The Church Season of Trinity
Holy Cross Day (Transferred)
Our Savior
Lutheran Church, Midland, MI (September 16, 2012)
Readings: Psalm 40:1-11
Numbers 21:4-91 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 12:20-33
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Grace,
Mercy, and Peace be to you from the Father,
and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
John 12:20–33, ESV
“Now among those who went up to worship at
the feast were some Greeks. So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in
Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip went and told
Andrew; Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. And Jesus answered them, “The
hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you,
unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if
it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever
hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves
me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone
serves me, the Father will honor him. “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall
I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to
this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have
glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd that stood there and
heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.”
Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not mine. Now is the
judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I,
when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said
this to show by what kind of death he was going to die.”
God has a plan for your
life. You know that already. Yet you may wonder why you still have problems in
your life. You ask yourselves; if God has a plan, shouldn't my life get
gradually better? We pray for God's help in times of trouble. God most
certainly helps you. So why are there still nagging problems? Why does life get
so hard? If God has a plan, what is taking Him so long to put it into action?
If He is loving, why does He seem so slow?
It is easy to say that
God has a plan for your life. But wouldn't it be nice to know what that plan
is? It is one thing to patiently endure troubles if you know how long you have
to endure. It is quite another thing if there is no end in sight, and perhaps
only the grave will end your troubles. If only God would show you His plan.
God does in fact have a
plan for and the plan is that you follow Jesus. That doesn’t sound so bad, does
it? As you follow Jesus, you do acts of love and service to help other people.
That sounds pretty easy and it sounds good.
But didn’t Christ said,
"Whoever serves Me must follow Me."
And before He said those words He said, "The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his
life in this world will keep it for eternal life." And before that He
said, "A kernel of wheat must fall
to the ground and die."
Jesus suffered and laid
down His life. That is what it means to follow Jesus. God's plan for you is the
way of the cross; in other words, to suffer and die. That’s not quite the plan
that any of us may think of and it may be just a tad unsettling. Because you’ve
heard from the TV Preachers and the people of this world that God's plan is to
give you a life with little or no trouble in it, everything will just always be
hunky dory. But God actually brings you the troubles. They happen according to
His plan.
Now let me finish before
we start wondering if God is cruel, He is not. He is loving, not mean-spirited.
Yet He is much wiser than we are. He knows what is best for us, and sometimes
that means pain. Maybe a better way to understand this is like when a doctor
inflicts pain when he gives an injection, but it is for our good. So God also
gives us pain, for our good.
Consider the life of
Christ. He was born into this world for the express purpose of suffering and
dying. "For this reason I came into this hour," said Jesus. God's
plan for Him was Passion and Crucifixion. The Father sent His own beloved Son
to do this.
We are to be imitators
of Christ. That means sharing in His sufferings. He went the way of the cross.
We must do the same. We do not suffer in order to earn anything before God, or
to atone for sin. Yet we still suffer in the image of Christ our Lord. We must
follow Him.
Too often, we love our
own lives. Loving your life here does not mean to enjoy the physical blessings
God gives. Otherwise, we would have to stop praying, "Give us this day our
daily bread." God gives us many blessings to enjoy. So we should not feel
guilty for taking pleasure in His created gifts.
Yet a Christian
following the way of the cross must be willing to die a little every day. Is
our life one of accumulating as many things as possible to make ourselves
happy? Is it our purpose to live for enjoyment? In that case, our lives would
be dedicated to serving ourselves, as if we were the God we worship.
But we must die daily in
sacrificing for the sake of Christ and our neighbor. If we greedily consume our
creature comforts, yet our brother suffers in poverty, then how is Christ
served by such a life? Should we not instead willingly suffer poverty, if need
be, for the sake of Christ and our brother? Not that Christ needs our charity.
Yet He has chosen to accept your works of mercy as if they were directed to
Him.
