John 12:20-33
In the pacific northwest several tribes of native Americans practiced the custom of potlatch. These tribes lived off the land and managed to set aside some of their goods for the future. They also had enough leisure time to make carvings, totem poles, blankets and beautifully decorated tools. Among the various tribal families, some members of course were richer than others. Somewhere in the distant past a unique form of government evolved. Families would gather together, and the leaders of the families would compete in how much they could give away. The winners of this contest were the leaders of larger clans, and so it went. They recognized that a person who could give away the most was entitled to the highest leadership position.
In contrast, i think, is our American culture. We accumulate. I visit elderly people and one thing that seems common is that they have a lot of stuff. The dining room, once undoubtedly the place where a family celebrated special occasions, is now a place to put things that have no other purpose except maybe sentimental value. And the more we have, the less free we are, the more we are tied down.
Jesus is giving us a lesson on how to have a happy life. “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”. We know that this is true. All of us have experienced this. If you fall in love and commit your life to someone else, you have to let parts of your old life go. If you are a parent, you know that you have to make sacrifices so that your child can thrive. And if you have a career, you’ve sacrificed for it. We can’t grow unless we prune away things that hold us back.
We see this pattern in biblical stories. Abraham leaves his home and family to become a wandering herdsman, and God makes him the father of nations. Peter and Andrew leave their careers as fishermen to follow Jesus and become fishers of men.
The secret of life isn’t much of a secret. It’s a pattern of loss and renewal, of dying and rising, of letting go and getting back.
The Greeks at the beginning of today’s gospel want to see Jesus. And Jesus gives this strange response. John’s gospel always makes us think. Because i think we all want to see Jesus, not under the accidents of bread and wine, as we will see him today, but as he appeared on the mountaintop to his disciples. We hope someday to see him glorified.
But Jesus tells us the way this hope must be fulfilled. Whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where i am there also will my servant be.
If you’ve changed something about your life this lent, you may have an inkling of what Jesus is talking about. If I've given up something pleasurable and stuck with it, that’s a tiny bit of hating my life. If I've taken on a spiritual practice that I hadn’t done before, that’s a tiny bit of where I act out my love for Jesus. To the extent that my life is disrupted, I've made room for the holy spirit to act in me.
In the second half of the gospel Jesus points to the hour that has finally come, the hour of judgment, the hour when the great process of glorifying the father will begin. And Jesus talks about being lifted up. One writer talked about a threefold lifting up. First is his crucifixion; he is lifted up to the scorn of the world and dies his sacrificial death. The second is his resurrection, when he comes bringing with him the souls of those who have been waiting for him; souls like Abraham, Moses, David, Jeremiah -- prophets, priests and kings, as well as ordinary souls of the pre-Christian era. The final lifting up is the ascension, when Jesus goes to sit at the right hand of the father, to advocate for us until his kingdom comes and he returns to judge the living and the dead.
So we should ask ourselves today, what is there about my life that I should give up? What is holding me back from being a saint? And what can I do to allow Jesus to draw me to himself when he is lifted up?
