More to dying than just death
“More to dying than just death” (John 12:20-33)
by Pastor Peter Goerzen
March 25, 2012, Grace Hill Mennonite Church
American Dream: Achievement, Appearance, and Affluence
It’s often said that there’s more to life than money, and it’s true. As the old song goes, “Money can’t buy me love.” Even most non-religious types know that. Some folks say that rather than it all being about just money, there are three things to life; the three A’s of the American dream: Achievement, Appearance, and of course, Affluence.
Of course, after enough years chasing A’s in school or achievement on the field or in careers, we start to wonder if we maybe missed out on something else – like family or friendships or faith.
And everyone who’s ever gone through adolescence and lived to tell about it knows how exhausting it is to keep up appearances. Am I attractive enough? Am I good enough? Am I thin or tall or smart or funny enough? And then for those of us who add church life into the mix, the classic, Am I as happy as people think I should be? Do I know the Bible well enough? Was what I said in Sunday School wise enough? Do I have the right theology or ideology or perspective on faith to fit in with my church family?
And finally, I’d be surprised to find a parent who says, “Boy, I sure hope my kids have a harder life than I do. Life would be so much better for them if they had less money than we do.” The adult life is one of earning, providing, laboring, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but for many, seeking affluence becomes meaningless, or we find ourselves backed into making decisions at work that compromise our integrity.
Dream. . . or Nightmare?
The American Dream of Achievement, Appearance, and Affluence twists into a nightmare of exhaustion, alienation, and inauthenticity. Of course, most folks know in theory that there’s more to life than all this, but in actual practice between jobs, bills, obligations, and goals, well, how much more can you really fit into life?
Jesus of course knew just how nightmarishly alienating the life of achievement, appearance, and affluence really is. Those who served him discovered that there was more to life than just living, and whoever has followed him has discovered that there’s more to dying than just death.
When Jesus got word that the Greeks were looking for him, when he had heard that word of him had spread even across the seas, he knew his time had come. “The hour has come,” Jesus said to his disciples, “for the Son of Man to be glorified.” And they couldn’t have been more pleased. Finally some recognition. Finally some status. Finally a little comfort and respect after all the hard work. I tell you what, Achievement, Appearance, and Affluence isn’t just the American dream. It goes back a lot farther than that.
But that’s not the dream Jesus had, and that’s not the glory he was after. It was only a matter of time before the authorities realized that he was no longer just a backwater fascination with a ramshackle following, and they took action to eliminate that threat. The hour had come for the Son of Man to enter into God’s kind of glory. “Very truly, I tell you,” Jesus said, “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. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for the life of the coming age.”
More to life than just living, and more to dying than just death.
There are lots of people who try to protect their lives. There was once a peasant who came up to Jesus (Luke 12:13ff). All he wanted was his fair share of Dad’s estate – his own meager little helping of but the shadow of affluence, to give him a shot at life. After all, Jesus had preached about good news for the poor. “It’s story time,” Jesus said and told one about a rich man whose land produced abundantly.
And this rich man wondered to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops? Can’t sell it on the saturated markets. No room left in the storage bins.” So he planned to tear down his barns and build them bigger. Appears to be a good retirement plan. Achievement. Affluence.
So he dreams of saying to his life in days to come, “Life, you have ample goods laid up for many years; You’ve earned the good life; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” Sounds like the American dream to me. Work hard. Invest wisely. Expand your holdings. Make something of yourself, and enjoy life and prosperity. Throw yourself a party!
But God said to him, “You fool! This very night they are demanding your life of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”1 And like that, the dream became a nightmare. “Those who love their life. . . lose it.”
More to life than just living
What happens if you do everything in your power to keep life the way it is? What happens if you “prevent change, prevent conflict, prevent pain?” Well, you find that life really is more than just living, and the life you thought you had really isn’t life at all.
Well, what should I do, for I do not want to lose my life; I want the abundant life. “Here is what I will do:” I will plan to fill up my life with stuff of significance. I will go to church every Sunday and I will read my Bible every day. I will be a loving and faithful spouse my whole life long. I will pray for God’s kingdom to come. I will give faithfully and improve the lot of the poor and the oppressed. I will write letters and advocate to establish the peace and justice of God in the world!
Now that sounds like life! And then I will say to my life, “Life, you are secure, for you have achieved. . . your. . . goals. . . ”
But will I not wake the next morning to find the world to be a broken and violent place, despite my very best efforts? Will I not find myself limited by the constraints of time and busy-ness and my own faults to love my spouse with the perfection that I ought? Will I not find that the poor and the oppressed are still poor and oppressed, and worse, that simply by meeting the basic needs of living where I do, in the complex interactions of global connectedness, my own economic activity is contributing to the poverty and oppression of people that I don’t even know are alive?
Will I not wake the next day just as burnt out and empty as I was before. Will I not wake to find I’ve got a life alright, but hate the fact that I can’t actually control my life in the world the way I’d like to, won’t I hate that I can’t by my own sheer determination make the world better?
