Life and Death and their Meaning

As I reviewed the gospel for this week in various translations of the Bible I began to notice the running heads that Bible publishers use to give the reader the main theme or point of each section. For tonight’s gospel the first few I looked at went like this:

§ NSRV – Jesus concludes his public ministry

§ NIV – Jesus predicts his death

§ Jerusalem Bible – Jesus foretells his death and subsequent glorification

§ New English Bible – Victory over death

And then I went to my trusty Bible commentary and the heading for tonight’s gospel passage read: “Jesus interprets his death.”

Somehow that caught my attention in a way that the others did not. Interpretation is about meaning, and fathoming the meaning of death is something we all will attempt at some point, and probably more than once, in our lives. Why must we die? And if we must die, why not only when we are old and unable to be productive or enjoy life? And the related question: why must we suffer?

It is no accident that the church confronts us with these questions the week before the beginning of the drama of Holy Week. Indeed, the church calls this day Passion Sunday, for we are about to rehearse and commemorate a story of a most tragic death and one that seemingly makes no sense at all. As we gaze at the cross on Good Friday and remember Jesus’ many kindnesses to those who were sick or who mourned, we are tempted shake our heads sadly and say what is often said when a good person dies needlessly: “What a waste. What a terrible waste.”

Jesus, however, characteristically turns this question of “What is the meaning of death?” on its head and implicitly poses another question: “What is the meaning of life?”

His answer is straightforward, even blunt, yet entirely in keeping with everything else we know about Jesus. 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. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

We might readily grasp the second part of this message and say to ourselves, “Ah yes. He’s said that before hasn’t he? This life on earth is not the end of the story. There’s something else. We must somehow try to focus on a never-ending life with God after this life. Right. Got it. But what’s this about the grain of wheat dying and bearing much fruit? How does that apply to me?”

To understand how this passage applies to us we have to think about how the gospel of John understands the purpose of Jesus’ death. There are three ways the church conventionally speaks of the efficacy of Jesus’ death for us. These are called “atonement theologies.”

One is the idea that Jesus has ransomed us by his death – that by his death we are freed from sin, as though we were held captive and now we are free. Another is that Jesus is a substitute for us and that by his death he has taken on our sins and has thus atoned for them. He has taken our sins upon himself. And, third, there is the idea that by Jesus’ death God demonstrates to us how very much God loves us. Sometimes we hear of all three of these atonement theologies blended into one that combines ransom, substitution, and the love of God into the notion of “sacrifice” – the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross for us.

In John’s gospel, however, we really don’t find much evidence for any of these theologies. In John’s gospel there is nothing about ransom or substitution and, unlike the Jesus of the first three gospels, he is in complete control. The idea of God’s love as the reason for Jesus’ death is partly evident in John’s gospel, but what is missing is the demand for the human response and decision that John sees as essential to Jesus’ glorification. For John, Jesus’ glorification is made complete by our response

The theological key to Jesus’ death is reconciliation – the process by which we in our broken humanity are reconnected to God by Jesus’ death. Perhaps sacrifice is one way of thinking about how this happens, but, based on my reading of John’s gospel, I don’t think it is the only way. It seems to me that in the passage from John’s gospel we heard tonight there is the idea that reconciliation – atonement, if you like – is based on the restoration of a broken relationship with God. And that brings us back to Jesus saying “…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.” This does not apply only to Jesus and his life and death, but to ours as well.

Whereas in the first three gospels we hear that we must take up our cross and follow Jesus, in John’s gospel there is a great emphasis on service to others as the way to follow him. Remember – this is the gospel in which we have Jesus washing the feet of his disciples and then telling them that this is an example of what they should do also.

In the 1960s the Rev. Ernest Gordon, a Scotsman, was the dean of the Princeton University Chapel. He is remembered as a powerful preacher and an example of how to live the Christian life. He is also remembered as the author of a book called that was later made into a movie called To End All Wars about his experiences as a prisoner of war during World War II. He was held in a Japanese camp in Thailand where the prisoners were forced to work on building a railroad through the jungle. The prisoners had little food and were sick with dysentery, diphtheria, and malnutrition. They were regularly beaten and one prisoner was even crucified – nailed to a cross – as punishment for some infraction.

In spite of their suffering, Gordon and others started a school for the prisoners in which those who were educated taught philosophy, theology, history, mathematics, and other subjects to their fellow soldiers as a way of giving them hope for the future. And the strong cared for the weak and there were many examples of inmates giving their own meager rations to others who were sick, or of doing chores for the prisoners who were too sick to do them. Throughout the movie there is a refrain from one of the officers who was a devout Christian and the refrain was – you guessed it – “…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.”

What was the fruit that came from how these men bore their suffering and how they cared for one another even at the peril of their own lives? Listen to this from Gordon’s book:

“Death was still with us—no doubt about that. But we were slowly being freed from its destructive grip. We were seeing for ourselves the sharp contrast between the forces that made for life and those that made for death. Selfishness, hatred, envy, jealousy, greed, self-indulgence, laziness and pride were all antilife. Love, heroism, self-sacrifice, sympathy, mercy, integrity and creative faith, on the other hand, were the essence of life, turning mere existence into living in its truest sense. There were the gifts of God to men.”

These indeed were the gifts of God to men. But they were more than that. They were, in fact, the response of these men to God’s love for them – a love which they discerned through their suffering in ways that they had never seen before. They saw how God’s love and the human response to that love transformed them and helped them survive the impossible with their dignity intact and with forgiveness for their Japanese tormentors in their hearts.

This, then, is the human response that completes the circuit of Jesus’ glorification that is at the heart of the understanding of Jesus’ death in John’s gospel. Jesus death is an expression of his relationship with God and by extension of his relationship – and his father’s relationship – with us. God’s love, like any kind of love, yearns for a response in order to make it whole and complete. And that response can only come from us.

Jesus’ death is cosmically powerful not because it is a sacrifice for human sin, although it may be that too. The power of Jesus’ death derives from the fact that it decisively demonstrates to the world that love is the very essence of what God is. And that power is brought to its fullness by our own response in kind. If Jesus has served us by his death, then we glorify him by serving him and others by turning our lives over willingly and joyfully to him.

Jesus’ death is the ultimate manifestation of his relationship with God and with us. It suggests to us that reconciliation to God is through relationship with God and with those whom God loves. And that would be you and me and every human being. This means that Jesus’ incarnation – his life – is the beginning of our atonement and is inextricably connected to his death. It is just so for us as well.