SERMON PREACHED BY THE REV. DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR
CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT
MARCH 16, 1997
The Humanity of Jesus IV:
Resignation
"We wish to see Jesus." (John 12:21)
Most of us, from time to time, receive calls from our friends, asking us if we would function as an intermediary. People ask me, for instance, if I would put in a good word for them to Desmond Tutu, or Bishop Browning, or Kathleen Battle (the diva, not the parish secretary). They ask us to do such favors because they want to approach some great personage, someone who receives lots of requests and calls. They reason, rightly or wrongly, that if we would be kind enough to mention them to our important friend, or even better, introduce them personally, or send a letter on their behalf, they could more easily hope to make contact with the V.I.P. in question. Of course, such acts often produce favorable results. How well I remember, nearly thirty years ago as a lowly seminarian spending a summer in England, being armed with three documents bearing the raised seal of the Bishop of Long Island. They were letters of introduction: me to the Archbishop of York, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Dean of Westminster. I took my letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury to his London residence, and presented it with my card, and behold! in three days I received an invitation summoning me to Lambeth Palace. (You see, there is early evidence of my suffering from delusions of grandeur!)
In today's Gospel, we see the who-you-know game at work. Some Greeks had come to Jerusalem to worship. They are eager to meet Jesus. News of his most spectacular miracle, the raising of Lazarus from the dead, was being circulated around the countryside, and these Greeks, known for their keen intellect and inquiring minds, want to make the acquaintance of this miracle-worker, prophet and preacher. But these Hellenic visitors, aware of Jesus' renown, reason that their chances of meeting him were somewhere between slim and none, so they elect to approach him through an intermediary, one of the disciples. But they did not choose just any disciple. They chose Philip, one of the two disciples with a Greek name. Philip was an excellent go-between, someone who shared Greek roots with the inquirers, and who was also connected to the Boss!
But even though one of the Twelve, Philip, believing himself to be at best a junior partner, approaches Andrew, the other disciple with a Greek name, to convey the Greeks' request, and together, the two disciples lay the Greeks' entreaty at their Master's feet. And just as Lord Arthur Michael Ramsey, the one hundredth occupant of the Throne of St. Augustine, deigned to grant an audience to a seminarian of no consequence from Brooklyn, New York, so did our Lord Jesus Christ grant an audience --- of sorts --- to the inquiring Greeks.
But there was one difference. I was elated, honored, and transfixed by my audience. Michael Ramsey, in his voluminous purple cassock, was larger than life, with eyebrows even bushier than Bishop Duncan's! Although we engaged in only a few minutes of small talk, that archiepiscopal utterance was, to me, impressionable Anglophile that I was --- did I say was? --- the Discourse of the Century! But the Greeks must have been disappointed with their audience. They expected to be ushered into the presence of royalty. They expected a glorious, majestic personage. They were ready to bow and scrape, to bask in the presence of greatness, to hang onto Jesus' every word! Jesus, at long last, would, through these Greek seekers, reveal his glory to the Gentiles. This is a Cecil B. DeMille moment. Lights, action, camera! Jesus' announcement only enhances their tiptoe expectation: "The hour has come," he proclaims, "for the Son of God to be glorified." How would that happen? asked the Greeks to themselves. Some great theophany? Some sound and light show? Surely it would be an event at least as dramatic as the Transfiguration. But no, Jesus describes his glory like this: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies it bears much fruit."
"Excuse me?" gasp the Greeks. "We couldn't have heard it right. Jesus must have got his heavenly signals crossed. This is not at all what we expected." But Jesus, clearly, knew exactly what he was talking about. He can't flub these lines; these are the words of his last public discourse recorded by John. You see, we praise God as the glorious one who is high, exalted, and lifted up. But Jesus speaks of divine glory as a seed falling to earth, dying. Jesus' glory is not in his exaltation, it is in his humiliation. It is not in his deification, but in his resignation. "Although he was a Son," the Epistle to the Hebrews reminds us, "he learned obedience through what he suffered." Or as St. Paul instructs the Philippians:
The divine nature was his from the first; yet he did not think to snatch at equality with God, but made himself nothing, assuming the nature of a slave. Bearing the human likeness, revealed in human shape, he humbled himself, and in obedience accepted even death -- death on a cross.
