Sermon on John 12:20-33

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

We’ve been talking throughout Lent about God’s love for this worldand our broken relationship with creation. We’ve started learning about lament, we’ve talked about microplastics, and we’re taking a trip to the landfill this week to learn about waste and what can be done with it.

We’ve dipped our toes into some heavytopics. Climate change is scary. It’s challenging to figure out what’s true. And it’s even harder to figure out what to do about it. It’s daunting as an individual faced with such enormous, global issues.

It would be easier to go onwith our lives pretending that nothing’s happening. Ignorance is bliss, as they say.

But when we find that we can’t ignore what we’ve learned, our stomachs can ache or our hearts can beat uncomfortably fast. It can be hard to get out of bed. Despair threatens to immobilize us.

In The Lord of the Rings, the character Denethor, steward of the kingdom of Gondor, gave in to despair.

Grieved by the death of one son and the grave injuries of his other son, he started looking more and more into a magic orb that gave him visions of the future.

He saw enemy ships arriving to a battle of already overwhelming odds and decided that killing himself was preferable to being killed by the enemy.

Too late, it’s revealed that the enemy ships were captured, and it was actually allies that sailed toward them. The reinforcements turned the tide on the battle, and Denethor’s death was in vain.

We have to be careful of the narratives we tell ourselves. Despair is powerful and destructive.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus’ disciples could easily fall into despair at the excruciating and humiliating public execution of their beloved rabbi.

And we know that to at least a certain extent, they did despair. Many of them ran away instead of keeping Jesus company in his last hours. Peter denied even knowing him in order to protect his own safety. Judas, haunted by what he had done, took his own life. In the following days, disciples huddled in the locked upper room, hiding from the authorities so that they might escape execution themselves.

We humans are understandably afraid of death and prone to despair.

But in our Gospel reading, Jesus offered us a different, more hopeful, perspective on death.

In this last of his public teachings, he was trying to reassure his followers that his death wouldn’t be in vain.Some Greek people (people outside the Jewish and even Samaritan communities) had come to see Jesus. Word had spread, and his mission was expanding.

He knew the religious authorities were suspicious of his popularity and wouldn’t let him upset the status quo for much longer. He knew his death was coming, but that wouldn’t put an end to his mission. It would grow beyond the control of those in power.

He drew on the natural world to illustrate his point: just like a seed dies to its current form when it’s buried in the ground but grows into something much bigger, Jesus’ death would create life abundant beyond anything they had yet seen.

Jesus promised to “draw all people to [himself],” drawing the circle of the Beloved Community ever wider.

What looks like death can actually be a form of new life. But we have to wait long enough to see it.

Denethor was wrong. He saw a glimpse of the future, buthis interpretationcaused him to give in to despair. He didn’t wait long enough to see the life that would emerge from what looked like death.

When researching climate change, it’s easy to fall into despair.I’m not a stranger to being overwhelmed and demoralized by it. Good news is challenging to find. So much is beyond our individual control, and the whole thing feels like a group project where no one’s cooperating, and so we’re all getting a failing grade.

Still, we don’t know what the future holds. Scientists can make educated guesses, but no one knows for sure.

In our reading from Ezekiel, God asks the prophet, “can these bones live?” and he replies, “O Lord God, you know.”That’s a good response to our situation:

“Will the planet be okay?” “O Lord God, you know.”

“Will climate change get worse?” “O Lord God, you know.”

“Will humanity do enough to make a difference?” “O Lord God, you know.”

And then, after remembering that only God knows the answer to what the future holds, start living like that answer doesn’t matter.Martin Luther is rumored to have said, when asked what he would do if the world were ending tomorrow, that he would plant a tree today. We can live in defiant hope for a better tomorrow, even if we don’t expect it.

Whether or not it’s possible to save the world as we know it, let’s live in a way we can be proud of, that our descendants can be proud of.

As of Friday, spring has just started, even though it feels like summer already. Let’s live in this season when new life emerges from what appeared dead.

Here in Southern California, we don’t have the dramatic shift from winter to spring that other places have, but some of you have lived in snow. You know the thrill of hope that comes from the first splash of red and pink and purple tulips and the sunny faces of daffodils—reminders that the ice won’t last forever.

Just as God breathed into the dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision, God still breathes life into our world.

Will this world live? God knows. As Presiding Bishop Yehiel Curry said, reminding us about God’s time, kairos time: “It is not too late to protect our climate. With God, it is never too late. Kairos means that this is an opportune and urgent time to address earth’s climate crisis.”

Beloved children of God, Beloved Body of Christ, we humans don’t know for sure what the future holds. Do not give in to despair. How you live makes a difference. It may not save the world. But it reflects the love and grace God has shown you. That matters.

Even if you see ships with enemy flags sailing toward you, don’t give up the fight.

Even if the world is going to end tomorrow, plant a tree.

What looks like death may be the seed that flowers into Beloved Community.

Even a cross can turn into a tree of life. Thanks be to God.