Coming to Terms with Death
John 12:20–33
One of the things that I’ve noticed as I have had the opportunity to preside over funerals as a pastor is that the tone, the emotional atmosphere surrounding a death can vary widely. Some endings are filled with laughter, memories, and connection. Others with deep sadness, despair, shock, and even anger. Many are somewhere between and beyond or even take place weaving layers of seemingly opposite emotions upon one another. Many are experienced differently by different people depending on their relationship to the deceased. To a long time caretaker, the final passing may bring a deep sense of relief and thankfulness that a loved one’s “time had come” is a cause for celebration and remembrance. Yet, that same final passing, may be experienced very differently by an out-of-state relative who had not yet come to terms with a loved one’s decline. To them, this was a deep and unrecoverable loss.
You can sometimes even get a sense of things by what an end-of-life service is called. A “Celebration of Life” or a Memorial Service or a Funeral.
Death, when it comes, is one of those things that forces you to come to terms with a new reality.
Sometimes that reality is very much welcomed.
Sometimes it is very much unwelcomed.
Sometimes, its complicated.
Sometimes, it is all three, all at once.
Sometimes, it is one or another, in their own time.
Whatever the case, when death comes into our lives, we face a reckoning. Things are no longer going to be the same.
It is hard to ever be fully prepared for death, but sometimes people are more prepared or less prepared. And this preparation, very much prefigures how one will experience death when it occurs. I believe the categories of right and wrong break down when you use them to apply to human emotions. Yet, when one is well prepared for the death of a loved one, it is my observation, that it is much easier to enter into a space that might be called a “celebration of life” when that reckoning comes. This is far harder to do, when death is a surprise.
In our Scripture today, we read the accounts of Jesus, the disciples and some Greek visitors who wanted to see Jesus.
Jesus was busy getting prepared for death. The Greek visitors and the disciples were not. They were in the midst of a Passover celebration. This is the festival that is referred to in verse 20. Preparing for death was probably the furthest thing from their mind. This was a time of cultural and spiritual celebration.
Jesus was seemingly aloof to the festival surrounding him. He was waxing philosophical about death. Busy finding purpose in his own death. Busy preparing for death.
Friends, at this moment in Lent, this is what Jesus invites us to do. We’re often much more like the Greek visitors, already busy thinking about Easter celebrations. We’re looking forward to the world continuing to open back up. Thinking about Spring Break and making summer plans. When we come to Jesus, when we start coming back to church, the last thing we want to do is to be met with somber reflection. Perhaps I’m wrong, but as we start to slowly open back up as a church and get back into a regular rhythm of things, maybe the tone you wanted to hear was a bit more upbeat than “let us prepare our hearts and minds for death.”
But friends, that is what Jesus invites us to do this morning. That is the opportunity we have in this final Sunday of Lent before Holy Week begins.
We want life here and now. We want celebration now. But Jesus teaches us in his words in today’s Scripture and in his actions of the weeks to come, that death precedes the kind of life that God gives. The real celebration only begins on the far side of death.
And here I’m talking about spiritual death. The entire journey of Lent is a preparation to die to something within ourselves that we need to let go of. Something within us needs to die, to fall to the ground, as Jesus says, so that it may bear much fruit.”
Throughout his ministry, Jesus waxes and wanes in popularity amongst the people. Yet, Jesus is never seduced by popularity. In fact, it seems to be that in moments where his popularity has reached an apex, he uses that exact moment to say some of the most unpopular of things. I know that next week is Palm Sunday when the people greet Jesus with palm branches and shouts of hosanna — the true culmination of his popularity. But in John’s gospel, that encounter immediately precedes our Scripture today. In fact, it is out of that crowd that the Greek people mentioned in our Scripture emerge. Into that moment of popular celebration, Jesus chooses to enter the town on a simple donkey. It is like being named CEO of a company and then intentionally driving into work the next day in some beat up, broken down car. Or as one commentator puts it, “”Jesus has gone and procured a donkey, as if in response to their misplaced enthusiasm for monarchical might. And after this great and grand celebration, where the crowds treat him like he is the Grand Marshall of a homecoming parade, Jesus meets them with a lecture on death and dying. We don’t know exactly what the Greek visitors wanted from Jesus, but I don’t think this was it.