Do you wish to see Jesus? If you do, you must be willing to accept a few paradoxical guidelines. First, If you wish to see Jesus, you must understand that you will achieve life through death. And I think you know me and my theology well enough to know that I am not preaching a pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by religion. I am not suggesting for a moment, that you must wait to die and go to heaven, in order to cash in on all the goodies. No, our Lord said "You shall have life and have it abundantly," and I think that he had in mind life on earth as well as life in heaven. No, you don't have to die a physical death. But you do have to die to self. "He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life." When we are caught up in our own sense of importance; when we subscribe to a belief in the unholy trinity of me, myself and I, we court disaster. It is when we open ourselves to the needs of others, it is when we exercise a servant ministry, that we begin to find the meaning of life.
"Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die," Jesus says. This is the way a seed sprouts. It loses its identifiable life and then comes really alive. Jesus would prove this once and for all on Calvary, but suggests that in our earthly pilgrimage, we must be about the business (in the words of yet another one of he rector's favorite hymns they took out of the Hymnal) of "toiling up new Calvaries ever, with the cross that turns not back."
Do you wish to see Jesus? If you do, you must understand that you will achieve gain through loss. Did you hear Isaac Watts' words in the gradual hymn?
Those words too often fall on the deaf ears of a microwave society that wants instant results, instant returns on our emotional as well as financial investments. But Jesus fully understood counting gain but loss. The Devil said to him, "Here's the way to win a following." But Jesus chose God's way. The Devil tried again: "Here's the way to gain a kingdom." Jesus replied that to choose God's way is better. And he ultimately gained that kingdom by denying himself.
Do you wish to see Jesus? If you do, you must understand that you will achieve honor through service. Consider in your mind's eye all the famous people you learned about in school. They are legion --- inventors, athletes, presidents and kings. But if we were to separate out from this list those whom we call "great" we will notice that almost invariably those are the ones who are remembered for doing something for somebody, for those whom Jesus referred to as "the least of these my brethren."
Do you wish to see Jesus? If you do, you must understand that you will achieve victory through defeat. On Wednesday of this past week, a friend and colleague of mine was elected fourth bishop of the Virgin Islands. The news was of especial interest to me, because a year and a half ago, I was a candidate for the same post. In re-reading the journals I kept at that time, I was reminded of just how much I was desirous of that position. I was suffering at the time from a serious, perhaps chronic case of a disease that occurs only in priests called "purple fever." On the eve of the special diocesan convention at which a bishop was to have been elected, I received a letter from Betty Howard, asking if I would be interested in being considered for the rectorship of Calvary Church. Like Scarlett O'Hara, I said to myself "I'll think about that tomorrow" --- that is, after the election. When the election took place and no one got the nod, I phoned Betty, and the rest is history. The disappointment in St. Thomas, one of several defeats, was, as I now understand, part of God's plan to "lead me to Calvary," to use the words of the hymn we shall sing at the end of this service --- to lead me to the victory of Calvary, not a personal victory, but a victory for the whole church. My sense of call to this place grows daily, and I am convinced that I should be here in your midst as much as I am convinced that God called me to the priesthood in the first place. Yes, we achieve victory through defeat.
Most of us have the wrong idea about resignation. We believe resignation is giving in or giving up. In common parlance, resignation is taking a course of action when no other options are open to us. But throughout Holy Scripture, resignation is a submission to God's will. It is Isaiah declaring, "Here I am, Lord, send me." It is Mary proclaiming "Be it unto me according to thy word." It is Jesus simply saying "Into thy hands, 0 Lord, I commend my spirit."
Such words do not form easily on the lips of those of us who, as Paul warned, think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think. And the problem is compounded if we believe ourselves to be endowed with a disproportionate share of worldly goods or grey matter. But then again, no one said being a Christian was easy. We will learn what resignation means, we will see Jesus, when we can sing with conviction the words of an old revival hymn: