The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams
Saint George’s Episcopal Church, Arlington, Virginia
Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 17th, 2024
Today is Saint Patrick’s Day and we might expect to focus on that in church today. But when Patrick’s feast day falls on a Sunday, we don’t observe it because the readings for the Sundays in Lent supersede lesser feast days. Patrick’s life and witness does inform our understanding of today’s Gospel, however. Patrick lived in Britain during the fifth century. He was captured by Irish slave traders when he was 16 and was forced to work as a shepherd. After 5 years, he escaped and returned to Britain. He could have lived out the rest of his life in privilege, being from a wealthy family, but he felt God calling him back to the land of his captors, so he returned to Ireland to share the good news of Jesus with them. It’s amazing to think that Patrick had such love for the people who had once enslaved him. And his love for them was all because of his love for Jesus. In our Gospel today, Jesus says,
“…’Now is the judgment of this world.; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. ‘ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.” John 12: 20-33
Jesus is approaching his death at this point and he is well aware of it. He has raised Lazarus from the dead, a foreshadowing of his own death, and he has allowed Mary to anoint his feet with expensive nard in preparation for his burial. Everything he has done has either drawn people closer to him or driven them further away. Some people are able to see who he is and some are not. Some are able to hear his message and others are not. He is about to be lifted high on a cross so that everyone will come to see and hear clearly.
We often focus on Jesus’ death as the act that atones for our individual sins, and that is most certainly true, but it is also much more than this. As theologian Charles Campbell writes, John’s understanding of what God is doing for humankind through the crucifixion is much larger and more dramatic. When the Gospel of John talks about “the world”, the author is not talking about creation. Creation itself is good. God created the universe and it is not only good, but very good, as the first creation story teaches us. When Jesus talks about “the world” in today’s Gospel, he is referring to the fallen realm that is estranged from God and is organized in opposition to God’s purposes for creation. When Jesus says, ’Now is the judgment of this world.; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.’ he is making a statement about the systems that dominate the thinking and functioning of the world: dominance, violence and oppression, to name a few. The ‘ruler of this world’ is the evil spirit that brings these systems into existence. When Jesus is crucified and dies, it looks as if these systems have triumphed yet again, it looks like evil is victorious, but they are actually judged, shown to be what they are, corrupt and debased. They are judged by the ultimate judge, by God, and they are judged by Jesus who is love himself, the Son of God who through his death, shows just how ugly and cruel the system of domination is, and also, paradoxically, forgives the people who are blind to the evil of it, those are not able to see because they have been programmed that “that is just the way things are.”
When we think about the history of racism in this country, we are reminded of all of the white people who thought that white dominance was the way things were supposed to be. They never questioned the social norms that oppressed Black people. And many Black people, quite understandably, never thought that things could change after all those years of systematic oppression. But Martin Luther King Jr and many others had eyes to see what others could not. They could see a vision of a new heaven and a new earth where God’s kingdom of justice and peace prevailed.
And MLK no doubt had Jesus’s crucifixion and Jesus’ judgment of “ the world” that the cross demonstrated in mind when the white authorities resorted to violence in response to the non-violent protests of the 1960s. He said this. “Let them get their dogs. Let them get the hose, and we will leave them standing before their God…We must ‘bring these issues to the surface, to bring them out into the open where everybody can see them.”
This is what happened as Jesus hung on the cross for all the world to see. Jesus exposed the evil system of oppression, and by exposing it he judged it and cast out its ruler. As theologian Gil Bailie writes, “The crucifixion both accomplishes the decisive demystification of the demonic powers and inaugurates the historical epoch in which these powers – and the social and psychological structures based upon them -will undergo a progressive delegitimization, as the Crucified One gradually draws all humanity to himself.” That is what we are a part of, my friends. We are part of that ongoing work begun by Jesus on the cross, the work continued by God in the resurrection and the work being brought to fullness by the Holy Spirit in us. As Jesus’ disciples, we ask God to help us to have eyes to see when we are blindly participating in systems that oppose God’s will for his creation and to have the courage to lead our lives differently and to work to change “the way things are” to be more like the way God intends for them to be. We will never fully get there, until the last day when Christ returns and finally brings all things to fullness and perfection, but we do the work that God has given us to do, striving for justice and peace and recognizing that things can get better with God’s help, and that we are never, ever to give into cynicism or fatalism. We are called to speak truth to the powers of this world. And we are called to love with a sacrificial love, the love of Jesus.
Jesus told Philip and Andrew in today’s Gospel that “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.” If we, as a single grain, live only for ourselves and for the purpose of maintaining the status quo, , we die spiritually, but if we work for the good of everyone, sharing what we have and working to build systems that honor the dignity of all, we flourish spiritually and the counter-cultural kingdom that Jesus came to establish grows and grows. Serving others in Jesus’s name looks like relinquishment, like losing what we have, but it actually builds everyone up. Death and scarcity and want are transformed into life and abundance and fulfillment. Following Jesus is the path of life that often looks and feels like death, because many of the things we hold dear, fall away.
Patrick gave up his family’s worldly status, wealth and power to go back to the land in which he was a slave to share the gospel with the people of Ireland. Martin Luther King brought the reality of racism, hatred and oppression in this country into the light for all the world to see, and literally gave his life for it. And both did this because of their love for Jesus and for the people Jesus came to save, all of us.
As we prepare today for the beginning of Holy Week next Sunday, Palm Sunday, we are reminded that in order to see the world as God sees it, we have to ask for eyes to see and interpret the events of our own day. And we have to ask for the courage to respond with the sacrificial love of Christ, the love that we cannot offer on our own. We can only give what God enables us to give.
“…’Now is the judgment of this world.; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. ‘ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.” John 12: 20-33