Ours is a faith that encourages us — to die. Actually, it demands of us that we die. It’s more fun to talk about eternal life, and we’ll get there — Easter will come. But it can’t come, not really, not in our lives, not as more than a date on the calendar or a service we have to go to, until and unless we die. Before it is about an eternity of living, Christianity is about a lifetime of dying. And here, in the midst of Lent and poised for Holy Week, we are called to die.

Greeks come to see Jesus. These were probably "God-fearers," Gentiles attracted to Judaism’s moral teachings and monotheism. The authorities, fearful and threatened, have just complained that the "whole world has gone after" Jesus (Jn. 12:19), and now these Greeks speak for all of us by saying, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus." For Jesus, this is clearly a watershed event. His ministry has broken out of the confines of Judaism. Metaphorically, the world has come to see him.

He knows that the gig us up — that the authorities will not tolerate this much longer — that the "hour has come." This is not easy for him. He says his "soul is troubled." But knowing, and dreading, what is to come, and now speaking to the whole world, he cuts to the chase and tells these Greeks (and us) what they (and we) who wish to "see Jesus" most need to know. And it is not the sweetness and light of Easter. He tells them that they have to die. "Very truly I tell you," he says, "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. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life."

Before we can be about an eternity of living, we have to be about a lifetime of dying. And the Bible is very clear about what parts of us are to die. St. Paul calls it "the flesh." That’s an unfortunate choice of words because people confuse it with our bodies, but what Paul means is, "That part of us that is not of Christ." And we are all born with a lot of ourselves that, the Bible tells us, is not of Christ.

So, as a Christian, I have been called to die a thousand deaths. I often struggle, the un-Christlike spirit within me thrashing, hanging on, fighting for its life, refusing to die. And then, so many times, when I’m sure that it has died, I find that, like an army of guerrilla fighters, it has merely retreated to the hills of my psyche, only to reappear at another time.

These life and death struggles are with

a desire for revenge that I feel so deeply in my gut;

a belief, however irrational, that money and material things will protect me;

a tendency, shared by most of us I think, to be able to rationalize what we need, so that what we think we need becomes merely what we want;

a temptation to take the much easier path of labeling people, rather than seeing every human being on earth as a Child of God whose dignity is to be respected;

my self-protective desire not to genuinely consider the harm that society has done to whole groups of people, but instead to want to judge each person’s accomplishments individually, comforting myself with the convenient lie that we all started with the same advantages.

My life and death struggles are with

wanting to talk about people in unflattering ways when they are not present. In other words, wanting to gossip;

wanting to turn gifts, like the gift of God’s love, into a transaction, so that I can earn it;

"loving" other people as a transaction, rather than a gift, so that the implicit message is that they have to earn it;

not forgiving people who have done terrible things in the world, or just hurtful things in my life.

One of my most difficult, and important, life and death struggles is with my seemingly instinctive view of coercion, the threat of violence, or violence itself as the real enduring power in the world. I struggle not to see the power of war (planes, bombs, tanks — violence) as more powerful than love and vulnerability (the cross).

I am called to die in all those areas. And, of course, many more. There are many, many parts of all of us that are not of Christ. I’m not talking about parts of us that are not part of some warm, fuzzy, niceness or generalized sense of decency. I’m talking about the parts of us that are not of Christ — the radical, disturbing Christ that we don’t have to guess at, the Christ who is in our Bible. The Christ who said, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." (Not, "Do unto others as they did unto you.") The Christ who said, "Love your enemies. Pray for them. Bless those who persecute you." The Christ who said, "Do not seek revenge." The Christ who said, "Judge not." The Christ who said, "You cannot serve God and money." The Christ who said, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." The Christ who said, "I came to be a servant." The Christ who said, "You are forgiven — as you have forgiven." The Christ who said, "Love your neighbor as yourself." The Christ who said "Whatever you have done to the least of these, the downtrodden and powerless, you have done to me." The Christ who showed the awesome power of God by dying on a cross.

It’s actually pretty hard to die to the parts of ourselves that are not of a sense of niceness, or decency, or social appropriateness, but I find it to be so much harder, to be the work of a lifetime, to die to the things that are not of the Christ of the Bible.

Next week we begin Holy Week with Palm Sunday. We will hold services for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. You really should not come to Easter unless you have come to those services. Because we, like those Greeks, really can’t see Jesus resurrected until we have seen him on the cross, and can’t be raised with him until we have been willing to take up our own crosses, our own instruments of death.

John Wesley said that many people believe in Christ who have not made the decision to follow him. I hope you know that my prayer for you is that you will know eternal life. But my prayer is also, that each of us may die a daily death.

Let us pray: O God, who for our redemption gave your only-begotten Son to the death of the cross, and by his glorious resurrection delivered us from the power of our enemy: Grant us so to die daily to sin, that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his resurrection; who lives and reigns now and for ever. Amen.