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  Sermon Heb. 5:1-10, John 12:20-33


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  At Christmas we celebrate the birth of a sweet baby. Miracle of miracles, we claim the baby as God’s own, the love of God Incarnate. As Holy Week hurtles toward us, the readings get more foreboding. It is one thing to celebrate a baby, but it is another thing entirely to face a good man, Jesus of Nazareth, facing an all too early death. Jesus Christ suffered, not only at the hands of Pontius Pilate. . Did Jesus suffer as God’s own, as human, as both? Since God is love, the heights and depths of love are known to God. To love is to rejoice, but to love is also to suffer. To love means caring as much for the other as we do our very own selves, so we may well sufer with them and for them. .

In both of our passages this morning, Jesus prays in the face of suffering. When were loud cries and tears lifted up, other than Gethsemane? In the Maccabees material these types of prayers are signs of piety, of being a good priest. I wonder if those loud cries and tears could also be prayers of frustration and confusion. If Jesus could see into the future, I wonder how many of those loud prayers were ones of pain at what we would, do, and will continue to do to each other? Of course, Hebrews pictures Jesus as the Great Priest of us all, the mediator, the bridge, between God and humanity par excellence. The job of the priest is to make intercession and offerings. For sins, for praise, for blessings. It could mean that he prayed out of death, from death, a pointer to resurrection. The linkage of these passages made me notice that the loud cries and tears to “now my soul/life is troubled” in John. I wonder if those loud cries and tears were not for us? Was the soul of Jesus troubled by us? We pray to be delivered from suffering. We pray in desperation for relief of suffering. Some pray to be able to face suffering with integrity and courage. I don’t know what Jesus learned through his suffering. Jesus was not set apart riding high above human issues. God does not ride above them either. Both sides join in prayer.

The Bibilical scholar Gail O’Day sees a relational stress here in John, so she emphasizes “the gift of life in love” After all, the fruit of the seed is the communion of saints, the community of Christians. When Jesus says, now my soul or my life is troubled could it be a sharing aspect issue of trust in the agony of the hour? Even though he faces death so resolutely, Jesus wants to live. The community fruit does emerge from the single seed; its life comes through the death the seed does not look forward to death. As I get older, I realize more fully that the life’s work of Jesus was terribly short. We really didn’t give him much of a chance to even get started. The seed loves life and expends its energy to create more life, abundant life.

We would like to see Jesus. We would too. Often people say that they would invite Jeuss to a magical dinner party for the greats. Many people want to see Jesus when they get to heaven; well maybe they want to see their family, well some of their family, first. What do we see of jesus in the various representations by artists? Some say we get to see Jesus in worship, in personal prayer. Calvin would insist that we see Jesus as the living image of the gospels. We get a glimpse of Christ in Communion. The disciples work through each other for this request. I think it is a signal to us that as Paul says, we form Christ. We allow others to see Jesus in our lives. The stunning answer to the request is that we see Jesus in suffering people, even in death. As Jesus says, to lose one’s life is to find it, its goal in eternal life. It clearly seems to mean to face death here, but it can include the loss of our egotism, the illusion of being in control, of letting go of our constant striving.