Buried Lies

Text: John 12:20-33
Theme: “Buried Lies”
Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 25, 2012
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

IN THE NAME OF JESUS

20 Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the festival. 21 They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. “Sir,” they said, “we would like to see Jesus.” 22 Philip went to tell Andrew; Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus.
23 Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25 Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.
27 “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name!”
Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” 29 The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.
30 Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. 31 Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up[g] from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33 He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.

So some Greeks were in town, our text says. What were they doing there? It must have been Spring break. The college crowd does like to head out of town, with their sunscreen and mom and dad’s credit cards, on Spring break – maybe to Padre or Cabo or some such place. Perhaps they’ll do some scuba diving in Belize. These Greeks, though, were in Jerusalem. And lest we think they were just vacationing, our reading, again, says they were there to worship at the festival. That changes the game a smidge. It wasn’t just any old festival; it was the big Jewish one: Passover.

Back where they came from, in Greece, there were scads of deities to worship; there were so many choices, a plethora of religious decisions to make. The Greek pantheon -- a collection of gods, if you will -- must have been like a religious Sam’s Club. The world is filled with gods (small g) who expect you to make a decision. Madison Avenue marketing is the modern Zeus who directs us to the god (small g) who will help us out and we can choose to serve. There’s only One God (capital G) who chooses to serve you, who makes a decision for you.

Our Greek friends had quite list to choose from. If you loved the daylight, you might have worshipped at the temple of Hemera. If nighttime was your thing, you might choose to bow the knee at the temple of Nyx. Perhaps the Greeks in our text were Dionysians. Dionysus was the Greek deity of wine, parties, festivals, madness, drunkenness, and pleasure at being forever young. Dionysius would have been the patron deity of the Denton Arts and Jazz festival. Dionysian priests and priestesses would run the liquor stores, the hookah lounge, and the head shop. Dionysus would surely support the legalization of weed. That must be it. They were Dionysian Greeks – just like we’re Christian Americans. When Christian becomes the adjective and not the noun, we detour into some not so good places – like to where a drug deal could go horribly wrong. But that’s for another sermon.

We go back to our Greek friends. Our best scholarship suggests that they might have grown weary with all this polytheism –with all these little deities supposedly running around and running the show. The monotheism – monotheism, meaning one God as opposed to many of them – may have drawn them to the worship of Yahweh – the God of the Hebrews; the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and, as it turns out, Jesus.

They want to see Jesus, we are told. I mean, His fame had spread. Word must have reached all the way to Greece – even without telephone, telegraph, or an iPad 3 with a high-powered WiFi connection and a Twitter app. (I wonder who the god of technology was. Let me check the list: looks as though it’s a toss-up between Hermes and Hephaestus – or maybe it is Steve Jobs and they just didn’t know it back then. Could Steve jobs be the reincarnation of Hermes and Hephaestus? You have to wonder!)

At any rate, our Greek friends were looking for an interview, an audience with Jesus of Nazareth. They go to who appears to be one of Jesus’s handlers, one of his front men – perhaps His “campaign manager.” They approached Philip, one of our Lord’s disciples, who has a Greek-sounding name. Surely, he can help. Philip sent a text message to Andrew, and Andrew, in turn, left a voicemail on Jesus’s iPhone and an instant message on His Google account which automatically forwarded the same message to His Facebook page. Actually, they didn’t have texting back then – or even voicemail, instant-messaging, social networking, or blah-blah-blah back then. (I just wanted to see if you were still with me!)

Jesus doesn’t text back. Instead, upon hearing of the Greek request, He speaks to the crowd. He uses His own voice. What a novel idea! He says “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” This isn’t the hour for curiosity about religion and coffee house chit-chat with our Bibles and latte’s. Now is not the hour for the endless, nauseating, posturing and elitist spin that passes for public discourse in even our own society. And, moments later and even more dramatically, we hear this: “Now is the time,” says Jesus, “for judgment on this world, now the prince of this world will be driven out. But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” John, who wrote the Gospel that bears His name, reports: “He (Jesus) said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.”

It would be the death of the cross for Jesus. That’s where He would be lifted up – on the cross. That death is what draws all people to God. It is not our curiosity. It is not our infernal, boundless desire for answers. It is not the American pantheon of gods (small g) we create for ourselves. It is not our exceptionalism. It is not our constitutionalism or our progressivism. It is not our moral fortitude. It is not our religious commitments. It is not our polished Presbyterianism. It is not our politics. It is the cross, my friend! A hymn puts it this way:

In the cross of Christ I glory, tow’r-ing o’er the wrecks of time.
All the light of sacred story gathers round its head sublime.

Let us fool ourselves no longer. It is the magnetism of the cross of Jesus that draws us here. Yes, in two weeks we will sing our Hallelujahs that Christ rose from the dead. But let us recall that the victory we shall celebrate is not the victory of Spring – not the victory of baseball, motherhood, apple pie, and Chevrolet. It is the victory of the Crucified One. He was crucified for our sins and raised again for our justification.

Take the cross out of the mix, and the magnetism – the drawing power – is gone. And then we’re left to search for or create and then make decisions about our own gods (small g). But the pesky little critters always elude our grasp, our control.
Oh, they got a hold of Jesus alright. They controlled Him. But, as He says in our text, “Unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it to eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.”

Late last year, I met the author David Cook. He wrote the book, Golf’s Sacred Journey: Seven Days at the Links of Utopia. As many if not all of you know, there is a town in Texas called Utopia. There is a driving range there and a cemetery. The story is about a pro golfer who loses his golf game, but, as it turns out, he was losing so much more – his faith, his family, his best hopes and dreams. He found himself worshipping at the altar of the championship and the million dollar payday. He sacrificed for that, but then his game left him.

In Utopia, Texas, trying to escape it all, he met an old man who knew a thing or two about golf – and life, for that matter. Every now and again, golfers experience what is called a “buried lie.” In other words, the ball lands and gets plugged in a wet sandtrap or some mud. As a golfer, I can tell you that it’s no fun. You can’t really hit a shot as you’re accustomed to. You have to extricate the ball.

The old man talked to this disillusioned pro golfer about buried lies like that and another kind as well. Take, for example, the lies – the untruths – we tell ourselves. We tell ourselves that life is all about winning – at all costs; that life is all about wealth and endless financial security, and you get there any way you can; that life is all about having our politics carry the day; that life boils down to self-fulfillment and self-fulfillment alone. There are other lies that we tell ourselves too – that we’re inferior, that we’re not worthy, that we’ll never amount to anything. All of these things are just flat-out false, but we tell ourselves this stuff, in so many words, all the time. You could say that it’s the air we breathe, and its making our spirits drown

If the Greeks had a god for deception, we’d be worshipping at that temple frequently. But, as the sign at an Alcoholics Anonmyous meeting house says, “The deception of others is almost always rooted in the deception of the self.”
The old man had the golfer write down all the lies he had been telling himself all through the years. Then, later in the day, he had the man walk over from the golf course to the cemetery. There, the old man had dug a small, fresh grave. There was a wooden box nearby. “Bury those lies”, said the old man. And, with not a few tears, that’s what that golfer did.

Then, through that old man, the young pro learned that the ultimate victory of life was to be found in the love of God made known in Jesus Christ who was lifted up from the earth to draw all people to Himself.

Come away from your pantheon; bury your lies; be drawn to the truth: that God would stop at nothing, not even death on a cross, to love you.
Amen.