Loading...My husband, Jeff, and I are looking forward to a full season of gardening this year. It was just a year ago Wednesday that we came here, and I began my ministry with you. Those first couple of months living here were complicated. We were in a rental house, still searching for a house to buy, with only a couple of months before our short-term lease was up.
In the end, we bid on and got our house towards the end of March, but we didn’t get into our house until May, and then it was a bit crazy with the moving and settling in. (We appreciated all the help from many of you!)
We didn’t stick any seeds in the ground—okra, cucumbers, green beans, or plant a few tomato plants in the small square of dirt that had once been a garden for the former owners of the house until late in the growing season. And we barely had time to do even that!
Jesus talks a bit about seeds and fruit in today’s Gospel. He uses this example to help the people around him prepare for what was expected of them after his impending death. In The Message transliteration of this Gospel, Eugene Peterson tells the story like this: “Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over.”
I can honestly report that it is not only wheat that reproduces itself many times over.
One word: tomatoes. If you garden, you know. One tiny cherry tomato that is left on the ground in one year will become many, many volunteer plants the next year.
But Jesus isn’t warning farmers or gardeners about the infestation of potentially unwanted plants sprouting in your garden. No. He is talking about what it means to learn and grow and trust in God’s love. And then to scatter that word around.
There are many people who need to know that following what Jesus taught means that we are expected to change. In today’s transliteration, He goes on to say, “In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is (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 you cling to your life, “just as it is,” never considering that there are new ways to understand how holy, life-giving LOVE works, you may not know what it means to be “Reckless in your love.”
Reckless in your love.
Isn’t that an image?
Last week I gave you a list of what non-binary, both/and love can look like. One of those items was living “by the Golden Rule: We treat others as we would like to be treated.” And I added this pivotal, life-changing, life-GIVING addition, from the Rev. Mark Sandlin: “If we were in their shoes.”
How reckless would our love become if we began to treat others as we would like to be treated if we were in their shoes? How much of a change in our lives would that be? Could we be willing to let the seeds of these words help us let go of our lives, just the way they are, and see where the love of God leads us?
Jesus goes on, and Eugene Peterson tells it this way: “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.”
Oooo! Following Jesus. Serving God. Offering reckless love.
Jesus has a plan. Back then, it was subversive. It was radical. It was not what the people expected their Messiah to be all about. They thought their Messiah would come with a sword and violence. But that’s not who God sent. That’s not the message God sent.
God sent Jesus to teach us how to offer reckless love. When Jesus asks “Father, put your glory on display,” a voice comes out of the sky saying, “I have glorified it and I’ll glorify it again.”
God glorifies love, my friends. Jesus shows us throughout his ministry, what that love should look like.
In a few minutes we will have the Prayers of the People. We will be asking God to “create in us clean hearts and to renew a right spirit within us.” This is our opportunity to recognize that we are the wheat of this Gospel—able to die to our old ways and to sprout anew to better follow Jesus and serve God by offering reckless love to the world.
We need to be ready to change our hearts, minds, and behavior because our Gospel doesn’t end there. It ends with Jesus telling those in his hearing about his death, resurrection, and ascension. Peterson puts Jesus’ words this way: “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.” He put it this way to show how he was going to be put to death.”
Recklessly loving others as Jesus taught us how to recklessly love others means we can stand at the foot of that cross, gathered around Jesus, confident that we have seen him, learned from him, and trust in him, not only with our lips, but in our lives.
Let us pray. Holy and loving God, at the beginning of this Gospel, we heard some Greeks asking Philip, “Sir, we want to see Jesus. Can you help us?” Help us help those who seek you, to find you. Create in us clean hearts so that the seeds you sprout within us can be beacons of the reckless love of Jesus. Renew a right spirit within us so that we can lovingly serve and follow you by serving and loving others. And through our transformation, teach us to show your love to the world, scattering seeds and bearing much fruit. All for your love’s sake. Amen.
The Message
There were some Greeks in town who had come up to worship at the Feast. They approached Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee: “Sir, we want to see Jesus. Can you help us?”
Philip went and told Andrew. Andrew and Philip together told Jesus. Jesus answered, “Time’s up. The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
“Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any 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 on to 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 shaken. 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.’”
A voice came out of the sky: “I have glorified it, and I’ll glorify it again.”
The listening crowd said, “Thunder!”
Others said, “An angel spoke to him!”
Jesus said, “The voice didn’t come for me but for you. 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.” He put it this way to show how he was going to be put to death.