The truth is, death is uncomfortable. That’s true whether it is the death of a loved one or some kind of internal spiritual death to some part of ourself. We know that there is a reckoning that must take place. We know things are about to change and it is hard to know exactly what that will look like. We see it even in Jesus. Jesus says, “Now my soul is troubled.” This is the point where most of us would turn back. Jesus considered it. He said, “And what should I say — ‘Father, save me from this hour.’” So often, we pray to be protected and delivered from the natural course of things in our world — disease, death, but also other things too — financial disaster, ending relationships, conflict with family and friends, poor decisions, and many other things. Our prayers often reveal that we treat God as a genie in a bottle, granting wishes. But in reality, God is the one who will accompany us on that most difficult of journeys — from the preparation to die to the moment of death itself and then beyond.
Friends, the Lenten journey is not a journey around pain and discomfort, but rather through it. Each of you, no doubt, has your own pain and struggles in life. I know I have mine. I’m not sure why those Greeks wanted to see Jesus, but the gospel of John tells us that the crowds gathered around Jesus because they had seen him raise Lazarus from the dead. Perhaps these Greeks had their own dead relatives they wanted Jesus to raise up. They wanted to be delivered from their pain rather than have Jesus help them process it.
Jesus could see that the miracles he was performing were not always being received as intended. People want the miracle without the transformation. They want resurrection without the preparation and death. This is often a shadow side of Christian faith. We want the benefits without the costs. We pray for miracles — to be delivered from situations of pain and death. But God is not in the wish granting business. God isn’t in this for a popularity contest. God offers to be there with us in the midst of our pain and struggles — and yes even death. And in so doing, God will help to transform that pain and death into something beautiful, redeeming, abundant and eternal. But God is not a cosmic pain killer. Rather, God will guide you towards the kind of pain and death you need so that rebirth and resurrection may occur.
Jesus teaches us today that it was only in dying that we can bear fruit. It is only in hating life, that we can have eternal life. If that language rubs you the wrong way, think about it like this — Jesus is saying short term pain, for long term gain. God is in the business of transforming this world and to do so, God needs servants willing to put others before themselves. It is only when we think of others needs before our own, that we can truly shift this world from one in which we’re looking out for ourselves to one in which love and community are the defining values. Jesus’s glory wasn’t found in the raising of Lazarus, his adornment by the crowds, and being sought after by admirers. Rather, it was found in his selfless love to die for the sake of others, even though that death was unjust.
For Christians, dying for the sake of others is glorification. We are a faith of putting others before our selves. I don’t think Christianity would be so popular if we were more explicit about this. But this is the true core of the Christian faith.
Our prayer focus this week is spiritual death. Perhaps you’ve gone this far in your Lenten journey and some part of you still looks for what you can get out of faith. People often get frustrated with church because they claim they are not “getting anything out of it.” Friends, this is exactly the problem. This is how the crowds, the Greeks were approaching Jesus — what could they get out of him? The point of faith and church isn’t for us to get something out of it. But rather it is to learn how to die to our own desires, to learn how to serve others, to begin to hate this “instant gratification” culture and yearn for something more eternal and abundant. Friends in your prayer time this week, on this final week before Holy Week, may we spend time earnestly seeking how to serve. How to let God walk with us through the pain rather than pretend God will take it away. May we seek to quiet that voice that says, I, I, I — me, mine and begin an others-first way of thinking, way of seeing the world. May we continue to die to egocentric ways of seeing the world and begin to adopt an others-centric way of seeing the world.
But here’s the hard truth about that — that shift feels a lot like dying. Lots of attachments and desires will simply need to go unfulfilled and unmet. But here’s the Easter truth — God has better things in store than what we can imagine in the here and now. Let us walk in faith, which so often means walking into some kind of pain, suffering, abandonment, even death without any certainty how things will be resolved. In so walking, we put our full faith in Christ, who will draw us all to himself in a glory that only God can imagine.
Would you pray with me?
