I preached this sermon at St. Lydia's on Palm Sunday, April 1, 2012. The text is John 12:20-25. Read it here.
This week I was eating lunch with a new acquaintance just down here on the corner at the Root Hill Café, and he mentioned that he had been to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens recently, and that, because of our very early spring this year, all of the cherry trees are already in bloom.
“Wow,” I said, “isn’t the cherry blossom festival usually in April or something? Won’t that throw off their whole schedule?”
And he said, “Oh yes, it’s throwing everything off. They’re gonna have a festival when there are no blossoms on the trees. And think about all those poor brides who timed their weddings so they could go there and have their pictures taken.” And then he said, enthusiastically, “They should get their dresses on and go down there now!”
I’ve been thinking a lot about timing this week.
About the spring, which seems to have sprung early,
about the tulips, that my youth group at First Presbyterian planted back in October.
I sent them a picture this week of the buds and wrote below it,
“Maybe they’ll bloom just in time for Easter.”
I’ve been thinking about some seeds I’d like to plant
for the St. Lydia’s community garden –
when to start seedlings in my apartment
so they’ll be the right size at the right time to plant outdoors.
Timing matters, it turns out.
I think of the friend who you bump into after years and years, and you think,
“What if I hadn’t stopped to run that quick errand? I never would have run into her.”
Our lives can seem to gracefully align in a particular moment –
with everything falling into rhythm.
Or maybe we feel sometimes that our timing is off,
and we are perpetually stuttering and bumping along.
Jesus has been talking about timing since the very beginning of this Gospel.
Timing is his impatient excuse at the wedding at Cana
when his mother nudges him to turn water into wine.
“Woman,” he says to her, “my hour has not yet come.”
He tells the Samaritan woman that the hour is coming.
He tells his brothers to go ahead to the festival without him,
because, again, his hour has not yet come.
We are told that the Jewish authorities don’t arrest Jesus
because the hour has not yet come.
He’s waiting –
waiting for a moment of ripeness, of readiness.
I think of the rising bread that Clare taught us about
at our bread workshop a few weeks ago.
You have to wait until it’s right at the top of its rise,
just before it’s going to fall
to put it in the oven.
And then we reach this passage in chapter twelve.
Jesus has entered Jerusalem.
The city is tense and electric with preparations for the Passover.
The people are at the height of their fervor for him,
hailing him as a king –
a king who rides on a donkey.
The Pharisees watch over all of it
plotting to kill him.
And he looks at his disciples and says,
“my hour has come.”
This is the time.
Very truly I tell you,
unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,
it remains just a single grain;
but it if dies,
it bears much fruit.
This is the time.
This is the hour.
There is a sense of fullness about it.
A sense of ripeness –
of standing on the edge of something that is just about to turn.
Another moment and it will begin to rot.
The Jesus described in John’s Gospel
has an almost clairvoyant sense of what’s to come
as he rides toward his death on a donkey’s back.
The crowds that extol him are the same crowds who will crucify him,
and he knows it.
The disciples who love him are the same as those who will betray him,
and he knows it.
The world is pulling steadily into alignment,
all for this moment.
It will all happen like clockwork.
Once more we are at the table,
and Jesus washes their feet,
in a sign of love and submission that is astonishing.
Love and death, again, at the same table.
Then he hands Judas a piece of bread --
it’s as if he’s handing him a role to read in a play.
“Do quickly what you are going to do,”
he tells him,
and just like that,
Judas heads out into the night
and everything is set in motion.
Very truly I tell you,
unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,
it remains just a single grain;
but it if dies,
it bears much fruit.
This is the hour,
and Jesus is falling.
Soon he will die.
And then he will bear fruit.
Part of you is falling.
Part of you is dying.
Part of you is bearing fruit.
Whatever is falling,
whatever is dying,
whatever is bearing fruit,
trust that God has perfect timing.
Trust that the bourgeoning ripeness
will not lead to rot, but to death,
a death that you both need and desire,
a death that will bear fruit.
This is the time.
This is the hour.
The fruit is heavy on the branch,
and we are as ready as we can be
to let go
and give up our very lives
that we might find something eternal, imperishable,
on the other side of death.
Comments