“How’s Your Heart”
 John 12:20-33
Jeremiah 31:31-34

 
Now, I need you to try to stay with me this morning.

The message today draws on both our Old Testament reading of Jeremiah 31: 31-44 and our Gospel reading of John 12: 20-33. 

In Jeremiah: The Old Testament reading of Jeremiah 31, as a whole, may well be one of the best examples of a poem in the whole book, both due to its beauty of expression and its religious content. It is possible that the single most important teaching of Jeremiah can be found in verses 31-44. He tells us here that He will put His law within us, and He will write it on our hearts; and He will be our God, and we shall be His people, because He will forgive our iniquity, and remember our sin no more. This text that is an allusion to Judah’s hardened heart and their failure to know God in all strata of society – they broke their covenant with God - but God will make a new covenant, which will be inscribed in the hearts of his people.  

This is not a promise of sinless-ness, but one of the forgiveness of sin.  

Through this new covenant all will know and love God, as the prophets had known Him, directly and intimately, in our hearts.  

The heart is the most persistent single image throughout these readings.

In the time of Jeremiah, the heart was not understood to be the "the opposite of the head," nor the center of emotion, that was the intestines. The heart was thought to be the center of intellect and values. The heart was the bottom line of the approach to God, the world, and everyone and everything in it that drives all our actions and decisions. "Heart" in our culture, has many associations that it didn't have in the biblical world. It is the heart that will be the witness to God's new covenant. It is the heart that seeks instruction and wisdom in the psalm. It is the heart of Jesus, not his ancestry or ritual perfection, that makes him our Savior. It was His heart which reflected his willingness to seek God's glory, even in his own execution, while calling those who serve him to be right alongside him in the process, then and thereafter, facing death with the power of Truth.

IN JOHN:

Our Gospel reading today, John 12: 20-33, marks the conclusion of Jesus’ public ministry.

This is a pivotal moment in the life of Jesus. It begins with the request of some Greeks, Gentiles, to see Jesus. This, it seems to me, is almost a signal; a sign that Jesus has been looking for or at least He seems to take it to have special meaning, for He begins to speak of His death, of “this hour.” Note the theme here of “this hour”.

(John 12:23) Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” (12:24) “Very truly, I tell you, 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.”

Notice here that Jesus uses the word “grain”. He does not use the word seed. We know that a seed can survive in a dormant state for hundreds, even thousands, of years. Yet it must die, be transformed, to bring forth new life.

The Greek word for “grain” used here is Kŏkkōs (kok-kos) and is used to mean the kernel of a seed. Kŏkkōs (kok-kos) or kernel, as used here, means “the central or most important part of something” (the Heart).

This is a connection to the teachings that unless we are reborn, unless our seed, our outer husk, our hard part, dies, we will not gain the kingdom of God.
This seed, this hard part of all of us must release our grain, our kernel, our heart, because it is in the rebirth of our heart to God’s form and substance that it multiplies life to others.

Is Jesus talking about a physical death here?

Some would argue yes, and that may be. Others may argue that Jesus was
talking about His own soon to be realized death. That day was coming in “this hour” just ahead for Christ.

I wonder why the appearance of these Gentiles, though, makes Jesus think about “this hour”?

He sees in these Greek Gentiles the first fruits of kingdom from the world at large. Until this time…until the gentiles ask to see Jesus, His life and ministry had been confined to one small country and to mostly one people. 
But now, the Gentiles are beginning to see, to hear, and to seek him.

Jesus knows this cannot continue to bear fruit until he, like a seed, dies, is buried, and then grows to yield a hundred-fold and more. It cannot be as Jesus of Nazareth that the Gentiles come to believe but only after the Christ of the cross, the Resurrected Lord, that the message could be planted in the hearts of Gentiles – just as his own disciples and missionaries like Paul would do.

How did they make this seed grow?
What did they do and preach?

They lifted up Christ.
They told of His works.
They told of His Death.
They told of His resurrection.

