Preached by the Right Reverend Grant Lynn Ford at the Sunshine Cathedral at the 9:00 am service on Sunday, April 2, 2006, the Fifth Sunday in Lent.
The grace of our Master Teacher — the love of God in the unity of Spirit — be with you all.
God of all Creation: You write upon our hearts and in our minds your love and wisdom for living the good life. You speak to us just as you did with the prophets of old. You call us to action to share your love and our gifts with others.
Yet we sometimes, out of fear, choose not hear your voice. Lord have mercy.
We do not always do what is beneficial for us. Christ have mercy.
We hesitate to answer your call. Lord have mercy.
Today we choose to step out and embrace your calling for us. We rise to reach our potential and to share our very best with others. We respect Jesus and will allow him to support us and guide us in all we do. All this we ask in his holy name, Amen.
Jeremiah 31:31, 33 (abridged)
31“One day,” says the Holy One, “I’m going to make a new covenant with Israel and Judah. 33This is the heart of that new covenant: I will write my Precepts not on tablets of stone, but on their hearts, in their minds. We will be intimately, internally connected. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
Scientific Christian Mental Practice — Emma Curtis Hopkins
All the liberating of the inner fire within us to operate on the world without us, by laying hold of its substance, is the speaking of the God-voice within us. This voice may come from the God-voice [outside] us, as it did to the prophets. If we feel that around us is God we may hear a voice from the bushes, like Moses. We may hear a voice from the air, as Samuel did. We may hear a voice from the clouds as Jesus Christ did. If we contemplate the God within us we shall feel the voice within us, and it will be as audible as if it were without us. Whichever way we may hear it we seem to turn our faith in that direction, and so our strength comes from that kind of faith. If we are determined that ALL is God we shall not be limited to the voice within nor the voice without. Everything will bear witness that we are in God.
John 12:20-26 (abridged)
20-21Some Greeks to Philip with a request: “We want to see Jesus.”
22Philip and Andrew went to Jesus with their request. 23“They want to see me? Jesus responded. “This is the time when the son of humanity is going to really be seen, to be seen, to be magnified! 24Here’s how it works: a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies. Otherwise it will always be one grain of wheat there are! 25So clinging to life will only bring it to an end. But if you simply let it go —without struggling or clinging—it goes on and on and on, right into eternity! 26If you want to walk this path with me, you’re going to have to do what I do. Then — like the grain of wheat — I will be replicated in the life of all of you. God’s glory will fill you all!”
I love a good farm story like anyone else. Seems Jesus did, too, because he was always telling them, as he did in our Gospel lesson today…which reminds me of another story.
It seems that this farmer was milking his cow. He was just getting a good rhythm going when a bug flew into the barn and started circling his head. Suddenly, the bug flew into the cow’s ear. The farmer didn’t think much about it until the bug squirted out into his bucket. You see, it went in one ear and out the udder.
Well, maybe I’d better stick with Jesus’ farm story. It’s not quite the groaner mine is.
Jesus spoke of “a grain of wheat [which] falls into the ground and dies.” Some scholars think he was talking about his own death, which at this point in his life he was anticipating. It’s like that this is true, as he must have realized that his counter-cultural teachings were going to have tremendous repercussions on him.
Why, if he were preaching today, he’d likely be killed all over again, or at least run out of many churches!
He also knew — like many others who were martyred — that his death would be the seed of something powerful.
Martin Luther King Jr., whose martyrdom we commemorate this week, was aware that he could be killed. His response, when questioned about it, was: “I just don’t worry about things like this. If I did, I just couldn’t get anything done... The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important. If you are cut down in a movement that is designed to save the soul of a nation, then no other death could be more redemptive.”
Charles Gilmer, a national director for Campus Crusade for Christ, said: “We can give new life to ‘The Dream,’ following the path of Dr. King. Our path may not lead to martyrdom by an assassin’s bullet as it did for Martin Luther King, but it does lead to dying to our selfish ways and self-sufficiency. Such a faith is not a weak-kneed, escapist religious exercise, but a courageous pursuit of that which is ultimately good, right and true.”
Jesus was fully aware of the fact that he alone couldn’t bring the realization of the kingdom of God into the world. It would take others like him. It could take centuries, even millennia, to accomplish the task. So he clearly said that the seed would never reproduce itself until it died to itself.
He’s not talking about the death of the ego, which is the goal of many religions, but of the letting go of the ego, setting it free from a sense of failure, of possessiveness, of a ‘clinging to itself’. “Clinging to life,” he tells us, “will only bring it to an end. But if you simply let it go—without struggling or clinging—it goes on and on and on, right into eternity!”
