Lent 5, Year B
April 2, 2006
Christ Church, Covington
“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”
(Jo. 12:24).
I love what Garrison Keillor calls “life’s persistent questions”. On his radio
show, Keillor posits a fictional investigator, Guy Noir, a comic spoof of 1930s
detective drama. Noir’s looking for answers to something big, when arguably he
ought to be paying attention to the case right before him: hence the comedy.
Most of us suffer from the exact opposite tendency, of focusing on the small
things and forgetting the big ones. Still, there are “life’s persistent
questions” (who am I? where am I headed? what does it all mean?), and anybody
who wants to be a fully paid-up member of the human race needs to be on the
trail of answers to the mystery.
So we come to Christian faith. At the heart of the Gospel is Jesus’ death and
resurrection, what our liturgy calls “the mystery of faith”: “Christ has died;
Christ is risen; Christ will come again”. In the great search for answers to
“life’s persistent questions”, Christianity holds up Jesus on the cross, the One
who rises again. Maybe you haven’t gotten to these questions yet; maybe you
don’t think they are important; maybe you think they can’t be answered. Or maybe
you even think you’ve got the answer, and the bad news is that there is no
meaning or purpose to the human endeavor beyond the experience itself. Or maybe
you’re still looking for answers. In any case, Christianity is wrapped up in
these questions, and seeks the answers in the story of Jesus Christ.
So what sort of answer to “life’s persistent questions” do we find in the death
and resurrection of Jesus Christ? Jesus himself appeals to a universal pattern
for the answer. In dying, the grain of wheat becomes the seed of new life.
Jesus’ death is more than destruction; in truth, it is surrender and sacrifice
for the sake of others that brings new life. Jesus is inviting the disciples,
and us, to understand that by trying to hold on to what we have, we put it most
greatly at risk. New life comes through a willingness to give up the old life,
as painful as that is. There is real grief and real loss in doing so, but the
good news is the reality of the new life that God gives us and the grace we find
to move ahead. We keep discovering new life just when we think we’ve come to the
end of the road. In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we find this
ancient pattern, realized in an actual human life lived by the Son of God.
It’s important for us to reflect on these questions, to reflect upon the death
and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Faith seeks understanding, and “life’s
persistent questions” are worth an attempt to answer. But there’s something even
more important than trying to understand the meaning of Jesus’ death and
resurrection (thank God!: because it is a puzzle), and that one thing is to try
to live it and make it a part of our own life.
You know where the dead ends are for you; you know the spots where you’re trying
to hold on to what you have and in the process putting it at the greatest risk.
You know where you are called to surrender in order to discover new life. It is
for you that Jesus has died and risen again. He does not require you to
understand this, or to feel in a particular way about it. He simply requires you
to make yourself available, in order to join in the new life he wants to give
you. He makes it as simple as coming to the altar in faith and love and hope.
Here we celebrate the life that he offered up and surrendered for us, so that
new life could break forth. “This is my body, which is given for you”. In the
face of “life’s persistent questions”, we’re invited to share in Jesus’
sacrifice and surrender, so that we may share his new life. In this Sacrament,
new life is available to us today, through God’s gift. We don’t need to have all
the answers to the questions. We simply need to make ourselves available to the
new life he wants to give us.
John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.
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