“Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” Some Greeks wanted to see Jesus. They ask Philip. Philip tells Andrew and Philip and Andrew tell Jesus. Jesus responds with a little story about a grain of wheat remaining just that, a single grain, unless it falls into the earth and dies, and then it produces much fruit. And in the middle of telling the story, he made a sunning statement “ And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
When it happened, when he was lifted up from the earth, when he lived out the parable of the grain of wheat dying in order to live, when Jesus of Nazareth, in the full bloom of young adulthood, was crucified, something decisive, something compelling, something the human race has never been able to forget or ignore, happened.
Part of what has been so compelling about it , is the sense that it didn’t have to happen. He could have avoided it. He could have stayed in the safety of Galilee instead of going to Jerusalem for the Passover. He didn’t have to go to the very place where those who hated him were prominent and powerful.
Why did Jesus die?
He died because he really believed that in living for others, we become the men and women God created us to be. He died to show us how to live: to save us from our sins, to show God’s love and forgiveness and reconciling grace that covers, pays for, redeems everything we have done to separate ourselves from God and others.
But more than that even, He died to save our souls from narrowness, from the confines of our own selfishness. He died to call us out of our self-concern, our stress and anxiety about careers and how much money we earn, to a life lived in the glorious freedom of his love.
He died to show us that we need never be afraid of anything.
Dr. Willy L Mafuta, Ph.D, Th.D
Senior Pastor,
Hopewell United Methodist Church, Hopewell, NJ 08525
Dr. Willy L Mafuta, Ph.D, Th.D
Senior Pastor,
Hopewell United Methodist Church, Hopewell, NJ 08525