Our Response – COMMUNION
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Fifth Sunday in Lent – March 29, 2009
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: Jeremiah 31:31-34/Hebrews 5: 5-10/John 12: 20-33]

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

I read somewhere that those words should be inscribed, facing the preacher, in every Christian pulpit. The request those Greeks made of Philip hasn’t left us. People come to churches, talk to spiritual directors, read books, watch television shows, spend time in meditation and lots of money seeking exactly what those seekers from Greece were – they want to see the one who can bring them to peace, make them whole and bring them to union with God. Over the last several weeks we’ve talked about the human condition as seeking and how God responds to it with the covenant and grace. Last time we talked about our first response – conversion. Now the second – communion.

Those who would see Jesus would know communion. The word communion comes from the Latin word communio, which implies a mutual participation. Webster’s tells us that it is “an act or instance of sharing . . . intimate fellowship or rapport.” You can see where this is going, yes? That communion involves communication and results in community? Another way to talk about this would be to use the language of relationship and of intimacy.

God gives the promise of a new covenant, and thus a new level of relationship and of intimacy to the prophet Jeremiah. God promises that He will “put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts.” As a result, the people will know that God is their God and that they are the Lord’s people. Here is the answer to the Psalmist’s cry for a “clean heart” created within him.

Samuel Roberts points out, “The limits of human moral capacity become the beginning of divine provision. Jeremiah portends a realization that the great moral problem of humankind – that is, sin – is not cognitive, but rather concerns the sinful will. As Pascal writes, ‘God wants to motivate the will more than the mind. Absolute clarity would be no more use to the mind and would not help the will.’” It is God’s action that enables us to live in right relationship – this is grace lived out.

The new covenant implies a new community, which means a new, a transformed way of approaching life. The One who ultimately makes this possible, who incarnates the Divine will to relationship, is Jesus. The early church saw in his life and actions the fulfillment of what Jeremiah had prophesied. That’s why the author of the book of Hebrews – long thought to be Paul, but now we realize we simply don’t know the author’s identity – makes the statement of who Jesus is. Moreover, how the fullness of God’s salvation has been made known through Jesus, the priest in the order of Melchizedek, whose priesthood was without beginning and without end, fulfilled in perfect obedience (deep listening/communion) to the Father.

Jesus indicates this – and the writer to the Hebrews talks about it – when he says, “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.” It is a lesson that has inspired many and brought even many more up completely short. It is one of those hard sayings of Jesus that makes us uncomfortable and places a demand on us that we don’t particularly want to hear. Jesus is telling us that we have to die to self. In fact, he comes right out and says it: “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it to eternal life.”

When the seed goes into the ground its hard outer shell slowly gives way and the germ of the plant is able to root and then to grow. As a result a single seed will be far more productive than if it had remained as it was, stuck in its individual shell. Believe it or not, spring is here and soon we will see the fruit of seeds pushing their way up in our gardens. Those of you who plant vegetable gardens know well the wonder of harvesting your own produce. I remember the cherry and the peach trees that we had in our yard when I was a child. There was nothing better than the fruit from those trees, each of which had been planted by my grandfather from a single seed. So it was with the life of Jesus. He was open to receive what the Father had for him. He was willing to take the risk of leaving self behind for the promise of a greater harvest. He planted his life and it continues to bear fruit.

Several years ago Richard Jeske wrote something in the journal Interpretation which seems particularly apt for the times in which we’re living. He said that Jesus was the highest achiever imaginable, but that he accomplished his highest achievement by remaining open to the Father. He wrote: “The way of recipiency is a difficult way for those who are born achievers – and that means all of us. Not only are we born such, but particularly in our society are we conditioned to think, value, and practice achievement. In our society it is the high achievers who succeed, the high earners who are respected, the haves (not the have-nots) who are our heroes. Our society will always choose competition over cooperation, property rights over personal rights, concentration over distribution, and accumulation over purpose. Our education systems no longer have as their objective education for citizenship but rather education for competitive production in the marketplace. To accumulate more is the basic value lesson our young people are being taught in our society, and as one magazine put it recently, ‘More is Never Enough.’”

Given what we’ve read in the papers, at least those which are still publishing, heard on television or seen on the internet this rings rather true, doesn’t it? Many sought the more that was never enough and now our country and indeed our world are teetering economically. Why? Because self became more important than other. Because my good, my desires, my way all became more important than the common good.

The message of the Gospel stands in the face of this view reminding us, through the life and ministry of Jesus, that there is a different way, a different value, a law written on the heart which will lead us to communion, to union with God. I like what the Puritan author Thomas Goodwin wrote: “Mutual communion is the soul of all true friendship and a familiar converse with a friend hath the greatest sweetness in it . . . [so] besides the common tribute of daily worship you owe to [God], take occasion to come into his presence on purpose to have communion with him. This is truly friendly, for friendship is most maintained and kept up by visits; and these, the more free and less occasioned by urgent business . . . they are, the more friendly the are. . . . We use to check our friends with this upbraiding, You still [always] come when you have some business, but when will you come to see me? . . . When thou comest into his presence, be telling him still how well thou lovest him; labour to abound in expressions of that kind, than which . . . there is nothing more taking with the heart of any friend. . . .The new heart promised to Jeremiah is thus open to a level of relationship never-before thought really possible – we become the friends of God.

One who had experienced suffering herself, Julian of Norwich sees the opportunity for being “oned” or united with God through it. In her Showings or Revelations of Divine Love the suffering Christ is the means by which God identifies with all suffering, human or otherwise. She records:

Here I saw a great unity[oneing]between Christ and us, as I understand it, for when he was in pain we were in pain, and all creatures able to suffer pain suffered with him. That is to say, all creatures which God has created for our service, the firmament and the earth, failed in their natural functions at the time of Christ’s death, for it is their natural characteristic to recognize him as their Lord, in whom all their powers exist. And when he failed, their nature constrained them to fail with him, insofar as the could because of the sorrow of his sufferings. And so those who were his friends suffered pain because of love and all creation suffered in general; that is to say, those who did not recognize him suffered because the comfort of all creation failed them, except for God’s powerful, secret preservation of them.

As Kerrie Hide points out, “Furthermore, creation in Christ unites humanity to all creation. This bond is such a great oneing that as Christ experiences the pain of the Passion it reverberates over the entire cosmos.” This, perhaps, is the point Jesus makes at the close of today’s Gospel lesson when he says, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” All suffer and now in Jesus, the “Suffering Servant,” God knows, shares and transforms it. Maybe that’s also why several people want us to remember that the cross is also a ‘plus’ sign as we are joined to God and God to us?

Our response of communion then, is to open ourselves to God’s invitation to friendship and to intimate union. As we make our response, we’ll discover that we’re able to relate in a new and more open way to the people and even to the world around us. We’ll see each other with a renewed appreciation for the wonder that is the human person. We’ll see the “beauty of the earth” again because we’ll be seeing it as God meant for us to see it.

I would invite you to see Jesus today and then go out to live as though you have seen Jesus. In fact, if the new law is written on our hearts it should bear fruit in our lives, shouldn’t it? Perhaps the most practical thing we can do is simply to live as though we really believe what we say we believe. The contemporary spiritual writer and theologian Dallas Willard has written an excellent book that a group of our men are reading together. It’s called The Divine Conspiracy and Willard writes something that is really quite challenging and quite true. He concludes that many people see God as otherworldly and unreal, which reduces those believers to having “faith in faith but [they] will have little faith in God.”

He writes: “For God and his world are just not ‘real’ to them. They may believe in believing but not be able to rely on God – like many in our current culture who love live but in practice are unable to love real people. They may believe in prayer, think it quite a good thing, but be unable to pray believing and so will rarely, if ever pray at all. I personally have become convinced that many people who believe in Jesus do not actually believe in God. By saying this I do not mean to condemn anyone but to cast light on why the lives of professed believers go as they do, and often contrary to what they sincerely intend.”

Neither do I seek to condemn, but I do earnestly desire for those of us who call ourselves “followers of Jesus Christ” to take it seriously and to make a difference in the world – beginning with ourselves and with this community of faith. If we really believe what Jesus tells us, well, we should live like it. Practically, then, take time this week – start today – to spend some time in prayer, open the Bible and spend some time with it and seek to show God’s love in the way you behave toward others. Remembering: “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.’” [Luke 10:27] And every day we say the Lord’s Prayer and say, “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” It’s not rocket science; it’s simply living out the reality of living out what we say we believe every day. But if we live this, it will lead us to intimate rapport and to mutual sharing with God and with one another.

If you would see Jesus, then look inside yourself and then look around. After all, didn’t he tell us that our actions toward others were as though they were done to him? “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.” Our response is communion – with God and with one another. Begin today. Begin today.