Sam Bush, Staring Down the Tiger Shark
There is a contemporary art piece by the British artist Damien Hirst, titled (get ready) “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.” The work itself is less-complicated than the title; it is simply a preserved tiger shark in a large glass case. It sold for $12 million in case you want to reconsider your career path. I remember walking around this enormous shark at the Met in New York City, staring into its gaping mouth, feeling like it was almost a near-death sensation. But Hirst’s lengthy title is fitting because, as I looked into the shark’s mouth and imagined I was about to be eaten, it wasn’t long before I realized I hadn’t eaten in a couple of hours and that there was a great falafel place a few blocks away and all of a sudden I had moved on. Death was, again, an impossibility.
Have you ever had a brush with death? A near miss on the highway, a flight rocked by turbulence, a health scare? In these moments, we often get a heightened sense of reality. We see a little more clearly as to what is meaningful and what is trivial. And yet, should we safely reach the other side of the crisis, it’s not long before that feeling fades. The writer Tim Kreider once reflected on getting stabbed and nearly dying. For a few months, he was given clarity. But, he writes, “Before a year had gone by, the same everyday anxieties and frustrations began creeping back. I was disgusted to catch myself yelling in traffic, pounding on my computer, lying awake at night worrying about what was to become of me” (writers, they’re just like us!). In other words, a near death experience will not save your life.
This morning’s gospel passage is not a near death experience, but a harbinger of Jesus’ actual death. This episode takes place right after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem that we’ll celebrate on Palm Sunday. Thousands of people are in town for a festival and Jesus is the toast of the town. Right before this passage, his rivals, the Pharisees, throw up their hands in jealousy saying, “The whole world has gone after him!” And yet, what goes up must come down. Jesus knows his crucifixion is days away at this point.
When a group of Gentiles ask for a backstage pass to meet Jesus, he says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Time’s up, in other words. He ominously says,
“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.” What a strange thing to say to this group of fans looking for an autograph.
We may feel required to nod along to these words about the grain of wheat, but they are utterly confounding. I agree with Jesus 100% in principle, but not actually. As someone who is living, death is an impossibility. I’ll sooner believe the serpent in the garden who,
in Genesis, tells Adam and Eve, “You will not surely die.” In Genesis, eating the fruit leads to death, but here, Jesus says death leads to fruit.
Still, it is hard to believe. How could death lead to anything good? In the face of death, I am Gloria Gaynor: I’ve got all my life to live and all my love to give and I will survive. Toward my loved ones, I am the poet Dylan Thomas, whose dying father inspired his famous line, “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light!” What a desperate plea to a dying loved one, but I’d be surprised if you can’t relate to it on some level.
What does Jesus say in the face of death? He says, “My soul is troubled.” It’s the same word he uses at the grave of his friend Lazarus when he flat-out loses it. This is no stoic display of controlled emotion, no Disney-brand philosophy that death is part of the circle of life. This is grief. This is heartache. He likely wishes death was an impossibility, but the reality of it is setting in.
And yet, he does go gently, as gentle as a lamb. Why? “Those who love their life lose it,” he says, “and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” What’s he talking about?
As human beings we are fixated on finding fulfillment. We think the ultimate goal of life is self-improvement or personal growth. But the Bible marches to the beat of a different drum. To be alive is to learn how to die. Well before our physical death, we die in a number of different ways: whether it’s a dream or our self-image, or a career or the death of a relationship or a marriage or a loved one. Jesus is saying anyone who holds onto his life, just as it is, destroys it. If you let it go, you’ll have it forever. Now, that sounds terrifying, but it is actually profoundly comforting because it means wherever you feel like you are dying, it is not the end of the story. It’s actually the beginning.
If you don’t believe me, just listen to the radio show This American Life, specifically the episode titled “Putting the Cart Before the Porsche.” It happens to be about the perfect family in Virginia. The father was a successful lawyer, he and his glamorous wife had matching Porsches and a huge house. Their four children excelled in school and cotillion and looked every bit the part. The youngest daughter, who is now an adult, said that, while perfect on the outside, “On the inside, it was an environment of constraint. Rules were very important. Etiquette, very important. She said, “My dad's insane temper could be set off by the slightest offense. Life was all about ‘avoiding awakening the bee's nest.’”
One day one of the daughters wrote her father a letter from college saying how much she admired him as a lawyer and that she wanted to be a lawyer herself and this letter cracks the nut. The mother comes home to find the father in the fetal position, weeping. They have a family meeting that night and he confesses that he had been stealing money from a trust to support their lifestyle. He turns himself in, gets disbarred, becomes a paralegal. To make ends meet, the mom takes a job as a janitor at their church. They move to a smaller house. Their beautiful life, as they know it, is over.
Years later, looking back, the same daughter says, “My dad was instantly better. He was happy.” He chewed gum which he never did before. Her mom was utterly transformed: this woman who would wear her expensive jewelry to the pool was now packing lunches and going around town, giving them to homeless people. A home once occupied by control was steeped in freedom, laughter and peace.
Spiritually, this family didn’t have a brush with death, but a head-on collision. Only after their identity was dead and buried could God make them a new creation. “Those who love their life lose it. Those who hate their life in this world will keep it forever.” You see, Jesus is the exception to the rule that what goes up must come down. His death and resurrection prove the opposite, in fact. Like a grain of wheat, whatever goes down, he raises up. Whatever falls apart, he puts back together.
Still, what are we to make of that dreadful tiger shark? Because, even if God restores our lives after we have crashed and burned, how do we address our final curtain call? Well, at the end of this passage, Jesus says, “When I am lifted up from the earth (meaning, from the Cross), I will draw all people to myself.” It reveals that we are saved not by Jesus’ teaching or moral example, but by his death. He who won your salvation did so by losing
everything, including his life. He himself was the grain of wheat that died and was buried so that you and I may enjoy the fruits of his labor. I’ll admit, it is difficult to comprehend.
Theologian Robert Capon offers an illustration to show how confounding the story of our salvation really is. He depicts a summer scene on a crowded beach on a sunny day. The surf is up, however, and there’s a bad undertow so the lifeguard puts up the “No Swimming” sign. As people are reluctantly getting out of the water, someone suddenly points out to sea and shouts, “There’s somebody out there!” A woman, in fact, is about 100 yards out, arms flailing, shouting for help. The lifeguard dives in and swims out to her. Everyone is expecting him to bring her safely back to shore, but just as he reaches her, he pauses and then goes under and does not come back up. Eventually, to everyone’s horror, the woman goes under as well. The crowd on the beach is aghast. “How could something like that happen? It makes no sense. And then, in cinematic fashion, Robert Capon draws our attention back to the lifeguard tower where a clipboard has been left lying on the seat. It reads, “It’s all okay. Trust me, she’s safe in my death.”
It’s a dark story, but it shares the same nature of the gospel which reveals that Christianity does not merely have a dark side, but a dark center. And yet, like a seed, God works in the dark. And dark is not dark if God is there. In the presence of God, darkness is light. You see, we are drawing nigh to Good Friday, when Jesus entered the grave and stared down the jaws of death, allowing himself to be eaten. In light of his resurrection, you are safe in his death. That shark has no power over you anymore. Last time I saw it, it was sitting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art so go enjoy some falafel. Even still, it’s hard to wrap my mind around. Like death, resurrection is physically impossible in the mind of someone living. And yet, because of Jesus, we know that, with God, all things are possible. Through Jesus, the impossible has become true.
Amen.
