Being Where Christ Will Be (March 17)

Readings, Jeremiah 31:31-34, John 12:20-33
Image, Eric Gill,  The Body of Jesus is Laid in the Tomb (1917)

Where I am, there will my servant be also.
 
This is the call on the life of the Christian. That we serve Christ by following Christ, serve, that is, by living after the pattern of Christ’s own life. Christ who, late in the day, looked around and saw the mounting opposition, the increasing animosity, the threat intensifying, and did not seek to be spared what the hour required. Instead, despite his troubled soul, Jesus trusted that through his service of the world he would be glorified, and through his glorification the holy name of God would be glorified too.
 
For Christ knew the saying was true and trustworthy: 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. Christ trusted that his crucifixion would not be a site of defeat, but his glorification, that his death would not be a site of loss, but of victory. He trusted that even if the world said “no” and rejected him, God would say “yes” and vindicate him.
 
This “yes” is heard in the resurrection of Christ. It is in his word of comfort and commission to Mary, his word of peace to Thomas, his asking John to feed his sheep. This “yes” echoes in the fruit of Jesus’ followers, who receive the Spirit at Pentecost and spread out to be the body of Christ in all the world. The saying is true and trustworthy, Christ was planted into the ground in death, so that through his resurrection, he could bear much fruit.  
 
It is by this, Christ declares, that the ruler of this world will be driven out. That the powers of Sin, Evil, and Death shall be confronted and overcome so that their grip on the world will be loosed. Having driven out the ruler, having loosed the grip of sin that has traced its course through human history since Adam, Christ is able to perform that which he was sent to perform, the reason he has come to this hour: Christ is able to draw all people to himself. His arms reach wide upon the cross, wide enough to embrace the whole world, draw us toward himself and hold us fast, so that wherever we are, there he shall be also.
 
In some ways, in the latter days of Lent, we are led back to where we began: The call placed on the Christian (to take up our cross and lose our life for Christ’s sake, to be found always where Christ is found) has been made possible by what Christ has already performed for us. Indeed, not only has Christ made it possible, but he made it the way to glory.
 
To say it another way, the servant is able to be where Christ is, because Christ has promised already and always, to be with us. Christ is Emmanuel, after all. Christ went down into the ground so that in resurrection and ascension he would be with all people in all times and places. Through the Spirit the single grain bears much fruit.
 
Now, it is good to delineate, that while Christ is Emmanuel, and has acted already to draw us to him and abides with us always, there are nonetheless places in which the servant is specifically called to be in order to be with Christ. Sites where the servant encounters and follows Christ in the most palpable and specific way.
 
The first place is at the table of grace, where Christ shares with us his very body and blood. The church community is the body of Christ, where the Word is proclaimed and the sacrament administered. And so we follow him here, to be further conformed to his image, to learn again – hour by hour - how to bear the fruit of his grain of love.
 
And the second place is with the least of these. It is when we love and serve the hungry, sick, poor, lonely, estranged, and imprisoned that we are most directly where Christ is. For what we did to the least, we did unto Christ. The servant of Christ is one who becomes a servant of the least of these in their struggle for freedom. Standing with those the world pushes and punishes, forgets and forsakes. It is with these the Lord of Glory sought fit to be intimately identified. The servant who intends to be found with Christ, must be found amongst the least, following in Christ’s way of mercy, friendship, and justice.
 
Holy Week draws near, we shall see the grain planted in the earth once more. May we bear fruit worthy of this glory, finding ourselves with the One who drew all humanity to himself.