John 12:24 * April 19, 2009 * Easter 2 * Rev. Steven Stern

Dying a Thousand Deaths

It looked like this rag I am holding in my hand only it was dirtier and more ragged. I called it my honer and don’t ask me where I got that name from because I don’t have any idea. It was my cuddle cloth. When I was a child it comforted me at night and helped me to get to sleep. It gave me a sense of security. But somewhere around the age of five or six I began to feel that I was more grown up and it was time for me to give up my honer. One night when I went to bed I thought to myself, “This is it, Steve. It’s time to bite the bullet. The honer has to go.” Having said this to myself I opened the window and my honer went sailing out into space. But in the middle of the night I woke up and I wanted my honer. I tried to tough it out. I tried to get back to sleep but I just couldn’t do it. Finally I got out of bed and went down the stairs and went outside to the bushes under my bedroom window. My feet were wet from the dew on the grass and my honer was damp but I retrieved it and went back to bed not quite ready to make the step from a little child to an older child.

I remember that time in my life because I think this was the first time I became aware that there are things you have to say goodbye to. It was my first experience with pain and loss. It was my first death. Do you remember your blanket or teddy bear? Do you remember your first death? Your first experience with pain and loss? In the course of our lives we lose so many things, so many people, and so many treasured experiences. We literally die a thousand deaths don’t we?

I would like you to ponder with me Jesus’ words in our text for today. He makes it clear that dying is something we have to do. Dying is something we have to experience over and over again. Let’s look at two things this morning as we contemplate the idea of dying a thousand deaths. First of all let’s look at the progression of these deaths. Secondly let’s look at the truths these deaths teach us.

As hard as it was for me to finally give up my honer what helped me was that I was not only letting go of something precious to me I was also moving on to something else. I was becoming a big boy. My feet could now reach the clutch on the tractor and I could begin to do some of the things my father could do. I was joining him in keeping a vital operation going. For a good portion of our lives we say goodbye and we let go of things with some regret but that regret is tempered by the realization that we are moving on and moving up. Grade school was fun but saying goodbye to it was not so hard when we thought of the excitement of going to high school. We were growing up physically and emotionally. We were going to get our driver’s license and hopefully our first part time job. We were going to start thinking about what we would like to do with our life when we really got out on our own. Sure there were times at our high school graduation and our college graduation and our moving into our first apartment when our mother would cry like it was some big deal but we were pretty much ok with the letting go and the moving on. These deaths weren’t so bad because we so something better on the horizon. Sure it was hard to say goodbye to some of the friends we hung out with. We promised we would stay in touch and keep abreast of each other’s lives but in our hearts we knew we would gradually lose touch with each other. Some of our breakups with girl friends and boy friends hurt us for a long time but we got over it. In time we found some one else.

But the deaths we experience and the losses we encounter get harder as we get older. I think it really begins to hit us when we get married and have children of our own. When you see your child walk off to school for the first time with his back pack on and so much hope on his face you wish you felt the same way. You are thinking that child is like a bird that has just left the nest. It can barely fly. There is a world of hawks and snakes and foxes waiting to pounce on that little bird who knows so little about what could all happen. Will your child find friends? Will he be accepted? Will he be picked on? Will he be led into trouble by friends who don’t believe what you do? From grade school through high school through college and on into adulthood parents die a thousand deaths worrying about their children. Worrying about poor choices, about drugs, about car accidents, about making the grade, about finding a profession they will like and that will provide them a living.

And as we die a thousand deaths worrying about our children we have our struggles with our own careers. The pressures, the changes, the transfers, the down sizing, the lay offs. We die as we watch our parents lose their health. We cry uncontrollably as we stand at their graves and realize they are gone from our lives.

In fact the older we get we see the steeper the mountain becomes. Forty, fifty, sixty years of marriage come to an end with the death of our spouse. The hole in our life is bigger than the crater of a volcano. We have never felt such pain and loss and grief. Then our own health fails. We can no longer live alone. We must go to assisted living or a nursing home. I shall never forget one of my elderly members in my congregation as she stood in her yard and watched her precious antiques being auctioned off. Her face was devastated as she watched her chairs and table and hutches being carried off and across the street the nursing home was preparing her room for her. Sometime later she told me she was so angry that God had brought her life to such a state of affairs. That is the progression of life for all of us. Little deaths lead to bigger deaths. Small pains become deeper and sharper until we come at last to our physical death and our final goodbye.

