No More Excuses!
based on John 12:20-36
by Rev. Randy Quinn
I
don’t know how many of you remember the television ad campaign Wendy’s
had several years ago. It featured two hamburgers, “Hamburger A” and
“Hamburger B.” People were shown both hamburgers and asked which they
would prefer.
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Hamburger A looked larger than Hamburger B. It
was in a soft bun with lettuce and tomato. The meat looked thick and juicy.
Ø
Hamburger B was much smaller. The bun looked
stale. The meat looked like it had been overcooked – or maybe even freeze
dried.
Do you remember that commercial?
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One man chose “Hamburger B” because it reminded
him of his mother’s cooking (and his wife whispers that she never was a very
good cook).
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Another man chose “Hamburger B” because, he said,
“I’m a truck driver and I like to taste my lunch all the way from
Philadelphia to Detroit.”
When given a choice, we often make
poor decisions for the wrong reasons, don’t we? And when we realize what we’ve
done, we often make excuses for our decisions. Our own pride won’t let us admit
to failure. Our own pride won’t let us – to use a Biblical word – our own pride
won’t let us repent.
You may or may not be surprised by
the number of excuses I have heard for not being in church on Sunday. I suspect
they tell me their excuses because they want someone to give them permission for
not being there, but I’m not the one who is offended by their absence.
It is the moral equivalent of
telling your neighbor why you didn’t go to work instead of letting your boss and
coworkers know. It’s like telling the clerk in the convenience store why you
didn’t go to school instead of letting your teacher and classmates know why you
weren’t there.
But still I hear the excuses.
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It’s my only day to sleep in.
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I don’t like to get dressed up when I don’t have
to go to work.
Ø
There was a ball game I had to watch.
Ø
People talk about money too much.
Ø
I don’t get anything out of it anyway.
You may have heard those before –
or maybe even used them before! But then there are those who stop going to
church altogether because they have been emotionally wounded or bruised by the
church or people in the church.
They came, like the Greeks in this
text, to see Jesus.
And the church got in the way.
In his book, An Unstoppable
Force, Erwin McManus makes the observation that Americans are more spiritual
than they have been in at least a hundred years. But in their searching for
God, the church is either the last place they look or when they did look, they
were all too often disappointed.
And so we start making our own
excuses. Rather than learning from them, we begin to explain their inability to
see what we know to be true. We begin to explain why we don’t need to change.
It isn’t the first time the church
has tried to make excuses for the world, as if our making excuses will excuse
them – or us! I mean, even the gospel writers found themselves trying to
explain why people in Jesus’ own day didn’t want “Hamburger A” and resorted to
putting Jesus to death.
Matthew, for instance, tells the
story of Jesus healing on the Sabbath and how the religious leaders found that
offensive. “How dare he violate one of God’s commandments!” (Mt. 12:9-14).
Their excuse was a righteous
indignation. They were offended that Jesus would put the health and well-being
of any human above the God-given commandment to rest on the Sabbath. So
offended, in fact, they began looking for a way to have him arrested. In their
minds it was the only way to defend God.
I’ve never heard someone say they
didn’t come to church because God didn’t want them there, but I know some church
people who didn’t.
We easily begin to act like the
religious leaders of Jesus’ day. We claim our own righteous indignation and
deny access to God by setting up our own pre-requisites for worship, or worse
yet, for salvation!
In the gospel of John, we find a
different way of excusing the actions of the religious leaders. John says they
were jealous of Jesus and his intimate relationship with God. He raises Lazarus
from the dead, and rather than join in the celebration, they fear they will lose
their place in the hearts and minds of the people (Jn. 11:45-54).
So they begin to make plans to put
Jesus to death. It’s better for one man to die than the whole social order,
they argue! They are convinced that his death is certain to protect their
standing in society.
Not many of us are willing to
change the status quo, either. We only know how to serve “Hamburger B,” and
we’re not about to take cooking classes.
We might say we want other people
to join us in worship, we might want other people to experience the joy of
salvation, but we all know we don’t want that to happen if it means we must
change, not if it means we can no longer do what we have always done, not if it
means we must repent.
Curiously, God has an entirely
different reason for allowing Jesus to die. He came, not to condemn us, but in
order to give us life (Jn. 3:16-17). Like seeds planted in the ground to bring
new fruit, Jesus is buried to give us new life. Jesus came to express and share
God’s love to all people. No matter what. No matter where.
What God offers is better than
Hamburger B. In fact, it’s better than Hamburger A, too.
And yet we continue to miss the
point. We continue to lift up our own reasons and excuses for his passion and
his death, and in the process, we fail to see Jesus as he saw himself. And in
that, we are no different than the disciples
The crowds came with a simple
request. I believe it’s the same request being made by people outside the
church today. “We would like to see Jesus” (Jn. 12:21).
The disciples aren’t sure what to
do. They whisper among themselves before finally approaching Jesus. “There are
people here, who want to see you. What should we do?”
Now, I suppose it was possible
that these people who came seeking Jesus were only interested in getting an
autograph. After all, he had just raised Lazarus from the dead. His reputation
was getting around. I suppose they could have been curiosity seekers who just
wanted to see what this man looked like.
I’m certain there are some who
come to our churches for that reason. They heard about the great musicians at
the Nazarene Church or the fantastic preacher at the Baptist Church. There are
curiosity seekers in every one of our churches.
But that doesn’t appear to be true
about the Greeks in our text for tonight. In fact, the report that they want to
see him seems to turn the story a little. “Now the hour has come,” Jesus says (Jn.
12:23). Quite a different response than when his mother asked him to help some
people during a wedding feast – there his response was the exact opposite, “my
hour has not yet come” (Jn. 2:4).
These people come to see Jesus and
he knows the time has come. In response Jesus says, “All people will see me
when I am lifted high upon the cross. In my death, all will know who I am and
whose I am” (Jn. 12:32).
Lift high the cross. There are
people who want to see Jesus. The time has come. It is up to us to lift high
the cross.
Let us pray: Holy God. We have
seen Jesus. We have seen him here tonight. We have seen him in our churches.
We have seen him in our community. We confess that often we try to protect him
from the world rather than lifting his name up for the world. Forgive our sin.
Give us the courage to lift high the cross and to follow you. Amen.