In all we do, we should
fix our eyes upon Christ, to see Him above and before all things. In our
devotion to Him, all other loves in this life should be pale and small in
comparison. Even our own survival should be secondary next to Christ. Should we
not gladly cast aside our life, if called upon, so that Christ might be
glorified in our death?
But our sinful nature
does not want death. It does not want to carry a cross. It does not want
anything to take priority over itself. We often participate in our religion
only so long as we feel satisfied and happy. We limit our involvement to those
activities with which we feel comfortable.
And what if we are
called upon to face greater suffering? The things we have felt are small
compared to the tribulations and persecutions that may yet come upon us, if God
so wills. Will we stand firm and accept whatever God sends? Or will we avoid,
retreat, or deny? If Peter the Rock could deny His lord three times, then
surely any of us could do the same. In our weak self-centeredness, we are
likely to cut and run in order to preserve our own life.
Deep inside, we love our
life. The sinful flesh is full of self-love. It does not submit to God's plan.
It wants no part of suffering or death. This flesh will be with us till we die.
So a part of us always resists God's plan of suffering and cross. Thus, seeking
to save our life, our sinful flesh would lead us to lose our life for all
eternity.
To rescue you from this death,
the Father sent His Son into human flesh. Yet Christ had no sin and did not
resist His Father. To be sure, Jesus was troubled by the prospect of the Cross.
In Gethsemane, He felt agony and sweated drops of blood. He prayed that the
Father keep the Cross from coming, if it were possible.
Still, He submitted to
His Father's will. There was no other way but the Cross. So Jesus patiently
endured it all. He suffered the vicious tortures of man and the burning wrath
of God.
Because our rebellious nature resisted God's plan, therefore Christ had
to suffer in our place. So this was God's plan, that His Son be slaughtered on
our behalf. Pain and death became the pinnacle of God's purpose, and a Man
tortured on a Cross became the glory of God. In the precious Blood and in the
Crucifixion, the Father's Name is glorified.
He lifted up His own Son
from the ground. He was suspended between heaven and earth, rejected by both.
On the Cross, Christ was made an unclean thing to His Father, to receive His
full, unleashed wrath against sin. But in this horror of a Man hung upon pieces
of wood, God created the greatest good that has ever existed. In this Man,
tortured to death, God has made salvation for all men.
So Christ crucified is
drawing all men to Himself. His message has gone out into all the earth. Some
reject and resist His Word, even though He draws them. He bore their sins, yet
they will not receive Him.
To you who believe, He
is a fruitful Seed that springs up to new life. He plants His own vitality in your
soul, so that you cannot die. Even in physical death, you will be a seed like
Christ, planted in the ground to sprout and blossom into immortality.
That is God's plan for
you. His plan carries you through death. You must suffer first, because you live
in the image of Christ. As He endured bitter pain and sorrow that pierced Him,
so you must endure. As Christ's life was carefully planned and set in place by
the power and wisdom of God, so your life is prepared in advance for you.
The Father does nothing
lightly or carelessly. His love for you is greater than anyone could ever
imagine. Every pain and every tear is known by Him. He sends you these troubles
so that you, like Christ, can pass through suffering into an eternity of joyful
bliss. For if you reject Christ in order to live a more comfortable life, then
you will spend eternity in suffering. But if you embrace Christ through all the
trouble that this life gives you, then you will share in His glory in the life
to come.
So you endure many hardships,
because you know that Jesus did not choose the easy path, but the hardest one
of all. He, your elder Brother, carried the heaviest burden, and your troubles
are light by comparison. Take comfort that He has merited full salvation for
you by His sufferings. Even when you shrink away from a cross He gives you to
bear, He is still ready to forgive.
So let us gladly die
with Jesus. Let us die to our sinful flesh in repentance. Let us die to this
sinful world. As we have died with Jesus in Baptism, let us gladly die to this
present life and suffer all, even death, rather than fall away from faith in
Him.
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