were a Jew
who held strictly to the notion of a kingly Davidic figure for the
Messiah. For those with expectations of a
kingly Davidic Messiah, a true Messiah would not die on a cross in an event of
capital punishment. Did King David die a
disgraceful death? No, he did not.
So how could the death of Jesus be defended as a necessary act of God's Messiah? How could the death of Jesus be
transformed from an event of horror to an event worthy of a Messiah?
If we understand that death is the big elephant in the room of all of us
who live, so too the death of Jesus was a big elephant in the room of those who
were trying to understand the confession of Jesus as the Messiah.
How could Jesus be a consideration for the Messiah? There were many post-resurrection appearances
of the Risen Christ to people who shared these encounters with others. There were many other visionary
manifestations of Christ, such as happened to St. Paul. The results of these manifestations of Christ
was a growing successful gathered communities of people in places throughout the
Roman Empire. This success brought about
the make-over and the re-interpretation of the Cross of Jesus from being a bad
event that signified the failure of a person.
Success of the Christian communities changed the event of the Cross into
a providential and glorified event of necessary sacrifice which would be
overridden by the event of the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus.
So Jesus of Nazareth was understood by many to be the suffering Messiah in keeping with the
images presented in the Psalms and the prophets of Hebrew Scripture, but Jesus
was the victorious and kingly Davidic Messiah in the power of the resurrection. Jesus was not a Davidic Messiah who came to
defeat the Roman Emperor; he was to be on the cross as the writer of John has
him to say, to complete an event of judgment upon the ruler of the world, the
devil. Jesus was a Messiah not because
he had armies but because he was the warrior king of the heavenly or interior
realm. The lifting up of Jesus on the
cross was to be an icon of faith so that people could find in Christ their way
back to recognizing God as the owner of their world; not the devil, not the
emperor, not one’s possessive egoistic self.
The spiritual practice of St. Paul and other New Testament writers was
to couple the transforming events which were occurring in their lives with the
life events of Jesus Christ. So when the
Gospels later came to textual form the death of Jesus was presented as being
the necessary providence of God to show that the devil as the force of evil
could conspire to kill the good and the perfect, but in fact, the good and the
perfect is deathless. The
post-resurrection appearances and effects of the Risen Christ in the lives of
people proved that what is good and perfect is deathless. What is good and perfect partakes of the
ability of the eternal return.
And so the death of Jesus could be understood to be like the death of
the seed; the seed’s appearance only changes so that it produces the fruit
which in turn produces endless other seeds to be planted and so guarantee the
hybrid into a future forever.
By the time John's Gospel had been written, the cross of Jesus had
become idealized and romanticized because of the effects of the Risen Christ in
transforming the lives of people who were called Christians.
St. Paul and others felt that the Risen Christ by the power of the Holy
Spirit could become the clean heart which was created in each person. St. Paul believed that the Risen Christ by
the power of the Holy Spirit could become law of God written upon everyone
heart, as fulfillment of the prophetic words of Jeremiah. The writer to the Hebrews believed in the
higher priesthood of Jesus because Jesus was not a member of the levitical priesthood. Jesus was an eternal priest after the order
of Melchizedek. In the letter to the
Hebrews, Jesus is presented as this mystical priest who enters the heavenly
temple and provides himself as a sacrificial offering for sins. So humanity cannot be tricked by the devil's
lie that God is inaccessible to us because of our sins and imperfection.
We are at the week before holy week; next week wee will be presented twice the
horrors of the crucifixion. It will be presented only because we know how it is
understood in light of the post-resurrection appearances of the Risen Christ to
the New Testament writers. They came to present the narrative of the Cross as
proof that the good and perfect can only seem to die and pass away for a short
time, when in fact it only comes back with exponential fruitful manifestations.
I do not believe we should use the "rosy" presentation of the
death of Jesus to minimize the true impact of death and suffering in our own
lives. To do so would to be fatalistic and
simply absolve bad things by saying, "God intended it so." What the cross means for us is that any one
individual event in our lives does not nullify or erase the possibilities of
many other good things happening in the future for us and others. One cannot make one's life so important as to
assume that all will end because one event occurs.
The death of Jesus did not end the world. The death of Jesus did not end the continuing
string of events and occasions of life, including the reappearance of the
effects of the life of Jesus into the lives of billions of people. These reappearing effects of Christ to so many
at least deserve a confession that he is truly a Messianic Person. Amen.
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