PAST SERMON 2009 #7
by Reverend Pat Blythe, delivered on Sunday March 29, 2009,
at the Church of the Holy Spirit. (Lent 5 Year B)
It’s About Dying, for the Love of Others
“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth will draw all people to myself.” (John 12: 32)
When I was in my summer placement a long time ago, someone asked me if I found it difficult writing a sermon each week. Well I didn’t even have to stop and think about that one. I quickly nodded my head and followed it up with the statement that I found it sheer agony — on 2 counts. Firstly, as a green preacher, every word was a struggle. Secondly, despite my being relatively new to preaching, I had already discovered that it was continually difficult to come up with new material, because basically the theme was always the same.
And after 25 years I could probably answer much the same way. Oh, the sermon prep has gotten easier in many ways, but it’s still an ongoing challenge to come up with some new way to tell the old, old story, the greatest story ever told!
Love is what Christianity is all about. It’s simple enough that the tiniest child can experience it, and yet powerful enough that it can change lives, attitudes, situations — the world!
How blessed we are to have the love of our families and friends. It feels so good to know that others care about us and that we are special and important to them. The true test of that love comes, however, at those times when in our wretchedness and unloveliness we hurt those who matter most — only to find that their love doesn’t diminish, their friendship doesn’t cease.
Times like those bring us closer to them when we realize that we can be ourselves with them, and still be forgiven and understood and held. And each time we experience their forgiveness and love, our love grows in return. Sometimes it’s very difficult to understand how a husband or wife, a parent or child or friend could possibly stand by us — and yet when they do we are overwhelmed with humility, and that bond between us is strengthened.
It’s like that with God’s love too, isn’t it? I’m sure that each one of us has been made aware of God’s great love and compassion at various times in our lives. I’m sure there have been times when we are overwhelmed by the abundance of his love and have fallen to our knees in great awe and wonder — wonder at how we could possibly be so precious to him when we seem so unworthy of his love.
Perhaps this might be illustrated by the story of a man named Brennan. He was visiting a Franciscan Retreat Centre, and one day, while reading his bible, he began to be extremely conscious of his inadequacies and sinfulness. He thought of all the things he should have done, could have done, ought to have done. He saw selfish motives in all he did and he felt totally and utterly miserable and unworthy.
In desperation and in faith he prayed: ‘Jesus, set me free!’
He had been reading the story of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet, and all of a sudden he visualized himself in that Upper Room, sitting in Judas’ place.
The servant tied a towel around his waist, poured water from a pitcher into a copper basin and reached out to wash his feet. Involuntarily he pulled his foot back. He couldn’t look at him. He had betrayed him, been unfaithful to him and to his plan.
It was then that he felt Jesus’ hand on his knee. “Brennan, what these years together have meant to me! You were being held even when you didn’t believe I was holding you. I love you, my friend.”
Tears rolled down his cheeks. “But Lord, my sins, my repeated failures, my weaknesses…
Jesus replies: ‘I understand. I’ve been there. Brennan, I expected more failure from you than you expected from yourself.’ He smiled; ‘And you always came back. Nothing pleased me so much as when you trust me, when you allow that my compassion is greater than your sinfulness.’ ‘But Jesus, my irritating character defects, the boasting, inflating the truth, the pretences of being an intellectual, the impatience with people…..and all the times I drank to excess…..
‘What you are saying is true Brennan, but your love for me never wavered and your heart remained pure. What’s more, you’ve done something that overshadows all the rest…..you have been kind to others.’
Brennan began to cry, so loud in fact that the priest in the next room came and knocked on the door to see if he was alright….
‘Now I’ll go,’ Jesus said.
I have just washed your feet. Do the same for others. Serve my people humbly and lovingly. You will find happiness if you do…. Peace, my friend.
The loving compassionate Jesus that Brennan met is the same Jesus we see in the Gospels; the Jesus who cherished life and existence, and especially other people as loving gifts from the Father.
