Accepting Jesus as Change Agent

We continue today with perhaps one of the most challenging of this Lenten series by The Rev. Dr. Michael Battle of CREDO:

" . . .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."--John 12: 24

Jesus' agricultural parables usually teach us about interdependent Christian community and how our relationships always need to mirror God's life. When we look at this world,
however, we can easily think Jesus' words are idealistic.There is a play by the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called Morts sans Sepultre (The Living Dead)--in French it is literally called, The Unburied Dead. The particular scene that illustrates how we are all interdependent takes place in the attic of a house in France during the Second World War. In the attic are a half-dozen captured members of the resistance. Abuse is rife as these prisoners wait anxiously for the next morning when they will be taken out one at a time and tortured for information. They innocently wait for their execution because there is nothing to do but wait, and then suffer, and then die.

An unexpected thing happens, the attic door opens and the soldiers throw another man in. It turns out that this man is the true leader of the resistance, but the Nazi soldiers do not realize
this. The Nazi soldiers simply think the man was caught after curfew.The other prisoners of course think differently and their anxiety turns to courage. They tell their leader, "Don't worry. We will hold our tongues." The leader responds, "I thank you, for myself, for the Resistance, for France. Your courage and your sacrifice will not be forgotten."Suddenly, one of the prisoners, who is eventually revealed as his fiancée, says, "Oh, shut up. Nothing you have to say could possibly mean anything to us. I am not blaming you. It is not your fault. But the fact is that you are a living man and I am a dead woman, and the living and the dead have nothing to say to each other. Tomorrow you go out that door to freedom and life, and I go out to torment and death, and that fact puts an impenetrable barrier between us. I do not hate or envy you. I simply do not see you as a meaningful part of my universe. Now go sit down over there, and leave me to talk and hold hands with my brothers and sisters, the people with whom I shall be dying in a few hours."

When we look at this world, we can easily get angry, angry at the leader of resistance.
We can easily become the fiancée to Jesus. It is easy to get angry at the leader of resistance if such a leader seems to have little effect on changing our outcomes of death and sin. Scenes of African poverty or incessant war or the church in division can make the strongest of faith use Jesus' words, "Now my soul is troubled" (John 12:27).

Let us pray,O God of all the nations of the earth: Remember the multitudes who have been created in your image but have not known the redeeming work of our Savior Jesus Christ; and grant that, by the prayers and labors of your holy Church, they may be brought to know and worship you as you have been revealed in your Son; who lives and reigns with you and the
Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen