Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Fifth Sunday in Lent Year B 2009

05 Lent B 09
March 29, 2009

Jeremiah 31:31-34
31 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.

Psalm 51:1-12
1 Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
4 Against you, you alone, have I sinned,
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are justified in your sentence
and blameless when you pass judgment.
5 Indeed, I was born guilty,
a sinner when my mother conceived me.
6 You desire truth in the inward being;
therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me away from your presence,
and do not take your holy spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and sustain in me a willing spirit.

Hebrews 5:5-10
1 Every high priest chosen from among mortals is put in charge of things pertaining to God on their behalf, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. 2 He is able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is subject to weakness; 3 and because of this he must offer sacrifice for his own sins as well as for those of the people. 4 And one does not presume to take this honor, but takes it only when called by God, just as Aaron was.
5 So also Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was appointed by the one who said to him,
"You are my Son,
today I have begotten you";
6 as he says also in another place,
"You are a priest forever,
according to the order of Melchizedek."
7 In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. 8 Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; 9 and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, 10 having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

John 12:20-33
20 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.


Giving Up Your Name

In the Twelve Step fellowships, there is another set of twelve called “The Twelve Traditions.” These traditions are the guiding principles not so much of the individual alcoholic or drug addict seeking relief and healing, but those of the whole Twelve Step Fellowship, be it for alcoholics or drug addicts or overeaters or whatever. Twelve Step fellowships have no paid therapists, no bosses, no presidents, no rules. They have traditions, and the only enforcement needed is the disease itself. If a group follows the traditions, its members get sober. If it doesn’t, they don’t.

The twelfth tradition reads, “Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all these traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.”

Anonymity, of course, means “without naming.” Most of us probably assume that the anonymity of these programs is to protect members from the embarrassment of their illnesses being publicly known. But the Traditions take this idea to another level. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of everything the Fellowship does, so that what is known about the Fellowship is only that it seeks to bring people suffering from addiction to recovery and wholeness. There are no famous recovering addicts. There are no poster children for Twelve Step Fellowships. There are no spokespersons, no popes or ministers or elders or saints. The Twelve Step Fellowships stand for helping people recover, period.

Following Christ into the kingdom of God means letting go of your name. It means getting swallowed into a big organic being in which you become but a part, a cell, a bit of tissue. It means subsuming all your claims to fame, casting your crowns before him, all your achievements and whatever you think you’ve accomplished, whatever you think you’ve done that’s worthy, just tossing it at his feet and giving him all the credit and all the power to do with it as he wishes. It means that from the time you go in and on into eternity, you are a living member of a much greater body, the body of the eternal Christ.

The cross is the gateway to the kingdom. It’s the nearly insane willingness to lose everything you love most, to give up everything you value, in exchange for entrance to the kingdom. Jesus went through that entrance and many witnesses testified that he made it, he got there, he was raised from the dead as the new being, the being for whom the barrier between heaven and earth is nothing more difficult to cross than air, a being immune forever to aging or death or disease, a being who has become entirely obedient to God, and is therefore given full access to God’s power. A human being, but more than a human being. A child of God, begotten by the Spirit of God.

Another tradition of the Twelve Step fellowships reads, “Our public relations policy is one of a attraction, not promotion.” The successes of the Twelve Step fellowships, the joy of those who have recovered, their meaningful lives, their spiritual awakening, these things are communicated with hardly any effort at all, the word just spreads, and the word is not about individuals who are good or well or successful, but about a fellowship that works. In the same way, the tradition of the church is that the spread of the gospel is a matter of attraction and not promotion. People may come to the church because of other people, but if they stay, they stay because they have met Christ. We exist to attract the world to Christ, to lift high the cross, as high as we can, so it can be seen at the greatest distance, to the ends of the earth. “This is the way to eternal life.”

We exist so that people will say, “I want to meet Jesus,” not only so they will say, “I want to go to a nice church,” or “I want to be like Sue or Judy or Jacob,” or “I want to be accepted in good society.” These things may all come to pass, but these are not the reasons the church exists. The church exists not to glorify its members, but to glorify Christ, and to bring the spiritual adventurer to his cross.

All this Lent we have been reading the book by Martha Grace Reese called Unbinding the Gospel. It’s about evangelism. Yes, that’s a scary word that brings to mind rude people shouting bible verses and sticking their feet in the door jamb to keep you from closing the door. But this book has shown me that the work of evangelism is really the work of telling others about the new life Christ offers, and the path to the cross that makes it possible.

Was it really necessary for Jesus to die? Yes, it was, but not because God required his blood in order to forgive humankind. It was necessary for him to die in order for God to amaze the world with the resurrection. It was necessary to show the world that you could stand up against the insanity of the human-run world and survive, even thrive, despite the world’s worst hostility.

Jesus knew quite well that if he told the real truth about God, that God is love and has no darkness in him, that God abhors most of the main principles and values that the world accepts as conventional wisdom, that God is opposed to any system that produces haves and have-nots, that God opposes murder in all its forms, “legitimate” or not, that displays of righteousness for the sake of making one’s name is no righteousness at all, the world would demand and require and even force upon him silence, permanent silence, the silence of the tomb. He didn’t need any angel to tell him that.

But he prayed earnestly, as Hebrews teaches us, that the Father would save him from death, so that all the world could see that God would and can and will keep his promises to those who love him, and God did. And so the cross of Jesus becomes for us the gate and the shepherd and the way and the truth and the light. It is our sole promotional device.

The cross is the only way to resurrection. It’s the only way that you’re going to become a new being. It’s the only way that you’re going to be able to cross the boundary between heaven and earth, it’s the only way that heaven will come to earth in you. And for those who are called to this, it’s worth it.

It’s worth everything you own. It’s worth your family, your children, your husband, your wife. It’s the treasure hidden in the field that you go and sell everything you have to buy. It’s the one perfect pearl that’s worth your life savings.

All you have to give up is your name. Give up your name and take on the name of Jesus Christ. Give up your individuality and become one with the body, one with the whole church on earth, one with everyone else who calls on the name of the Lord. When you feel about the body of Christ the way you used to feel about your family, when you think about the kingdom of God the way you used to think about your greatest ambition in life, when you feel about every person in the world the way you feel about your most beloved child, then you can enter, then you can traipse right in, then you can put on the robe and dance barefoot on the streets of gold.

Then you don’t have to worry anymore about what you have to say or what you’re going to do or how long you’re going to live or what you’re going to do about the pain and grief of life, because none of those things will matter anymore. You will be an eternal being. You will enter into a life that began before the beginning and goes on long after the end.

So what will you say? What do you feel? Is your soul troubled? It should be. You’re thinking about leaping off the cliff and expecting to take flight. Is this what you want to be saved from? You want to be saved from having to leap off the cliff, to take up your cross?

Or do you want God to be glorified? Do you want Jesus Christ to be lifted up for the whole world to see? Do you believe that God can glorify himself in you?

What’s your name?

Amen.

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