And there, there, Jesus says, is the answer. “Those who hate their life in this world will keep their life for the everlasting age to come.” Only if we hate the way we alienate our lives by worldly ways of living – seeking after affluence, appearance, achievement, or safety, superiority, and satisfaction – and the ways we get stuck in the world’s gears, if we hate that rat race enough to give it all up and start running after Jesus instead, then we will find God’s abundant life.
Jesus had a choice to make, and so do we. You see, if he wanted to make something impressive of his life, he could have chosen the path of self protection and self achievement. He could have tried to blend in a little better, maybe try to rise in the ranks of Jerusalem’s great teachers and climb the ladder of success to get to a place where he could “make some changes around there” finally.
Could’ve become famous and lived long if he wanted to make something of his life. But if he wanted to let God make something amazing of his life, well, then he had another option. If he kept relentlessly proclaiming and demonstrating God’s kingdom, eventually he would suffer for it. “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.” You see, the fact of the matter is, that if you live long enough, eventually you will discover, if you haven’t now already, that, contrary to almost every commencement address I’ve ever heard, there are some things you can never achieve no matter how hard you work, and no matter how sure your determination is. The will alone is insufficient in this world of massive powers beyond our control. If the grain never falls, never deigns to leave its place in the sun, it will remain always a single grain. No matter how much effort. No matter how much good intention.
More to dying than just death
But if the grain lets go and falls to the earth, and in a sense, if it dies, then, after a time, comes the sprout of new life and bountiful harvest. Jesus did not drive out the ruler of this world by sheer determination to hang onto life or by calling upon legions of angels to join him in battle. He did not free us from death’s grip by getting elected high priest or president; nor did he release us from sin’s tyranny by becoming a wealthy philanthropist who could toss enough gold and cash at the problem to make it go away, or by writing a book and going on tour. No no, Jesus won his greatest victory, secured our salvation, was lifted up to glory, by choosing suffering and dying, because, friends, for Jesus and for those who follow after him, there’s more to dying than just death.
What Jesus was saying is that suffering and dying may have a redemptive power. And one of the important parts of this story is that Jesus did have a choice. “No one takes my life from me,” Jesus said, “but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:18). There’s so much suffering in this world that has nothing to do with God’s kingdom. There is nothing redemptive in famine or genocide or abuse. Those who endure such suffering do not make a choice. The kind that is redemptive is the kind that Jesus chose – to be who God called him to be no matter what the cost.
Because Jesus was “willing to lose his life – because his message mattered so much to him that he was willing to show people what it meant instead of just telling them about it – his seed bore much fruit.”2 Because Jesus chose the way of faithfulness and was willing to die, God raised him from the dead. Because Jesus was willing to die, people found that there’s more to life than just living, and there’s more to dying than just death. “Because Jesus was willing to die, a new community could form in his name, one that redefined its life on the basis of his death.”3
Suffering and even dying were no longer to be feared and avoided at all costs. Suffering didn’t mean God was mad at you; it might actually mean God loved you, because when someone following the way of Jesus purposefully chooses the life of self-giving as Jesus did, that suffering becomes “one of God’s most powerful tools for transformation,”4 and it bears much fruit.
The greatest good, the most promising change, comes not through achievement, not through goals or sheer determination, but through dying. The solution doesn’t begin with greater accomplishment or initiative; it begins by dying, by self-offering. The New Testament talks about this quite a bit. Elsewhere, Jesus told his disciples to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him. “It is how God breaks open hard hearts so that they may be made new. It is how God opens closed lives so that they can get some air into them again.”5
Paul spoke repeatedly of this. “The world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14), he wrote. If we want the abundant life, what we really must do before any planning or goal-setting or new initiative to achieve, is to fall to the earth and die, to let go and to let God. Some of us who place such a high value on appearance and affluence need to die to the idolatry of the self, to our control on life. Dominating personalities need to die to their own power; proud achievers to their accomplishments, and to the idolatry of the mind. Then God may become the center, the standard, and we may become passionate about what God is passionate about.
Dying is not just for the powerful and confident either. It is also the path to freedom for the oppressed; for we must also die to hopelessness, fatalism, numbness, acquiescence if we hope for life God desires for us. Barbara Brown Taylor summarizes:
When Jesus died, this power was made manifest. By absorbing into himself the worst that the world could do to a child of God and by refusing to do any of it back, he made sure it was put to death with him. By suffering every kind of hurt and shame without ever once letting them deflect him from his purpose, he broke their hold on humankind. In him, sin met its match. He showed us what is possible. These are just some of the fruits of Christ’s death, things that could never have happened if he had not been willing to fall to the ground. . . If he had not died, we would not be here.6
Paul once wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives within me” (Gal. 2:20) The NT does not understand the cross and the resurrection as a one time event; rather, it is a story that is lived out in the body of believers who follow Christ over and over and over again. Jesus told his disciples to follow him by taking up their cross daily (Luke 9:23).
Paul said put it all together beautifully:
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:1-11, NRSV).
Truly there is more to life than just living, and more to dying than just death. Thanks be to God.
Notes:
1. “They are demanding” is the literal translation.
2. Barbara Brown Taylor, “Unless a Grain Falls” in God in Pain, 64.
3. Taylor, 64.
4. Taylor, 64.
5. Taylor, 64.
6. Taylor, 65.