The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt– a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. – Jeremiah 31:31-34
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Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. 21 They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22 Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23 Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.
27 “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say– ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” 29 The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” 30 Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 31 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33 He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. – John 12:20-33
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Welcome to Lent, Week 5. Before I head into the sermon, I wanted to mention a few other things happening this week. Today, of course, is St. Patrick’s Day – so happy St. Patrick’s Day! And then Tuesday is the first day of Spring… and Wednesday we remember the birthday of Mr. Rogers; and Thursday we remember the birthday of JS Bach, and Saturday is the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Purim – so if you have Jewish friends, wish them a Happy Purim!
Today is also the last of the ‘regular’ Sundays in Lent. Next week is Palm Sunday, which begins Holy Week – and as we move forward, drawing closer to the Cross, the darkness and the heaviness of Jesus’ last days begins to gather around us.
Our readings for today focus on the last few weeks of Jesus’ life, and on how the events of those weeks tie in with God’s plan to save the human race from sin and self-destruction, through the Messiah.
Today’s theme – “Seeds in the Sand” – is taken from Jesus’ words in John 12:24-25. In these verses, Jesus is explaining to the disciples that he’s about to die; and while Jesus doesn’t mention the word resurrection directly in this verse, he hints at it by saying that a seed that lands in the soil will bear fruit.
But Jesus is just one seed – so where do the other seeds come from? Well… all of us at some point will be a ‘seed in the sand’; and by the power of God and the power Jesus’ resurrection, we also will bear fruit.
That’s the ‘big picture’ message for today.
Digging into the details, I’d like to start with our reading from Jeremiah. Since about the beginning of this year I’ve been finding myself drawn to the Book of Jeremiah – I’ve been reading it a lot lately! It might have something to do with the fact that worshiping idols was a huge problem in Jeremiah’s time – and worshiping idols, in a slightly different way, is a huge problem in our society as well. So I’ve been reading to see how Jeremiah dealt with it.
Jeremiah was the last prophet in Jerusalem before the city fell to the Babylonians. Jeremiah, sharing God’s word, predicted and then witnessed the fall of Jerusalem.
In Jeremiah’s lifetime, God kept reaching out and reaching out and reaching out to the people of Israel: calling them away from false gods, calling them away from sacrificing their children and their futures to idols, calling them back to the one true and living God. Some who loved God paid attention to Jeremiah’s message – in Jerusalem, people like members of the army, staffers in the palace, everyday people. But the king and the people in power and the religious leaders did not listen. In fact they ridiculed Jeremiah and threatened his life. God gave Jeremiah the job of saying to the king and to those in power, “this is your last chance – the Babylonians are coming! If you value your lives, surrender to the Babylonians. They will take you to Babylon, but at least you’ll be alive!” That was God’s message through Jeremiah.
And they wouldn’t listen.
The short passage we read in Jeremiah (above) sounds like good news. God is saying through Jeremiah:
“The days are coming… when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah… I will put my law within them, and write it on their hearts. No longer shall they teach one another, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me.”
This sounds like good news – but the thing is, things didn’t change. The people didn’t listen. These promises of God would be fulfilled at a later time.
Also, these four verses – as encouraging as they sound – are found in between two very dark passages. In the passage before it, God is still asking the people to return to God, and the people are refusing, and we hear Jeremiah speak a word that is usually connected with the birth of the Messiah. Jeremiah says:
“A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children, and refuses to be comforted, for they are no more.”
We recognize this verse from the Christmas story. Jesus was born “King of the Jews”; and King Herod – being afraid for his throne – ordered all the male babies two years old or under to be killed.
Jeremiah’s words are indeed looking forward to those ‘days that are coming’ – but they also applied to Jerusalem back then.
Then following our passage, God tells Jeremiah: when the siege of Jerusalem comes, go and buy a field. Again the reason is that better days will come – but not right away. In the immediate future, the Babylonians are coming, and God’s word through Jeremiah is: “those who give themselves up to the Babylonians will live.” In other words, surrender.
These days we don’t fight wars by siege because most cities don’t have walls around them these days. But Jerusalem was a walled city: and attacking a walled city could be extremely costly in terms of casualties. So rather than attack the walls and try to climb over them, an invading army – in this case, from Babylon – would “lay siege” – which was devastatingly brutal. The army would surround the city, and stop any and all traffic coming into or out of the city; and then wait for the people inside the walls to starve to death. When there was no one left alive to fight, the army would simply walk in and take over the city.
