POURED OUT TO MAKE US KIN
Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51; John 12:20-32
April 2, 2006
By Rev. Dr. Jeanne Knepper

Mychal Judge died on a sunny Tuesday morning in September, a day that had dawned clear and bright, with no hint of what would come. Mychal was a recovering alcoholic, a gay activist, a Roman Catholic priest, a Franciscan friar, and chaplain for the firefighters of lower Manhattan. On September 11, 2001, he went to the World Trade Center with his firefighters. Early that morning, as he bent to pray for an injured person, a piece of debris hit him on the head and killed him. Father Mychal Judge was the first casualty of 9-11.

The firefighters and police who knew him as a dear reflection of Christ, as the man who would laugh and pray with them, who would go anywhere with them, who was devoted to them, these firefighters and police put his body on a broken chair, carried him to nearby Saint Peter’s Roman Catholic Church, laid him on the altar in the sanctuary, knelt beside him, laid their hands on his body, and prayed for him in his death. In that moment of grief and loss, they took on the role of the priesthood; they became the church for one another, ministering to each other as they tended to the one who had loved them so.

A photographer caught the drama of the firefighters carrying Father Mychal on the broken chair in a photo that recalls Michelangelo’s Pieta, the sculpture of Mary holding the broken body of Jesus. His death has become a focal point for the oft-voiced and painful cry, “Why?�

Why? Why did Father Mychal, who did not have to be there, why did Father Mychal go towards a collapsing building? Why did he stay to comfort someone who was injured instead of saving himself? Did God want him to die? Why did he die?

Always, after the denial, always comes the question, “Why?� And so it was for the early Christians, those Followers of the Way of Jesus, the ones who walked and talked and slept and ate with their beloved leader, the ones who were left bereft when he was accused, tried, and executed, “Why? O God, why did he die?�

Each of the gospel writers addressed that question, as did the great evangelist Paul. The answers are different, one from another. Did you know that? Our scripture contain their reasonings as they developed different theories to come to terms with his death.

Their thoughts about the why of Jesus’ death have become different Christian theories, arguments that persist to this day. One is the ransom theory, which is built on a belief that Adam’s sin condemned all humanity to death, but that Jesus died to pay the price for our sin, so that we could be set free from death. A second is referred to as a substitutionary theory, that Jesus died as a sacrificial substitute for our deaths that would otherwise be the consequence of our on-going sinful behavior, just as the earlier Hebrew people had sacrificed bullocks, lambs, doves and grain to appease God for their sins. Both of these theories, you might notice, turn on a belief that God demands death and/or sacrifice to heal the broken relationship between God and humanity. Just recently, these theories were the driving force behind the emphasis on suffering and pain in Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of Christ.

Now, I’ve said it before from this pulpit, I wouldn’t worship or serve a God that I believed demanded blood sacrifice to balance off previous or on-going affront. And I’ll say it again: the notion that God demanded Jesus’ death, even as a substitute for our own, is a blasphemy against all that is holy and good, that is, against the very nature and being of God. Moreover, it is a teaching that lays a cover of sanctity over parental rage while advising the victims of abuse that submission to injury is a mark of obedience and makes one kin to Christ. These teachings are utterly wrong and harmful. God does not, DOES NOT will injury and death to God’s children. None of them. Never. At all.

But then, what are we to make of the death of Jesus? Are there other ways to think about it, ways that don’t turn on a notion that God demanded human sacrifice? Fortunately, yes, and today’s scripture is one of them. Written 70-100 years after the death of Jesus, John’s gospel roots the meaning of his death in the growth of the community of faith.

Let’s examine the passage again. It begins, actually, in the verse before the one we read, when the Pharisees claimed, after the healing of Lazarus, “Look, the world has gone after him!� And then, indeed, in the first verse of our lesson, we find some Greeks, that is some Gentiles, non-Jews, coming to Philip and saying, “Sir, we want to see Jesus.�

Now the significance of this is that both Philip and Andrew, to whom they all go next, were called into discipleship with the words “come and see.� In John’s storytelling, this is a way to let us know that these Gentiles want to be disciples. The message of Jesus is for them as well, is for Gentile and Jew, is for all the world. This is a message of universal salvation, built into the simple recounting of their appeal.

And notice, Jesus does not turn them away. He does not say they aren’t clean, or circumcised; he doesn’t choke at the notion of Greeks joining the inner circle. No, he tells them that his hour has come, when he will die. And how will this be? Listen again to his response, this time, through Eugene Peterson’s translation:

Listen carefully: unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds onto life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal. If any of you wants to serve me, then follow me. Then you’ll be where I am, ready to serve at a moment’s notice. The Father will honor and reward anyone who serves me.

Right now, I am storm-tossed. And what am I going to say? “Father, get me out of this�? No, this is why I came in the first place. I’ll say, “Father, put your glory on display.� . . . At this moment, the world is in crisis. Now Satan, the ruler of this world, will be thrown out. And I, as I am lifted up from the earth, will attract everyone to me and gather them around me.

John gives us, through his gospel, this gospel, this good news: the Word, the Logos, the very core of God’s meaning entered into human life as the one we knew as Jesus, wrestled, even unto death, with separation, with judgment, with all the ways we demean, injure, and exclude each other, wrestled faithfully and utterly with all that is evil, even as he knew that he would be killed in the process, because he understood that this struggle was God’s being in him and because he knew that nothing, not even death, could separate him from God. But more: his very death would bring people to him, would bring people to relationship with God, would multiply his faithfulness hundredsfold, overthrowing the rule of evil in all the earth.

And what of you, what of me? Do we sometimes feel that wrong is winning, that our efforts at faithfulness are puny and meaningless, that it doesn’t seem to matter at all what we long for, or do, or try to be? Do we wish for a word of hope and encouragement, some assurance that our lives will have meaning? It is here, in the promise that our little seeds of hope will sprout and bear fruit in the lives of others, that we have joined with the Christ, the being of God, still alive, even today, in the world.

Did you notice that the gospel writer used wheat as the seed that would be planted to bear much fruit? It was not accidental, for wheat becomes bread, and bread is the substance of our sacrament of communion, a sacrament already in use in the community of Christians when the gospel was written. This is what we recall, this is what we remember when we break the bread, when we share the cup: our lives may be broken, crushed, poured out as we live lives of faith, but they will never disappear into nothingness, for they become the bread of life, the cup of promise, the utter conviction that we do not and will never live apart from God. God is present, Christ lives, and we live wherever the community of faith has gathered to tell the stories of faith and to draw courage for lives of faith in our times.

Some would say that Mychal Judge, as gay man, as recovering alcoholic, that Mychal Judge could not be a bearer of Christ for the world. the firefighters of lower Manhattan would not be among them, for they saw Christ in Father Mychal’s love. And Jesus would not be among them, either. Jesus said, “If any of you want to serve me, then follow me. Be where I am, ready to serve at a moment’s notice.� Live without fear, love without reservation, hope without end, for your every act of courage sows seeds of God’s glory, plants fruits of faith, nourishes the body of Christ, alive forever. Amen.

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