"Identity"
Sermon Presented April 2, 2006
John 12:20-33
To what do you attribute your identity? I never thought much about it until my separation and eventual divorce. Let me explain. On July 1, 1990, I moved into my dream home - one I had helped design. It was on a lake that I dreamed of living on decades before it became a residential site. The view was magnificent, wildlife was abundant and the design of the house was perfect. Four years to the day after moving in, a moving van pulled up and two men loaded my things and took them to an apartment about 10 miles away. This new apartment had almost no furniture when I moved in - just boxes of books, a bed, a couple of chairs, TV, washer and dryer, some family treasures, and basic dishes and cookware. (I had ordered new furniture, but it didn't arrive for several months.) I did have a good view of trees from the windows, but no lake, all-day sunlight, or hardwood floors. I was in tears much of that day and month, and part of my sense of loss had to do with the loss of the identity I enjoyed for more than 33 years.
Five days after moving, I drove to the Country Club Plaza to see an outdoor performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream. On the way back to the apartment (I could never call it "home") I saw flashing red lights behind me. A Kansas City police officer pulled me over and informed me that I was driving 48 MPH in a 35 MPH zone. I gave him my driver's license and his first question was: "Do you still live at 4822 Vista Circle?" Tears welled up in my eyes as I said, "No, I moved last week."
During the following months, I began to realize how much of my identity was wrapped up in being an attorney's wife and living in a beautiful home. My second identity as an ordained minister was also threatened because my future status as a divorced woman made the prospect of ever becoming the pastor of a church slim to none. I was having an identity crisis. Who was I and what did the future hold for me?
Our text this morning shows the beginning of an identity crisis for Jesus' followers. The scene begins with some Greek proselytes to the Jewish faith approaching Philip, one of the apostles with a Greek name. These Jewish converts are in Jerusalem because of Passover. They want to "see" Jesus. (In John's Gospel, to "see" usually carries the connotation of believing.) Philip finds Andrew, and together they approach Jesus. Jesus tells them that the "hour" has come for him to be glorified. Hear the story from John 12:20-33. (Read text.)
If you listened carefully and are familiar with the scriptures, you may have noticed that there is a tension between John's story and the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane related in Matthew and Luke - two of the three Synoptic Gospels. The word "Synoptic" means similar. The Synoptic gospels tell similar gospel stories, but John's story is different. For John, the crucifixion is Jesus' glorification, and John concentrates on the events that lead up to it.
The tension concerns Jesus' approaching death. According to John, even though Jesus is troubled, he doesn't ask God to save him from death. John tells his story without Jesus' cry to God for deliverance that we see in the Synoptics. In John's gospel, Jesus is the victorious conqueror, while the Synoptics show more of Jesus' humanity.
In earlier chapters, John quotes Jesus as saying "My hour has not yet come." Another time when leaders try to arrest Jesus, they fail because Jesus says "my hour has not yet come." Again in the 8th chapter, John writes that Jesus could not be arrested because his hour "had not yet come." But here in the 12th chapter, when Jesus is at the height of his glory after raising Lazarus from the dead, he announces that his hour has now come.
If we had been part of that audience, we would have assumed that Jesus meant that now was the time for him to take his rightful place as the king of Israel. That was the role the Jewish people believed the Messiah would fill. Jesus was successful, honored, and worshiped, so the logical outcome is that now he will become king.
But Jesus tells them that if God's kingdom is to grow, then he must die, like a grain of wheat dies, so that there will be a multiplication - so there will be fruit. When a kernel of wheat falls into the earth and dies, its identity changes. It's still wheat, but it changes from a single brown seed into a large green plant loaded with thousands of seeds. When we come to Christ seeking to follow him, we are still Lawrence and Mary and Betty and Chris, but we aren't the same as we were before. We now have the potential for great growth and multiplication. The key to dying and to bearing much fruit lies in following Jesus and serving him. We serve Jesus by sharing his love with others.
Jesus goes on to say that if you follow him, you can't hang onto your life - even your identity. Those who love their life will lose it and those who hate their life will keep it for eternity. What Jesus means is that the principle of discipleship requires death to our self-interests in exchange for life eternal. It's the law of multiplication - like the seed. As we die to self and live for Jesus, we share Christ through our words and our loving actions - thus multiplying Christ's presence in the world.
