Heartbroken
For two weeks in a row now, Jesus has talked about being lifted up. Last week he compared what is going to happen to him, being lifted up, to that time when Moses put a bronze serpent on a pole and lifted it up for people to look at after they had been bitten by snakes themselves, so that they might be healed.
This week he says that when he is lifted up from the earth he will draw all people to himself.
Both references, of course, are to the cross and also his ascension after his death. When he is lifted up onto the cross, everyone will look upon him and see the glory of God who is willing to die for those he loves, who is showing that he will be with them in their own suffering and shame.
Being lifted up will be an exaltation. His rising from the dead will show us the true power of God. And his ascension will be a way for people to be reconciled with God. But despite the lofty language Jesus uses - glorification - in the short term, we are talking about something traumatic here.
There is much trauma in the world. Read the news. See the destruction and death and starvation and brutality and the continued tearing of the fabric of community through hatefulness on the front page every day.
It’s so wearing and depressing.
As we move closer and closer to Good Friday, I am more and more aware of just how close I often feel to drowning in sorrow. How my sense of resiliency has grown thin.
Yet I believe that we cannot look away from trauma, from disaster, we cannot look away from wreckage of all kinds because I know that God is to be found there and that God calls us to stand there too, even if all we can do is just stand there and weep. And we would be in good company if that is all we can do. At the foot of the cross stood Mary Magdalene and the other women after everyone else had run away. They stood in sorrow and they stood bearing witness. It was all they could do.
But of course that was not the end of the story. Mary Magdalene and the other women later spoke up about what they had seen - not only death but also resurrection. Not that people believed them at the time. They spoke of the power of love.
When Jesus speaks of the grain of wheat dying but bearing much fruit, he is reminding us that there needs to be a response to what happens to him. The world responded to Jesus by putting him to death, but also a community of believers was formed and responded to his life and death and resurrection and ascension by serving in the world in his name, bearing witness and responding to suffering and bringing forth life and redemption through the power of love.
We are the current generation of that community called to continue to bear fruit.
It would be nice if our story were that Jesus was a good teacher who lived a good life and died a good death, a feel good story of gentle wisdom imparted to eager and dedicated followers, but our story is a lot more radical than that. Our story is that we follow a man who is actually hard to follow, who turned things upside down, who erased traditional cultural boundaries, who flaunted customs and who was willing to die rather than become complicit in the use of violence through which to take revenge or wield destructive power.
He was killed because he was a threat to the status quo of both political and religious leaders, because he dared to treat the poor and the sick and the outcast as if they were just as important as the rich and the privilegedand dared to say that this is what God is like.
He took on being an outcast, he took on being abandoned, he took on being misunderstood, scorned and scourged, taunted and tortured in hopes that something would be broken open in us that would lead us to see the dark side of power and how the world’s love of that kind of power is driven by evil.
He challenged us to keep looking through it all until we could see the redemptive power of love that God can bring to bear that will heal us and heal the world.
He took on dying a shameful and horrible death - described succinctly in our creeds as “he suffered” and in response he asks US to bear witness to the suffering in the world and to minister to those who suffer as well because we know another power, the power of love, the power of resurrection life.
As he says today in the Gospel, our response it to bear fruit.
Which we do by seeing the suffering around us and opening ourselves to the Spirit’s leading us into response, as individuals and as a community, through direct actions on a personal level and as part of community efforts,
from supporting just public policy to giving from our resources to humanitarian or peacemaking work. And standing up against a culture of hate and violence and death. Because we know that what God wants for us - and for all - is life.
Our engagement can be powerful and transformative, for us and for the world, but undergoing transformation through the power of God means being willing to first be broken wide open by the suffering we see.
As Holy Week draws near and our sorrows and the sorrows of the world are about to be illuminated by his,
what do we think following Jesus is supposed to look like when he speaks of dying to bear fruit, of losing our life to save it, to see glory, to hear thunder and know it to be the voice of God? What will we see when he is lifted up? What must be broken open in us now, and how will we bear witness to it?
And most of all, how will we respond?
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