Signs on the Way: Yield A sermon by Rev. Aaron Fulp-Eickstaedt At Immanuel Presbyterian Church, McLean VA On March 22 nd, 2015

Transcription

1 Signs on the Way: Yield A sermon by Rev. Aaron Fulp-Eickstaedt At Immanuel Presbyterian Church, McLean VA On March 22 nd, 2015 Today I continue a series of sermons I m calling Signs on the Way, in which I ll be looking at scripture passages in light of certain traffic signs as a window into the journey that is the spiritual life. Today the assigned lectionary passage from the Gospels is from John 12: There are a couple of things you need to be aware of as you hear it. First, when John has Jesus speak of hating one s life in this world to keep it for eternal life, the word hate there is intentionally strong. It s meant to have you sit up and take notice. Hating one s life is not to be understood in the sometimes whiny way a child (or adult for that matter) can say, I hate my life. It should rather be heard more like the Apostle Paul, after telling the Philippians how much reason he had to boast about his religious life and status, then going on to say that whatever gains he had he counted as loss. Indeed, not just as loss, but as skubala dog excrement for the sake of knowing Christ. It s not hating life itself that Paul and Jesus are talking about, I think, but coming to reject as distasteful a certain acquisitive, defensive, and aggressive approach to life and living an approach that is unwilling to yield, to let go. The second thing to know as you hear this text is this: When John has Jesus say to God, Glorify your name, that word glorify give glory to is rooted in a Hebrew word that means weight, substance, presence. To glorify something is to give weigh, substance and presence to it. To glorify someone is to testify to their importance, it is to give weight substance and presence to that person to show and tell the world who that someone is. Third, when John has Jesus speak of being lifted up, he s talking about being lifted on a cross to die, to yield up his spirit, to endure the hatred of those who resisted the message of love he came to bring. So, with that perspective on hating one s life, glorifying God, and being lifted up let s together listen for God s word in John 12. Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, Sir, we wish to see Jesus. Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 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. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor. Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say Father, save me from this hour? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name. Then a voice came from heaven, I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again. The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, An angel has spoken to him. Jesus answered, This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. Of all the traffic signs out there, perhaps the most difficult one to get for a novice driver at least, is the Yield sign. You know how it is supposed to work. You come off one road onto another without necessarily coming to a stop, but having to pay attention to the traffic on the road onto which you are

2 merging. You look over your shoulder, ceding the right of way to the vehicles traveling on the thoroughfare you are entering. It s not always easy, of course, but it s important, because not yielding can have drastic consequences, as we are occasionally reminded. Spend a couple of weeks paying particular attention to yield signs, as I have, and you ll notice that there are some places and times where you almost always have to come to a complete stop because the traffic is so heavy, others where it seems the traffic is light or flows smoothly so that it s easy to slip in. There are short merge areas which make the yielding difficult and longer ones which make it simpler. Then there are always people who just don t want to yield, no matter the volume of traffic or length of ramp. I don t really have good feelings about those people especially when they pull out right in front of me. There are always people don t want to yield. Yet traffic flows best when drivers are willing to do so, even without a sign telling them to do so. That can be so difficult, though, can t it? Here in Northern Virginia, as opposed to other parts of the country (say Pittsburgh, Dave Furry tells me), yielding just does not come easy. We live in a hard-charging culture, always hustling, get there, get there now, don t let people in, get ahead if you can. You ve seen it, maybe even participated in it. Gripping the steering wheel tightly in the line of traffic. There is no way I m going to let that guy in. Not today, buddy! You wait your turn. Then there are the people who intentionally wait to try to merge until they ve reached the front of the line if traffic. Gosh. People don t like to yield, not on the road and not in other parts of life either. As important and sometimes hard to figure out on the highway as yielding is, it may be even more important on the path of day to day life in the Spirit. When and how do we yield? To what and whom should we yield? Discerning the answers to those questions and living into them is part of the key to the life of discipleship. So the Gospel of John tells us that some Greeks Gentiles, people outside of his and his disciples religious tradition came to Philip looking to see Jesus. They d clearly heard about him and they wanted to find out what this guy was all about. So Philip found Andrew and together Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. In response, Jesus, as he is wont to do in the Gospel of John, delivered a monologue. A monologue on yielding, where in essence, he says: The time has come for Son of Man, the truly Human One to be glorified. The time has come for people to understand the weight of my message, to see just how I glorify God, how I flesh out God and God s priorities. And let me tell you it s all about yielding. Like a grain of wheat yielding up its life by falling into the ground, so that the seed might yield give up, give forth, or bear fruit so must you and I learn to yield. We must learn to give up a certain grasping approach to life in order to experience what it is to live in Beloved Community. We must learn to let go of a way of being that is all about getting and protecting and embrace a way that is about giving and serving. We must learn to die to self so that you might live to and for God. That is a pretty tall order. As if to emphasize the difficulty of such a charge, Jesus then lapses into what some have called The Gethsemane moment in John s gospel.

