Fifth Sunday of Lent

The Tale of the Magic Pomegranate - A story to listen to, together with this sermon. Click on the title to hear it read.

If you wish to hear the sermon as preached click here

Hebrews 5.5-10; John 12.20-33

After coming to the half way point in Lent last week and the rest from our thinking about the demands of the season in our Lenten discipline, today we begin to focus on the way ahead. And that way ahead leads us to the cross and beyond. From today we focus more and more upon Jesus' own journey in the last weeks and days of his earthly life. It's a journey through the pain and horror of death on a cross, to the mystery, wonder, joy and celebration of resurrection. And if we don't learn anything about the Christian journey and its meaning for each of us over the next couple of weeks then we are very unlikely to learn it at any other time of the year.

Today's gospel reading gives us, in just four sentences from Jesus, the whole meaning of the Christian life. If we miss this, we miss it all. And I have to say that outside the Sermon on the Mount, here we have perhaps the most important words of Jesus for us as his would be followers.

"Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." Those words and that simple image of a seed giving rise to a plant, so graphically convey the process of becoming a Christian, and we see that we might call it a whole of life process. When we look at a wheat grain. It is in every respect wheat. It contains the whole plant, in embryo. It's as fully a wheat plant as the plant itself. But to become the plant it has to become so transformed that it in effect goes out of existence, it 'dies' Jesus says. We can say that the grain, in growing, becomes what it is. And to do that, something of itself has to gave way to something else.

Every one of us is born in God's image and likeness. And when we are baptised we are given the Holy Spirit and we are 'made' Christian. At baptism we are made followers of Christ and members of the Church. But we are like that grain of wheat, that seed. We are in every respect a Christian after our baptism. But like that seed growing into the plant, we have to become what we are. As we grow in our Christian life, we become more and more like Christ. And in doing so, the way were has to give way to what we are becoming. Something of us has to pass away to give way to, as Jesus says, 'much fruit'.

And what has to die, what has to give way to something else, is usually our own will. In becoming a Christian, our own will has to die. Our own will has to give way to the will of God. And it is a dying. Jesus himself experienced this especially before his ministry began, in his temptation in the wilderness; and towards the end of his life in the Garden of Gethsemane when he was facing arrest and execution. It was his Father's will that he continue his journey to death. And his own will would have made him flee. And Jesus alludes to this further on in our gospel reading today: "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.'" Jesus gives up his own human will, puts it to death so to speak, to do his Father's will. And it's only then that Jesus becomes what he is, the Saviour of the World.

This is tough stuff. One of the recent Eastern saints is recorded as saying that there is no Christian life, only a Christian death. It makes being a Christian sound like a very sombre, painful and sorrowful way of life. But Jesus says that the life he brings is life in all its fullness. So we look to his promise. He says in this gospel reading this morning. 'Those who love their life, lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.....Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.' So just as the grain of wheat in giving up its life, goes on to become the full fruitful plant, so Jesus says, we do the same as his followers. We become fully what we are. And in that sense, in giving up our life, we get our life back. This time, it's the life God intends for us all along, intends from the beginning.

But we have to go through this process. There's no escaping it. To become what God intends for us, we have to go this way, this way of dying to our self, this giving up of our own will for God's will. In doing so we become like Christ himself, we become fully what we are. There are no half measures too. To gain all, we have to give all.

So this is the way we are following. Its the way of Christ, the way of the cross. But it leads to resurrection. It leads to what Jesus promised - life in all its fullness. And to know what that is, to know what it means, we have to travel the way ourself. Nobody else can do it for us. Each and every one of us has to make the decision to go the way of Christ and then to follow it if we are to become what God intends for us.

The good thing for us though is that there are those who have done it before us and those who are doing it alongside us. So we are not alone. We can share the journey and learn from one another and help one another along, if we will. That's what the Church is here for, this blessed company of faithful people. So we journey together with Jesus over the next two weeks, to his death and beyond. And as we look at his giving himself over to his Father's will, let us also try and do more of that sort of thing, remembering that it's only in giving that we receive, and in giving up our own self to God, he gives us of himself.