What are we to learn from these deaths and from this progression? What are the truths we need to become aware of as we live out our lives? The truths I see are that life keeps moving. As much as you enjoy playing with your toys you can’t stay a child. You have to say goodbye to childhood. As much as you enjoy having children and raising them you have to let them go. As much as you love your spouse you will lose that spouse. As much as you enjoy your work you will come to a time when you can’t work any more. Life is impermanent. Life gives and life takes away. Life is fragile and unpredictable. We never know what lies ahead.

But the greatest truth we need to learn from the losses of life and the progression of those losses is found in Jesus’ words for us in this verse of John’s Gospel. As Jesus talks about the necessity of His death we want to see how does His death connect with the deaths and losses we experience in our lives. The connection is this. In the process of living and letting go of things in our lives at some point in our life we will become aware of the fact that there are broken relationships in our lives. It is when we see that we are on the outs with some one that we begin to see our need for reconciliation. It is times of crisis and serious illness that especially bring us to see the broken relationships.

I remember a lady who was going to have open heart surgery at St. Joseph’s hospital quite a number of years ago. She was in her sixties and she wasn’t sure she would survive the operation because her heart was weak. As she talked to me about her fears of dying she revealed that she had a big hurt on her heart. She told me that when she was in her teens she hung around with the fast crowd. She dressed in leathers and hung out with bikers. Her brother was a straight arrow and was looked at as a good boy. In his early twenties he had his tonsils taken out and a few days after his surgery he unexpectedly hemorrhaged and died. At his funeral some old ladies came up to his wild biker sister and shook their heads. “Boy”, they said, “God is sure hard to figure out. He takes a wonderful person like your brother and he leaves a devil like you behind.” Forty some years later as this woman told me her story the hurt was still there. Maybe it hurt even more than when the words were first spoken. She had come to see the truth that some one had hurt her heart. She had been wounded. The ladies who had inflicted the wound were no longer living. No words of apology had ever been uttered. No healing had ever come.

Who can heal a heart like this? Jesus answered that question by saying, “Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains a single seed. But if it dies it produces many seeds.” As much as Jesus loved people and helped them, as much as He performed miracles and healed people of their diseases, it was His death that really did the job. In His ultimate sacrifice, in falling to the ground like a grain of wheat, in going to the grave, His love paid for and healed the brokenness of every human relationship. As that lady and I sat there that day and looked at the wound on her heart we looked at Jesus’ words from the cross when He said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Many people don’t even know the hurts they have inflicted on others. We can only give our hurts to the Father and let Him work on their hearts. Let Him bring them to moments of discovery so they will call on Him for forgiveness. And as this lady began to realize these old ladies didn’t know what they were doing she began to realize that she herself had probably also hurt others without knowing or remembering that she had. She and those old ladies both needed Jesus to die for them and forgive them for their sins

About a month ago my brother came to visit me and as we were talking he said to me, “Do you remember when we were horsing around in the barn when we were kids?” He said, “I was about five years old and I was chasing you and you reached down and picked up some twine and tripped me and I fell into the gutter. It was full of cow manure and urine.” It was a cruel and heartless thing to do. My brother still remembered it vividly. I did not remember that day. I felt bad that I had forgotten and had not apologized. I wondered how many other things have I done and said to my wife and children that have hurt them.

As you think about who has hurt you and whom you have hurt is there anything more precious to you and me than to know Jesus died that we might be forgiven. He went into the ground so that we could be His seeds. He died for sin and now He calls us to die to sin.

This is where Jesus’ death connects with all the deaths and losses we encounter in our earthly lives. Jesus shows us that to truly love you have to die. You have to sacrifice it all. Love gives up its own time, its own interests, and its own plans. Love loses sleep, love prays for children who have gone astray, love never stops hoping and seeking. Love pays any price to help some one else find their peace in Jesus. Like Jesus we die so that those we love may live.

Now think about Thomas in our Gospel lesson for today. When Jesus saw him He said to him, “Come here, Thomas. Put your hand into the spear wound in my side. Put your hand into the nail holes in my hands.” Can you imagine how hard it was for Thomas to do that? It brought back all the pain and anguish Thomas had felt when Jesus had died on the cross. Why was Jesus rubbing his face in that old pain and grief? Was it not to help Thomas see that he had to embrace Jesus’ death in order to also embrace His resurrection? If you don’t die you don’t rise.

For some of you who are here today you know how Thomas felt. Some of you may have found it difficult to hear me talk about the deaths you have experienced in your lives. I hope you have come to understand that rising and living and finding joy come after dying and mourning and shedding tears. Embrace your grief. Remember your losses. Die to self and cherished dreams that have not come true. And in the embrace of the one who died for you die a thousand deaths so you can touch a thousand lives. Amen.