3 In John, as opposed to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, there s no scene depicting Jesus praying in the Garden under an olive tree alone on the night before his arrest, pouring out his soul to God while his disciples snooze away. There s no scene showing Jesus praying If it be your will, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. No, in John there s just this scene and these words spoken by a man who knows he is going to be hung on a cross Now my soul is troubled. But I m not going to ask God to save me from this time. No, it is for this reason I have come to this time. That s the ultimate yielding, whether it happens in Gethsemane or not: letting go of clinging to life and privilege at all costs, knowing that you are going to be rejected and killed for standing for a love that is for the whole world, no exceptions, and standing against a status quo that is based on exclusion. Knowing that you ll be castigated for protecting the vulnerable, for working for justice, for seeking peace and reconciliation, for embodying God s love in the world as Jesus did. Yielding like that, that is hard, soul-troubling work. No wonder Jesus said, Now is my soul troubled. How often we choose to yield to other things, other pressures. When I told Judith I was preaching on the yield sign today, she, like Fran Rooney did, burst into an old hymn that she d learned growing up in Baptist and Methodist churches. Maybe you know this one. I don t happen to know it. I grew up in Lutheran and U.C.C. and Presbyterian churches. We didn t sing this one, so I don t even know how it goes. So Brian, you can breathe easy. I m not going to try to sing it. This first verse goes like this: Yield not to temptation, for yielding is sin; Each vict ry will help you some other to win; Fight manfully onward, dark passions subdue; Look ever to Jesus, He ll carry you through. 1 Of course, there are things to which we are not supposed to yield. Yield Not to Temptation. Yield not to the desire for revenge, the urge to hate, the impulse to grasp, the tug of fearfulness. Yield not to complacency or despair. Yield instead to the power of the spirit of love, a love that is willing to lay down a certain approach to life for the sake of letting God s spirit, God s loving Spirit, work through you. That sort of faithful yielding happens every day all around the world. It happens even here in Northern Virginia. Sometimes you see it at the pharmacy. You wait in a long line. Somebody in front of you, who has waited in that same long line, finds out that there is a problem with her prescription. Rather than doing what you would do, she takes two deep breaths and calmly explains what she needs. Then when the clerk acts confused, she takes two deep breaths more and asks to see the manager. Fortyfive minutes later, she still does not blast the manager and does not complain. You wonder where that came from. It came from learning how to yield to the Spirit. 1 Horatio Palmer, Yield Not To Temptation, 1868, Public Domain.

4 That kind of yielding sometimes happens even on the highway. It happens when you ve got every reason to hold on to the grudge, but instead you let it go. Sometimes it happens in much more dramatic ways. I ve been amazed frankly, at the way Christians not here, but there Christians not here in the U.S. but Christians in Egypt and Iran and Iraq and Syria, have been responding to what is clearly evil. I don t often quote from Christianity Today, but I read this piece this week and I have to share a portion of it with you. The author of the article writes: Last week, the brother of two of the 21 Coptic Christians beheaded on video by ISIS presented an extraordinary message of grace to the killers. Beshir Kamel thanked ISIS for including the men's declaration of belief in Jesus, saying it had strengthened his own faith. Then, asked if he would forgive his brothers' murderers, he said that his mother would open her home to the men, and ask God to open their eyes. He even prayed for the men involved, asking God that they would 'be saved.' Meanwhile in the UK, Bishop Angaelos, the General Bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church here, has called on Christians to forgive and pray for the militants involved. "I think as Christians that's our mandate," he told Christian Today. "It's what we do. I don't see it as being difficult." And in Iraq, a young Christian refugee told a TV reporter she hopes God will forgive ISIS. Myriam, whose family fled their village near Mosul when the militants moved in to seize it last year, was asked by a journalist from the Christian station SAT-7 if she would want to retaliate to the group. "I won't do anything to them," she replied. "I will only ask God to forgive them." BBC Trending reported on a video made by young Egyptian Christian Anne Alfred, which had gone viral in her home country in the wake of the slaughter (of the Coptic Christians). The video, which calls for forgiveness and peace instead of anger and hate, was watched over 500,000 times in the week following the murders. Quoting Jesus with the words 'forgive them father, for they know not what they do', Alfred's video struck a chord with Christians and Muslims in Egypt and beyond. The golden thread running through all of these stories - and others like them - is this remarkable notion of forgiveness, even in the face of unspeakable horror. And at a time of breathtaking inhumanity, we should allow ourselves to be equally struck by the shocking nature of this response. People who've been directly bereaved, who've lost their homes, whose lives as they knew it are over forever, expressing grace, forgiveness and peace to the very people who caused their pain. What kind of power produces that much strength? 2 What kind of power produces that kind of strength? I don t know. Ask Jesus. There s a remarkable scene in the movie The Butler 3. I hope you ve seen it. It s the early sixties and they are preparing for a sit-in. This kind of training in non-violence happened across the south. They are preparing for a sit-in and the butler s son is sitting there at a counter as they run through what might happen. They throw mustard and ketchup on him, they beat him, and he wants to respond with violence. 2 Martin Saunders, The greatest weapon against ISIS? Forgiveness., Christian Today. February 27, Lee Daniels The Butler, directed by Lee Daniels, 2013

5 A little later, they go through the same thing. But this is not a dry run. This is real life. And not only do people dump ketchup and mustard and salt on him, not only do they hit him, but he s carried away to be arrested. What kind of power produces such strength? I don t know. Ask Jesus. I ll admit it. The person at the pharmacy that wasn t the woman in front of me. That was me. Standing there, I thought, this is silly, it s trivial, it s nothing like what the Christians in the Middle East are experiencing, but how is it that I m not just going off like a rocket? Maybe it s because little by little, here and there, now and then, through the power of a community gathered around me, and around you, and most importantly around Jesus, I am learning what it means to yield. What kind of power produces that sort of strength? Ask Jesus.