SERMON A Matter of Life and Death

Lent 5(B):Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-13; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33

Sisters and brothers, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I'm preaching on death today, so I'm going to cheat and give you the sermon Cliff's Notes up front. This is in case you tune out or whatever and think that everything's hopeless. My sermon today has three phases: one, Oh my God, we're all going to die. Two, Jesus points beyond death to eternal life. Three, this eternal life is visible to the eyes of faith here and now. So if you lose the thread, don't worry. It's not all bad.

Several years ago, the makers of the Xbox ran an ad in Great Britain that was almost immediately banned. I finally watched it on Youtube this week, but I remembered the description vividly from reading about it in 2002. A woman is in labor, and her child flies into the world and right through the hospital window. The camera follows him as he becomes a boy, a man, and then an old man, all while flying high above the earth. After a half-minute of rapid airborne aging, he crashes into a grave. "Life is short," the ad closes. "Play more."

It's a disturbing ad, without a doubt. It's grotesque. I will say that I found the concept less impressive as the father of a baby boy than I did back when I was a death-obsessed college student. And I'm still a little puzzled by this: is remembering that life is short supposed to encourage us to spend more time blowing up digital zombies, rather than calling an old friend or reading to our children or doing something useful? All the same, I wonder if the ad provoked such an outraged reaction because it was so frank. We're born, we live, we die, all with breathtaking speed. This is true even if God blesses you with a long life. This is not an altogether bad thing. It makes every day precious. It keeps the world from becoming overcrowded with miserably jaded immortals. It gives life some urgency. You'd better believe we wouldn't even be making an effort to get you all out of here in an hour if we lived forever.

All the same, we humans try very hard to stiff-arm thoughts of our own mortality. How else can you explain the fact that people will wait for an hour in line to eat brunch? Or watch an episode of The Simpsons for the fifth time? If I gave death any thought, I don't know how I'd be able to merge from Mannheim Road onto the Eisenhower at rush hour. Funeral homes depress property values and moods. Politicians try to tell us that they can keep us safe from all evils. Aging and natural death are hidden in our culture, while youth is celebrated. People still manage to experience boredom. We children of Adam and Eve are always closing our eyes and imaging that the fruit was never eaten and that the road to the garden is still open. When I was a hospice chaplain, I saw that this denial could last up until the very end of life.

Today in our Gospel lesson, Jesus is dealing with his own mortality head on. It is the feast of Passover, during which he will be offered to ward off sin and death for all time. Two Greek gentiles have come to see him, meaning that word of him has gone forth from God's chosen people to the rest of the world. Now is the time of decision. It's time for the Son of Man to be glorified. And how will he be glorified? "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies," Jesus says, "it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life." This is the kind of statement that will get you sent to the school psychologist nowadays. Jesus today would be enduring questions about his feelings and about how he gets along with his Father--an especially tough issue in his case. It's a voice from a different age. And it's important to hear it correctly. Jesus is not saying that life is bad and death is good. When they put Socrates to death, he said that it was for the best--either he gets to sleep forever, or hang out with the heroes and wise men of old. Jesus was not a philosopher. He had friends. He wept over the death of Lazarus. He pitched his tent among us precisely because life is good and should be good. But it is not the only good. It is not the highest good. As soon as life becomes the highest good--as soon as you will do anything to keep it--you must hate your life. As soon as your life becomes captured by the world, you must hate your life. That's why Jesus is so hard on people when they try to make him into a moral teacher or a political ruler. He did not come to be a first-century version of the Deepak Chopra or Che Guevara. These wayward disciples can't see the great hope to which Christ is calling them--a hope stronger than life and death. That is why Jesus has come to this hour. That is how God will be glorified in him. The grain of this life is good, but it bears the fruit of eternal life only when we yield it up to the earth. This is a realization that troubles even Jesus.

And yet Jesus says, "Now the ruler of this world is cast out." Not "in the future the ruler of this world will be cast out," or "at the last day the ruler of this world shall be cast out," but "now." Eternal life isn't something we just wait and suffer for. It's something that invades our world even now. It disrupts our false sense of security. It breaks down the barriers we set up between ourselves and our neighbors. It invites us to do more and greater things than we had ever thought possible. Eternal life rides the train in peace and awaits the bus with patience. Eternal life doesn't look over its shoulder in the tough neighborhood. You've tasted it if you've ever taken a risk without either denying death on one hand or fearing it on the other. Because what looked to all the world like Jesus' lowest moment was actually his hidden victory. "When I am lifted up from the earth," he says, "I will draw all people to myself." Think about that--"I will draw all people to myself." All people. Even the shortest, most tragic life. Even the most barren, depressing day. All lives have something in them that points to that fact of a man on a cross. Every life is just unspeakably important.

So what of my Xbox ad and the panicked reaction it caused? Maybe it's not just that it showed the flight from womb to tomb in 30 shocking seconds. Maybe it was the idea that life is not only short, but kind of pointless. The best thing to do in this brief life is to distract and amuse ourselves, it seemed to say. That really is a depressing thought. The eyes of faith, however, see things differently. We know that life is short. We hear Simeon telling Mary that a sword will pierce her heart, also. We see jealous, fearful Herod ordering the massacre of the innocents to try to eliminate Jesus. We claim that God became human and was killed on a cross at a little over age thirty. The eyes of faith see a short life. But they also see a vast life. The eyes of faith see every human being as a little world. The eyes of faith see tragedy and comedy and heroism in every human life, no matter how small. The eyes of faith see a sick person not just as a patient but as a creation. They see a struggling student not just as a hard case but as God's holy temple in need of restoration. And everyone, everyone, everyone has something in them that snatches at eternity.

So yes, life is short. And the grave always draws us to it. But beyond the grave, the crucified and risen Lord draws us still farther. Thanks be to God. Amen.

March 29, 209

Benjamin J. Dueholm

Pastoral Associate

Wicker Park Lutheran Church

Chicago