You can imagine this meant absolutely no mercy for civilians, for children, or for the elderly. And a siege could take years. The suffering was unspeakable. This particular siege – the siege of Jerusalem – lasted about a year and a half before a handful of people who were still alive finally surrendered. The royal family tried to slip out a side exit, and were captured and killed, except for the king who was blinded and taken to Babylon; and just a few of the poorest people still living were allowed to stay and work the land so it wouldn’t turn into a wasteland. Everyone else still living was deported to Babylon for the next seventy years.
Why did God allow this to happen? Because the people had been unfaithful: they had turned their back on God and God’s covenant time and time and time again; they worshiped false gods, they had done all kinds of evil, including murder; and the people had refused, over and over, to return to the God who loved them. What we see here is the price of loving and chasing after what is not God and what is not worthy of human worship.
These days people don’t usually worship physical idols, or statues, or golden calves – but we have other kinds of idols. And truth be told, even the ancient people didn’t really worship statues so much as they worshiped what the statues represented: the power to grow, the power to give life, the power to give wealth.
Today, in our culture – I used to know a guy who thought American Idol, the TV show, was an evil thing. Personally I think that one’s the least of our worries, although some people do idolize fame and money. But basically the definition of idolatry is making anything (or anyone) more important than God in our lives.
To give a parallel: think about what it means to have a faithful marriage. When we get married, part of the marriage vow is to be faithful to our spouse. With God, when we become believers, our baptism and/or our confirmation includes similar vows of faithfulness to God – spiritual faithfulness. Our relationship with God is meant to last forever. If there’s anything in our lives that we love more than God, or value more highly than God, that thing is an idol.
So if we have committed our lives to God, what would ever motivate us to do something like bear false witness – that is, lie in court? Or be violent? Or be less than honest in our business dealings? Or withhold friendship from someone who is lonely? Or refuse to give food or clothing to someone in need?
This is why I can barely stand to watch the evening news anymore – because I see our country, and people around the world as well, doing these things over and over: not listening to God, just like the people in Jerusalem wouldn’t listen. I pray God’s guidance and mercy on our world!
At the same time, though – unlike in Jeremiah’s day – we have the advantage of knowing the Messiah. God’s promise to send a Saviour is no longer future tense in our world. Jesus is present tense – always present tense. As we come to the Gospel of John, we see and hear our Saviour Jesus entering into his last days on earth.
Just a few days before, Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead. As a result, so many people were following Jesus that the authorities in Jerusalem were getting nervous. Among other things, they were afraid the Romans might see the size of this group, think it was a rebellious mob, and react with violence. So the authorities in Jerusalem made plans to kill both Jesus and Lazarus.
At the very same moment, John says, a group of Greeks came asking to see Jesus. This was a sign to Jesus: the time of including the Gentiles had come. Both Jews and Gentiles will be part of Jesus’ kingdom from now on; which also signals to Jesus that his time is short. And Jesus says, “Father, glorify thy name” and God answers, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”
Now, with everything complete, and every prophecy fulfilled, Jesus says, “the hour has come.” His soul is troubled – understandably so, looking at the cross. Jesus knows what’s coming, and he is distressed by it. But for John – and for Jesus – the focus is not so much on death as on what Jesus’ death will make possible: resurrection, ascension, forgiveness for God’s people, and the bearing of much fruit.
Jesus’ death and resurrection will bring salvation and a gateway into God’s kingdom for many people and nations. Jesus’ ascension will make it possible for all of God’s people to have the Holy Spirit living in us, writing God’s word and God’s law on our hearts; and making it possible for us to live with God forever. Death becomes merely a doorway into an eternal relationship.
This, by the way, is very different than what the ancient Greeks and Romans believed about heaven and eternity. Back then they believed – as many people do today – that the universe is not personal, and that if we have any relationship to a “next life” it will only be as a “fragment of the cosmos” as they might say. There will be no conscious awareness; there will be no reunion with loved ones. The Greeks believed – as some of today’s fiction writers sometimes put it – that we are all “star stuff”: eternal but having no memory.
Christian teaching is completely different. God tells us that the “word was made flesh and lived among us” – not in an abstract sense but in physical reality.
That Word is Jesus: who we can love, and be loved by, in a personal relationship. In Jesus and through Jesus we live forever, not as ‘star stuff’ but as actual people. We are eternal beings, still human – and we will know our loved ones when we see them again; and we will know Jesus when we see Him.
This is what the church has taught, and what God has taught, from the very beginning of time. This is the new covenant that Jeremiah predicted: “they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” This is the fruit that grows from seeds in the sand. AMEN.
Getting Started 