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Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it cannot bear fruit.
Sermon for Passion Sunday, 2 April 2006; Holy Trinity Cathedral, Auckland
The Rt Rev’d Richard Randerson, Dean
A cartoon of Michael Leunig’s depicts God lying bleeding on the ground
and calling for help. A passer-by kills him off, saying God is all-powerful,
not a helpless, all-vulnerable victim.
As we approach our yearly contemplation of the suffering of Christ on the Cross,
the realities of power and pain in our world press upon us. Where do we look
for God in the midst of global suffering, in the abuse of power by the all-powerful,
in the blood of the innocent?
A poignant image on the TV screen on Friday was the 10-year old Iraqi girl
whose whole family had been killed by a party of US Marines who invaded their
home. She said she could not forgive, and in the midst of her trauma and imposed
orphan-hood, that is easy enough to understand.
So we feel angry with those callous US Marines, but who are they? Strip them
of their uniforms, return them to their home towns, and they are 20-year olds
whose lives have been turned upside down by being called up for a war they do
not understand in a foreign land, young men and women who have had brutality
bred into them, often for reasons of self-defence, who in another age might
have signed up for the American Peace Corps to bring food and aid to the needy
in Africa and elsewhere.
These are the flower of America’s youth, many of them poor, black and
under-educated, who, at a time when they should be preparing to live lives of
achievement for themselves and others, and to be finding life partners and raising
the next generation, are being sent out instead to destroy the lives of the
innocent, and to see their own lives traumatised and destroyed in the process.
They too are victims in the chain of viciousness.
Behind them are the masters of war who with almost limitless resources and
unbridled power take it upon themselves to invade a sovereign territory with
a rationale which has proved to be totally without foundation, and which we
now hear was no more than a PR smoke-screen anyhow : the intention to invade
was there all along.
The suave and power-dressed inhabitants of the White House are a long way from
the dead on the bloodstained streets of Baghdad, but behind them lies an even
larger constituency who keep them in power. These are the millions of mums,
dads and kids, people like you and me whose lives are more exercised by rising
rates and property values, or the rocketing price of petrol, than we are by
the pain of those far away.
The warlords know that their power will be stripped from them if they start
getting serious about carbon emissions, or end up with fuel shortages because
they have not moved to control oil supplies in foreign lands. As one cartoon
said : “What’s our oil doing under their sand?”
Thus much of the evil in the world comes back to what we might see as the desirable
and harmless pursuit of the good life. A prayer for war-makers might be a prayer
for ourselves :
We pray for all whose minds have become captive to brutality,
and whose hearts are deadened by violence in a cause that in their dreams seemed
noble,
but in the chaos of conflict and the calculation of killing has become base,
as your image in their enemy is forgotten. (Patrick Woodhouse : With you is
the Well of Life)
We return to Michael Leunig’s question of where, and who, is God? God
the all-powerful? – as we would like God to be, the God of certainty and
strength! or God the all-vulnerable? – the one to be found lying helpless
and bleeding on the side of the road. The answer lies in the words of today’s
Gospel. Jesus says : “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat
falls into the ground and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies
it bears much fruit.” (John 12. 24).
Jesus suffers with the suffering, is the companion of the dying, and mourns
with the grieving. But his words here point to a different dynamic : it is the
redemptive power that is generated by those who voluntarily give up things they
hold dear so that they might take on the discipleship of Christ. This is made
clear by Jesus in the following verse (v.25) : “ Those who love their
life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it
for eternal life” (The word “hate” means to “love less”).
At this moment in Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem he is the grain that will
fall into the earth and die, and will bear much fruit. He is the one who will
be “lifted up from the earth, and will draw all people unto me”
(v.32). The glory and the power of God is seen in the suffering and death of
the vulnerable, in the gentle saints and martyrs in every place and every generation
who have eschewed worldly power in order to testify and transform the lives
of those around them by the greater power of love and sacrificial living.
It is these saints, ordinary people like you and me, who have taken the opportunity
to walk in the way of Christ, and in allowing personal hopes and idols to fall
into the ground and die, and in challenging the evil consequences of corporate
and political stratagems, have been the source of hope and new life to others.
Hans Kung (On Being a Christian) describes them as those who practise
Love of enemies instead of their destruction, unconditional forgiveness instead
of retaliation;
Readiness to suffer instead of using force;
Blessing for peace-makers instead of hymns of hate and revenge.
We all like our certainties. But the Rev’d Scott Cowdell, Rector of St
Paul’s Church in Canberra, reminds us that God is an all-vulnerable god,
and writes : “the all-vulnerable God can’t be identified with any
ideology; the all-vulnerable god doesn’t bestow the authority of the sacred
on any human order. Rather the all-vulnerable god opens a new future for human
beings through the power of Jesus”.
Over the next two weeks as we follow Jesus on the road to the Cross, we might
remember his words about the grain of wheat that falls into the ground and dies.
And pray also the concluding part of Patrick Woodhouse’s prayer :
God of hope, the ultimate victory of love cannot fail.
Come with your truth and light; strengthen the peace-makers;
and in the places of our world where your body is crucified again,
turn the night-time of our violence into the day-break of your reconciliation;
So may we find, O God, hope renewed, faith vindicated, and peace finally reborn.
Dean’s e-mail : >randers@ihug.co.nz
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