And he’s the same Jesus who speaks to us today, who forgives our sins, heals our wounds and who embraces us as no human ever could. It’s almost beyond our comprehension to imagine the enormity of his love for us — but those whose feet he has washed have an inkling — they’ve had a vision of heaven; they’ve seen through the dark glass for a moment or two, and have experienced for themselves the depth of Jesus’ love for them. And there are no words to describe it; one can do none other that stand in awe and wonder.
It’s important to stop once in a while however, and reflect on the depth of that love… And each time we do this we find ourselves at the foot of the cross.
There was a time when Brennan travelled into this depth… He was sitting alone in a cave in a desert in Spain when he heard Jesus say: ‘For love of you I left my Father’s side. I came to you who ran from me, who fled me, who did not want to hear my name. For love of you I was covered with spit, punched and beaten and fixed to the wood of a cross.’
As Brennan stared at the crucifix he had with him, he heard these words: ‘This is not a joke. It is not a laughing matter to me that I have loved you.’
The longer he looked at the crucifix, the more he realized that no one had, or could have loved him as Jesus did, and he cried out, ‘Jesus, are you crazy; are you out of your mind to have loved me so much?’
It was that night that he understood what a wise old Franciscan had once told him. He said, ‘Once you come to know the love of Jesus Christ, nothing else in the world will seem beautiful or desirable.’
“On that very same day twelve years later, Brennan’s mind was filled with the image of a three year old boy playing on the rug in his living room… His mother was sitting over in the corner, and when she called him he toddled over and climbed up onto her knees…. She looked down and asked softly, ‘How much do you love me? He spread his chubby little arms out as far as they would go and said ‘This much I love you.’
In an instant it was thirty years later; the little boy was now a man and he hung nailed to a crossbeam. His mother looked up and said, ‘How much do you love me? His arms were stretched to the end of the universe. He said, ‘This much I love you!’ And he died….” (from A Stranger to Self Hatred, written by Brennan Manning)
Over and over again, love and the cross are bound together. Loving was costly for Jesus, and it’s costly for us too. It involves risk and courage and vulnerability and trust, and faith that God will be with us.
Jesus showed us that we are of infinite worth to the Father, and our vocation as his children is to share the depth of that love with others.
Margaret Lawrence wrote this in her book A Jest of God:
“The wood in the church is beautifully finished… and at first, where the high altar would be if this church paid court to high altars, a stain glass window shows a pretty and clean-cut Jesus expiring gently and with absolutely no inconvenience, no gore, no pain; just this nice and slightly effeminate insurance salesman who, somewhat incongruously, happens to be clad in a toga, holding his arms languidly up to something which might in other circumstances have been a cross.”
Whenever I read this passage I get very angry. Is this what we’ve done to Jesus over the centuries? Have we sentimentalized the story of the crucifixion so much that this is the picture the world sees – that’s if they recognize Jesus at all?
I wonder just how many people do see Jesus this way. I wonder how many think that Christianity is a nice comfortable security blanket, made up of pious platitudes spoken by insecure and timid people! God forbid that we allow that to happen!
The cross was not beautiful; it was not painless; and Jesus’ death was not gentle. Instead it was terrible agony for him – and it was all for us – for you and for me.
I don’t know about you, but that knowledge boggles my mind. It leaves me speechless and filled with awe. Somehow it helps me comprehend what love is all about – it’s about sharing your life with others; it’s about caring for others more than yourself; it’s about suffering for the sake of others; it’s about dying, if necessary, for the love of others.
And it’s also about resurrection and new life, and the kingdom, and hope and joy and peace.
It’s the greatest story ever told and it didn’t end at the cross. That was only just the beginning. The empty tomb followed along with the news that was whispered at first and then shouted from the rooftops. “The Lord is Risen!”
Then on that great day of Pentecost, Jesus breathed new life into his Church… He sent his spirit to dwell with us and to live in each one of us… His arms were no longer held fast, nailed to the hard wood of the cross, they were stretched out to the ends of the earth they now enfolded it and lifted it up to God, its Creator and Redeemer.
“And I, when I am lifted up will draw all people to myself.”
AMEN.