Seed goes into the ground, and like we sang earlier this morning, “The dark, warm earth lies heavy, damp, a tomb that blocks the light; there is no way to cling to life in that eternal night.”
But the hymn writer gives us hope. “Then something stirs—a puff of wind, a warming drop of rain.” Here is the metaphor of Spirit, alive and working even when sickness, poverty and ultimate death threatens. This is what Jesus is talking about…Spirit cannot be killed or silenced or stilled, notr can death triumph over life. The hymn’s stanza ends with “The seed begins to stretch and burst, as life begins again.”
In the next stanza we sing, “A brave new shoot peaks out of earth and stretches to the sun; now bursting full of brand-new seeds, its life goes on and on.”
So we hear the words of Jesus: “Let it go…it goes on and on and on, right into
eternity!” He’s talking about something that can happen right here and now,
not waiting until we’re dead and in the ground.
All we have to do is quit struggling, quit clinging to life and everything in
it, let go and let God…and the seed bursts forth within us, the seed of the
kingdom of God, manifested in life, health, abundance, goodness, multiplying
in acts of mercy and justice and love.
Remember the parable of Jesus? “It’s like a mustard seed, the tiniest little seed. But when it’s planted it grows into one of the largest trees around. Birds build their nests in the branches.” Matthew 13:31-32
There is another parable you may not have heard. It goes like this: “A wealthy Brahman farmer, was celebrating his harvest-thanksgiving when the Blessed One came with his alms-bowl, begging for food. Some of the people paid him reverence, but the Brahman was angry and said: ‘O wandering monk, it would be more fitting for you to go to work than to beg. I plough and sow, and having ploughed and sown, I eat. If you did likewise, you, too, would have something to eat.’
“The Enlightened One answered him and said: ‘O Brahman, I too, plough and sow, and having ploughed and sown, I eat.’
“‘Do you claim to be a farmer?’ replied the Brahman. ‘Where, then, are your oxen? Where is the seed and where is the plough?’
“The Blessed One said: ‘Confidence is the seed I sow: good works are the rain that fertilizes it; wisdom and modesty are the plough; my mind is the rein; I lay hold of the handle of the law; earnestness is the goad I use, and exertion is my ox. This ploughing is ploughed to destroy the weeds of illusion. The harvest it yields is the immortal fruit of Nirvana, and thus all sorrow ends.’”
Buddhists and Christians alike may understand that when the seed is allowed
to grow, it yields immortal fruit. The great Sufi Master Rumi, spoke of “wheat
grain that breaks open in the ground, then grows, then gets harvested, then
crushed in the mill
for flour, then baked, then crushed again between teeth to become a person’s
deepest understanding.”
He is speaking of the seeds of luminosity, as it is called in Sufism, shining bright as the full moon in the darkness of night. Sounds like enlightenment to me! Sounds like salvation to me! Sounds like “Aha!” to me!
There’s the seed that can grow in our lives right here, right now, on and on and on, right into eternity. It’s that enlightenment or consciousness of ‘the kingdom of God within’, flowing out in rivers of blessing and goodness, justice and mercy.
Charles Fillmore wrote in his book Atom Smashing Power of Mind: “When we finally understand the facts of life and rid our minds of the delusion that we shall find immortal life after we die, then we shall seek more diligently to awaken the spiritual [person] within us and strengthen and build up the spiritual domain of our being until, like Jesus, we shall be able to control the atomic energy in our bodies and perform so-called miracles.”
Jesus tells us, “If you want to walk this path with me, you’re going to have to do what I do. Then—like the grain of wheat—I will be replicated in the life of all of you. God’s glory will fill you all!”
God’s glory filling us all? Jeremiah says on God’s behalf: “I will write my Precepts not on tablets of stone, but on their hearts, in their minds. We will be intimately, internally connected.”
What more could we ask for in this life than what the Buddha describes as “the immortal fruit of Nirvana”? Or what Rumi calls “a person’s deepest understanding”? Or what Jesus calls “life abundant and eternal”?
Who could ask for anything more than that life which—when we let it go—goes on and on and on. And that’s the Truth!
Seeds of enlightenment grow in me.
I am bursting with abundant life —
life that heals,
life that prospers,
life that blesses me —
and brings hope and help to others.
I am bursting with abundant life —
and I like it like that.
And so it is. Amen.
The playwright Henry Miller said: “Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music — the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.”
