Sermon for the 17th of March - Passion Sunday
Today I would like to reflect on Jesus going up to Jerusalem.
Dead seeds bearing much fruit.
And how the Christian faith can compel people to place themselves in mortal danger.
Stanley Rother was born near Oklahoma City in 1935 and ordained in 1963.
A few years later Stanley was posted to the Diocese’s mission in the Guatemalan highlands in Santiago Atitlan. This was a period of civil war and strife which would continue until the 1990s.
He learnt to preach in the local language. He set up a radio station for broadcasting language and maths. In 1980 his radio station was destroyed, and the director murdered. He wrote to the faithful in Oklahoma about the violent situation. “This is one of the reasons I have for staying in the face of physical harm. The shepherd cannot run from the face of danger.” Shortly after, it was learnt his name was high on a hit list of right-wing death squads. He was pulled out of Guatemala. Desperate to celebrate Easter with his Guatemalan congregation, he returned a few months later. He was murdered the following July.
I was reminded of Stanley Rother when I read these words from today’s Gospel
“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.”
Today, pilgrims flock to Fr. Stanley’s church in Guatemala. A single grain died yet bore much fruit.
So much fruit, that Stanley Rother who was beatified in 2017, the first US born priest and martyr to be so.
Think too of other words of Jesus we just heard:
Those who love their life lose it, those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
Can you think of others who have left a place of safety to return their country of origin?
In the full and certain knowledge, they are very likely going to their death.
Alex Navalny?
And in this season of Lent, I would like you to also remember Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor who returned to Germany from a lecture trip in the US in 1939; He would be executed in April 1945 by the Nazi police.
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.
Today is Passion Sunday.
This is when Jesus’s ministry pivots- Having said often, for example at the Marriage in Cana of Galilee “My hour has not come,” something triggers and Jesus exclaims:
The hour HAS come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
The rush of ministry, of miracles , teaching and telling parables is almost over.
From being a person always “DOING”, Jesus is going to be “DONE TO.”
Just as Rother and Bonhoeffer’s returns to Guatemala and Germany heralded death, so the move to Jerusalem by Jesus will lead to certain death.
Bonhoeffer’s legacy is another example of the dead seed bearing much fruit.
Bonhoeffer wrote a letter from prison, which encapsulates for me the tensions of Lent, as we contemplate, indeed I would say struggle with just how much of the world we can let go.
When we talk of letting go of the World, perhaps what we really mean is letting go of SELF - how much of self we can let go.
Let go of self by all means- but should we let go of the world?
Here’s what Bonhoeffer wrote:
I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called priestly type!), a righteous person or an unrighteous one, a sick or a healthy one
By “this-worldliness” I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In doing so we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world -watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That is how one becomes a human being and a Christian.
Watching with Christ in Gethsemane - what might this mean? How might we watch with Christ in Gethsemane?
How we can live unreservedly in life with its duties and perplexities.
I suggest it requires us to be intentional in our dealings with others.
That is how the seeds, watered by the examples of our forebears of faith, bear much fruit.
Perhaps we are to imagine ourselves walking in proximity with Jesus, being present at the events of Passion Week and Holy Week.
Jeremiah writes “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.”
Let the light of Christ burn ever more brightly in our hearts this Passion tide.
Bonhoeffer finished his letter with these words:
“May God in his mercy lead us through these times; but above all, may he lead us to himself.”
May God lead us to himself this coming Eastertide. Amen.