The Grain of Wheat

I want to cry when I pass that magnificent Methodist Church on Fourth Street becoming offices and the one in South Williamsport that is now a day care center.

I worshipped in many of the Williamsport congregations back in the glory days.

Fred Hasskarl was pastor here and even the balcony was crowded.

Charlie Heaps at Bethany when they supported two pastors; Charlie Coates at Savior; Frank Bell.

My home church (also Wally Brandau’s) used to consider an attendance under 400 a bad Sunday; now they don’t even hit half that on Easter.

And the problem pervades North America and Europe.

And it’s not just Lutheran churches that have experienced problems.

But even the Southern Baptists and many evangelicals are leveling off or starting to decline.

You can no longer say conservative churches are growing and liberal ones are shrinking.

Experts have come up with all sorts of brilliant schemes to fix the decline of North American Christianity.

Doctor Jesus provides us with a cure in today’s Gospel, but it is not a medicine we want to take.

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 that our Lord not only stands above us telling us what we have to do, He leads the way by dying in order to give life, and then says that if we intend to serve him, we must follow him — specifically on the way of the cross. Our problem is not some trivial weakness that we can fix if we just learn the right techniques.

Jeremiah in our first lesson reports God’s promise to give us a new heart and a new spirit.

The writer to the Hebrews tells us that even the sinless Son of God needed suffering to be perfect and in the Psalm we with David ask for a clean heart and a right spirit.

People flock to preachers who offer snippets of advice on what little things they can do to fix themselves.

I have often been criticized by members who think I’m too negative and not really helpful.

Sadly the problem with us is not something we can fix no matter how hard we try.

The only possible cure is to die so God can raise us with a new heart and a new spirit.

God loves us so much he is willing to kill us in order to make us alive.

God’s Word comes to us in two forms for exactly that reason.

God speaks the word of Law to kill us.

Luther calls it God’s strange or alien work because while it may seem God kills us because he hates us, killing us is not God’s real intent.

That’s why we hate God’s Law and try to replace it with things we can do (such as sermons of good advice). Although we are always tortured by the question whether we have done enough, modern churches eliminate the Law altogether, trying to convince us to accept everybody and everything. But not only is that another law, it is a ridiculous law — all of us agree some things are unacceptable.

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it cannot bear fruit but remains alone.

Only when the Law does God’s alien work of killing us can the Gospel do God’s proper work (as Luther calls it) of raising us to life with Christ.

The Christian life is not progress from varying degrees of wickedness toward more virtue.

Instead, every day we die to ourselves because we are joined to the death of Christ in baptism and every day we hear the wonderful word of promise that raises us to new life in Christ.

The Apostle Paul was not a bad guy before he became a Christian. In fact, he says that as to righteousness under the law he was blameless.. . a text pastors and Sunday School teachers have a hard time explaining away.

But Paul didn’t need to repent of his sins, he needed to repent of his virtues.

Whatever claim he thought he had on God he learned to count as worthless for the sake of the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ and being joined to his death and resurrection.

If our churches are to find new life, if we as people are to find new life, we need to die.

Churches have to stop worrying about our survival as institutions and give ourselves freely in faith toward God and love toward our neighbors.

And we Christians need to let God’s Law kill us every day by showing us our utter need for grace, so that the Gospel can call us not to a better life but to the new life God creates in us.

We need to repent of our virtues so that nothing stands between us and God. And even this is not something we can do — it is what God’s Word of Law and Gospel does to us.

Then like that grain of wheat that falls into the ground and dies we and our churches can bear much fruit, for God does love us and He works wonders by raising the dead.

But in order to be raised with Christ, we need to die with him.

And that is what we resist with every fiber of our being.

Only after the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies can it bear much fruit.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.