This doesn't mean that we lose our self-esteem, because we must feel good about ourselves to give ourselves away. We can't love others as ourselves if we don't love ourselves. Jesus wants us to willingly turn our lives over to God and allow God to give us direction. God's direction for Jesus led to the cross where Jesus gave his physical life in obedience to God's will. Very few Christians today are called to that kind of obedience; an exception is the Christian in Afghanistan who was sentenced to death because he converted to Christianity from the Islamic faith. Thankfully, he was released.
Most people, especially those under the age of 50 don't want to make long term commitments to anything - whether it's a club or marriage. Committing to a lifetime of anything doesn't cross their radar screen. It's the same with discipleship. When we committed to follow Jesus, we may have believed that we would follow faithfully all of our lives, but we didn't and we don't. We fail miserably at times - as did the disciples. The ideal is to commit daily and ask God to help us live out our identity as a Christian that day. When we fail, we can repent and begin again. In that way we can die to self daily so as to live for Christ.
Jesus' "hour" arrives when opposition to him hits a crescendo and the religious leaders seek his death. But it also arrives because of Jesus' success in the world. The world seeks Jesus and his miracles. But the world is fickle. When Jesus is hanging on the cross, the world, even his disciples, turn away and abandon him. Jesus appears to be a failure in death.
Because Jesus' desire was to follow God's direction, the cross was unavoidable. This doesn't mean he had no choice. It just means that this was a consequence of following God. Jesus chose the way of God. He chose the cross. As disciples, we need to make God's will our priority and not give priority to our own selfish desires. The Christian identity isn't all sunshine and roses; it's suffering and crosses.
When we relinquish something to God, we may see unexpected results. Sometimes we can keep what we relinquished, we just don't hold onto it as tightly as we did before. Because we don't hold on, we can either comfortably release it or continue to enjoy it. It's not easy to relinquish our loved ones, our time and our assets.
Over a period of three years, the disciples walked with Jesus, observed his miracles and listened to his teachings. They assumed the identity of followers of Jesus and they believed they were faithful. Hadn't they left families and occupations to follow him? But they weren't ready to hear the message that Jesus' role wasn't what they expected and that he must die. Now they hear that they too must be willing to give up their lives. It wasn't until later, that they were ready to move toward death.
Friday night I saw the African movie Tsotsi - the film
that won an Oscar in the category of foreign language films. It is the
story of a young man who was raised in the hopelessness of South African
poverty. A hard childhood left the Tsotsi with a heart of stone and
he embarks on a life of crime, because it is the only thing he is good
at.
However, his life is altered when he hijacks a car and discovers a baby
in the backseat. He places the baby in a shopping bag and carries it
back to his shack, wanting to protect it. Immediately he is attacked
by a barrage of repressed and traumatized childhood memories and for
the first time in his life he cares for something besides himself.
He sticks a gun in the face of a woman with a baby, demanding that she nurse this child, and as he cares for the baby - with the help of the woman, he begins to change. At the conclusion of the film, the audience sees a very different Tsotsi than we saw at the beginning. Now he has a new identity, even though he will pay for his crimes. It's a story of redemption.
In the midst of my identity crisis, I attended Broadway Baptist Church in Kansas City one morning. This church has a long history of using liturgical dance in worship. That morning, I heard the choir sing and a team of three dancers dance to a chorus titled "I Will Change Your Name." The words and the dance touched my heart. Hear the words:
I will change your name.
You shall no longer be called
wounded, outcast, lonely or afraid.
I will change your name.
Your new name shall be
Confidence, Joyfulness, Overcoming One.
Faithfulness, Friend of God, One who seeks my face.
At that moment I "saw" Jesus. I experienced an identity change - along with a new name and new potential for growth. God changes people on a daily basis like the change that came to me that morning, the changes that came to Jesus' disciples, and the changes that came to the fictional character Tsotsi. God is in the business of changing people so that we can become who God wants us to be. Thanks be to God!
