With thanks to Spokane Westward Cluster Dean Pastor Carol Yeager for starting to connect the Rule of Benedict and Life Together for me and to Treasure Valley Cluster Co-Dean Pastor Lucas Shurson for asking the question about obedience, all during our deans’ retreat

Holy Trinity, Ephrata & St. Paul, Quincy

John 12:20-33

Our synod staff meeting devotions have come from a devotional book about reformer Martin Luther’s Small Catechism. Luther, like all catechism writers, wrote the Small Catechism to help families teach the faith in the homes. In it, he writes about the Ten Commandments, the Apostle’s Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the sacraments of Baptism and Communion. 

A catechism uses a question-and-answer form. So, for example, Luther writes, “The First Article: I believe in God the Father almighty, Maker of heaven and hearth. What does this mean?” then he goes on and gives an explanation or answer.

In a way, Jesus does something similar in this morning’s scripture passage from John. It is as if he says, “I am going to die on a cross” and follows with the question, “what does that mean?” His many sayings today are the answer.

He begins with this little agricultural parable, “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.” I wonder if I had been one of those early disciples, if I might have turned to a friend, rolled my eyes, and whispered, “Why can’t he just say what he means?”

And hopefully my friend would have replied, “Jesus is going to die. He is that one grain that is going to fall into the earth and die. He will also be raised from the dead. AND a community will gather because of his death and resurrection. Whenever Jesus uses the word ‘fruit’ he is talking about the life of the community of faith.” That’s what fruit is. Jesus’ death will draw our community of faith together and we will have life together.

A bit later Jesus says, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” The offer of life and healing and salvation is there for everyone. It is people’s response to this offer that sets limits, not Jesus himself. 

Collectively, Jesus’ sayings or teachings suggest a model of reconciliation that is built around the restoration of relationship. In other words, discipleship, following Jesus, is defined as serving Jesus. This is also the fruit of restored relationship with God. 

Throughout John’s Gospel, this relationship with God and our neighbors is described in the metaphors of new birth and new life. Jesus’ glorification is the final step in this new life. In other words, it is through Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension that God’s relationship to the world is irrevocably changed. One scholar (O’Day) concludes, “The world that lives in opposition to Jesus is judged by Jesus’ death, and its power overcome. Jesus’ death has this effect, not because it is a sacrifice that atones for human sin, but because it reveals the power and promise of God and God’s love decisively in the world.”

In his explanation of the Second Article of the Creed, Martin Luther writes, “All of this Jesus has done that I may be his own, live under him in his kingdom, and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as he is risen from the dead and lives and rules eternally.”

The faith community, that means you all, is the fruit of Jesus’ death and resurrection. It is what shows forth Jesus’ love to the world. The grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies. We cannot forget Jesus’ death on the cross, to which our Lenten journey points each year. It is hard to imagine such a death. Yet hope is found there. From death comes fruit. From death comes new life. 

Our cluster deans, including Pastor Paul Palumbo from Chelan Lutheran—your dean, had our annual retreat this past week Monday-Wednesday. The site of our retreat was St. Gertrude’s Monastery, up on the Camas Prairie near Grangeville, Idaho, not far from the Salmon River. Tuesday morning, we were joined by Prioress Sister Theresa Jackson who spoke with us about how the monastery community is changing, like the rest of the larger church. 

The sisters recognize that very few people, including Catholic women, are interested in taking monastic vows today. However, there remains interest in the way of life laid out by St. Benedict of the 6^th century, which you can read in a short document titled the Rule of Benedict. Lay people committed to this community can become oblates. In the middle of the pandemic, the monastery also had many dormitory units remade into cohousing units for single women who want to be part of the community. No longer will be it be the Monastery of St. Benedict, but instead the Center for Benedictine Life at the Monastery of St. Benedict. 

Hearing from Sister Theresa and praying twice each day with the sisters, I got a glimpse of the fruit Jesus refers to in his many sayings. I also got a glimpse of what I think so many people, maybe even you, are longing for today. The sisters pray together, live together, have things in common, and serve the wider community and one another. But it is not all roses. 

Sister Theresa talked about obedience and one of our pastors asked her to expand, explaining that Lutherans, who bristle at anything that might hinder mercy and forgiveness by grace along. What she ended up sharing was stories of mutual care for one another, not unlike a parent taking responsibility for children. Jesus says, “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” To love one’s life is the opposite of Jesus’ own action; it places one outside the community shaped by Jesus’ gift of his life and leads to the loss of that life. 

And the whole communal life at the monastery is grounded in regular prayer and encounters with scripture. The way Sr Theres spoke about Lectio Divina, a meditative practice of reading scripture, is probably not so unlike your own daily devotions, maybe. Sometimes I worry that in our Lutheran attempts to understand what scripture was saying to its original audience, say gospel writer John’s audience, important as that is, we forget that with practice and the help of the Holy Spirit, scripture can speak to us today. We don’t want to get into the habit of knowing the answer we want God to give us, and then trying to find it in the Bible. But when we pair meditative or devotional reading with communal worship and acts of service to our neighbors, the reading can be transformational. It can in fact help shape us into the communities of disciples who are the fruit Jesus speaks about.

In his classic The Life Together, German Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes this about encountering each other and the Word of God, “The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God’s love for us that He not only gives us His Word but also lends us His ear,”

Paired with the engagement of scripture for the Benedictines is the life of prayer. What does praying with one another and for one another three times each day do for a group of Christians? I can only imagine. But I know that praying for one another and with one another as a Lutheran Christian congregation has been transformational for me. Here is Bonhoeffer again, “A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses. I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face, that hitherto may have been strange and intolerable to me, is transformed in intercession into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died, the face of a forgiven sinner.” The fruit of Christian community is abundant life. Thank you all for being that life in this time and place.

Finally, our scripture passage this morning from John Chapter 12 ends up being a beautiful prelude to Holy Week. At the end of Good Friday service is often the Adoration of the Cross. These words are sung, “Behold the life-giving cross, on which was hung the salvation of the whole world.” The very last words of the response by the congregation after the adoration are: “By your Holy Cross, you have redeemed the world.” Amen. Thanks be to God.