That testimony, that witness, drew and continues to draw people to him even today.

Jesus’ work on Earth was about to come to an end. 
Jesus was about to be finished! 
Jesus was about to release His Grain, His kernel, His heart, so that we could be reborn.

We, you and I, are not yet literally finished here on Earth, but that does not mean that we cannot shed our seeds of finished work and release our kernels, our hearts, and be reborn in our hearts right now.

Become like the Gentiles that wished to see Jesus.

Let us ask:

What "finished work" in us as individuals, or as a congregation, needs to die to make way for new life to emerge? What are we so afraid of having taken from us or destroyed that we would hold it all in — like the covering of the wheat grain?

In John this metaphor of a grain of wheat is a reference to the coming passion of Jesus – the death on the cross. But note that there is a tie here to the Jeremiah passage:

(Jeremiah 31:31)
 “The days are surely coming,” says the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.”

This gives a preview of the release our kernels, our hearts, and our spiritual rebirth. Perhaps, Jesus saw himself as the suffering servant of Isaiah, as the way to bring about the redemption of humanity through the way of suffering. By his stripes, the wounds of the world are healed. By his death, abundant and eternal life come to all who hear and believe, who wish to see him as did these Greeks.

(John 12:27)
"Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say--' Father, save me from this hour'? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.”

(John 12:28)
”Father, glorify your name." Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again." 


Did it have to be this way?  Yes.
Did He have to drink of this cup? Yes.
Could He not ask to avoid it, to find another way?  Yes.
Yes, He could ask, but He doesn’t.
He submits here, as He would in Gethsemane, to the will of God.
He will suffer and die and be raised from the dead because that will glorify God and bring hope, healing, and life to humanity.

If somehow his being raised up on a cross (and perhaps there is also a reference here to the resurrection) could draw people back to God, then so be it. All I can say is what millions of others have said before – that when you truly stand at the foot of the cross, looking up onto the face of the Son of God, something happens to us. There is a love that flows from the cross that profoundly touches us, changes us, makes us want to love back – love God and love others. It’s a love that we know will suffer anything, any pain for us.
It’s the ultimate evidence of just how far God is willing to go to show us how very much we are loved.

You may have noticed the “Ole Rugged Cross” in front of the Church this year let me warn you to stay away from that cross. Don’t look at it. Don’t go near it… unless you want to be overwhelmed and changed forever by the love of God. Dying to give life is a law of nature. It is also a spiritual law.

(John12: 25)
Jesus says, “Those who love their lives will lose their lives; those who hate their lives in this world will keep their lives for eternal life”.

It is a fact of life that no person truly lives who makes himself, his ambitions, his comfort, his pleasure the center of his life. 
The more he turns in on himself, the more alone he becomes, the further away from life he gets. It is only as he risks his life, that he sacrifices, gives of himself that he begins to truly live, to find fulfillment for his deepest needs.

This is also the law of Christ. Jesus hears that Greeks, Gentiles, are asking for him and then he begins talking about death to give life. 
I think he is looking ahead to the harvest of Gentiles, but knows that this cannot happen unless he, like a seed, gives up his life, and plants His Sacred Heart so that we (you and I) will have rebirth. 

Jesus planted his life in the soil of Golgotha and from his life… new life has come… and still comes to so many.

Dying to live is also the way of all those who would follow Christ.

To truly be his disciple we are called upon daily to take up our cross and follow him, to die to self and give our all, to fill our days with selfless love. 

Allow me to read:

“Jesus lover of My Soul” (verse 4)

“Plenteous grace with thee is found,
grace to cover all my sin,
let the healing streams abound,
make me and keep me pure within.

Thou of life the fountain art,
freely let me take of thee,
spring thou up within my heart,
rise to all eternity.”

 
The proclamation and experience of the Word today is focused on a personal examination of our hearts. Each of us…every one here… and out there… needs to answer this one question:

How’s Your Heart?