{"id":651624,"date":"2024-02-07T17:19:12","date_gmt":"2024-02-07T22:19:12","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2026-08-17T20:12:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T00:12:38","slug":"for-your-sake-lent-5-b-march-17-2024","status":"publish","type":"sermon","link":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/sermons\/for-your-sake-lent-5-b-march-17-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"For Your Sake, Lent 5 (B) \u2013 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-purple-color has-alpha-channel-opacity has-purple-background-color has-background is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/playlist.megaphone.fm?e=DFMS2663202818&#038;light=true\" width=\"100%\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-purple-color has-alpha-channel-opacity has-purple-background-color has-background is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[RCL] Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-13 or Psalm 119:9-16; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-large is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.episcopalchurch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/L5-2024-Cover-FB-1024x536.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-301628\" style=\"width:512px\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some foreigners, outsiders, show up for the festival. They say, \u201cWe wish to see Jesus.\u201d Philip runs to Andrew and presumably says something along the lines of, \u201cHey, there are all these foreigners who want to see Jesus! What should we do?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Andrew obviously has no answers. Who wants foreigners around at a time like this?! So, they run off to Jesus to tell him the foreigners are at the gates looking for him. Jesus says, in effect, if you want to see me, really, really see me, then stick around. You\u2019ll have to deal with my death at the hands of Rome to really, really see me. Are they ready for that? Are&nbsp;<em>you<\/em>&nbsp;ready for that? To which we might add, are&nbsp;<em>we<\/em>&nbsp;ready for that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then obviously there was some noise. Some thought it was thunder, so it must have been loud. Some thought it looked as if Jesus was talking to someone, but there was no one there. Must be angels, some surmise. It was that voice from heaven. The same voice he heard at his baptism that said, \u201cYou are my beloved. I am well pleased with you.\u201d The same voice from the cloud on the mountaintop with Peter, James, John, and Jesus that said, \u201cThis is my beloved, listen to him.\u201d Are we listening yet?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now when Jesus says, \u201cFather, glorify thy name,\u201d the voice returns and says, \u201cI have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.\u201d Or was it thunder? Is he talking to angels? Has he simply lost it and started talking to himself? Should we even think of letting the foreigners see him like this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While everyone is trying to figure out what is happening, Jesus announces, \u201cThis voice has come for your sake, not mine.\u201d Which I would take to mean: for our sake, not his.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This voice that keeps coming around is for us, not for Jesus, which makes perfect sense. He knows the voice. The voice knows him. He has always heard the voice. He comes to get us to listen to the voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Surely, we must wonder why we do not hear the voice like Jesus does more often? Or at all! Would it surprise us to learn that to this very day, 90% of the peoples of the world regularly hear such voices? That modern Westerners are the minority, the anomaly, as those people who do not regularly access this kind of communication with God and spirits? The question is quite naturally, why not us? And most people say we are too busy to be listening, or think we are too sophisticated to hear voices, or think you have to be crazy or mentally ill to hear such voices. Someone has suggested that maybe it is because we are too grown up. Someone else has pointed out that most other cultures do not make such a big thing out of growing up. And isn\u2019t it Jesus, after all, who says we are to come to the kingdom like children?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And couldn\u2019t it be that we don\u2019t want to hear anything about having to watch him die, watch him be executed, the victim of state-sanctioned capital punishment? Dress it up as being like a grain of wheat, call it what you may, but that is what it is: state-sanctioned public execution. In all the debate on capital punishment, how often are we asked to reflect upon what it might mean that the One who calls us into a relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the victim of state-sanctioned capital punishment?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All we know is that he says, \u201cThis voice has come for your sake, not for mine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This voice that says, \u201cYou are my beloved. I am well pleased with you. I have glorified my name and I will glorify it again.\u201d We are left feeling that for God\u2019s name to be glorified, we need to be listening to God\u2019s voice and learn how to become part of the glorifying process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Holy Week and all it portends may be dark and scary. But it is not nearly as frightening as the prospect that for others to see Jesus, we might need to be part of the glorifying process. In Sunday School, we rarely hear anything about this voice and its being for us. Seminaries typically do not offer a lot of training on how to listen for this voice Jesus says is for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The creeds do not appear to discuss it. The catechism does not seem to discuss it. Yet, there it is. \u201cThis voice has come for your sake, not for mine.\u201d Seems as if we\u2019d best get listening to hear what this voice says; nothing less than the future of the whole world is at stake, he goes on to say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The problem is that those of us who, like the foreigners, want to see Jesus are the very people to whom others come expecting to see Jesus. In us. In what we say and what we do. In his book&nbsp;<em>By Grace Transformed,<\/em>&nbsp;the late Gordon Cosby of the Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C., discusses just how it is that others \u201chear the voice\u201d and come to see Jesus. Gordon puts it this way:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cEvery single one of us is significant to somebody else. The people to whom we are significant will catch this thing from us if they know that we are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, absolutely devoted and loyal to the Lord Jesus Christ. But the trouble is that in those moments we think of as off moments, others decide whether or not we are truly committed. The times a person says, \u2018I must talk to you,\u2019 or when we are weeding the garden. Or, working in an office. Grading a road. Nailing on a molding or painting a room. Cooking a meal. Speaking to a child. These are the times and places where the other person decides who we really are. There can be no \u2018off moments\u2019 for Christians if our faith and its vitality are to be contagious.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Next Sunday is Palm Sunday. The beginning of Holy Week, the most important week in the Christian year. We must all make time to come and serve him, follow him, be with him wherever he may be. Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, the Great Vigil of Easter are all times we need to come and be with him. \u201cFollow me,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And we need to listen for the Voice. The Voice that is for our sake, not for his. The Voice speaks to us so that we might know how beloved we are. So that we might know how well pleased God is with us. Once we hear this voice and believe it, others will see Jesus, in all that we say and all that we do. Amen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>This sermon was written by <strong>the Rev. Kirk Alan Kubicek<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-file\"><a id=\"wp-block-file--media-d075f62d-33e3-4b40-bd99-d5fa34e75c44\" href=\"https:\/\/www.episcopalchurch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Sermon-Lent-5B-English.docx\">Word \u2013 Lent 5 (B) Sermon<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.episcopalchurch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Sermon-Lent-5B-English.docx\" class=\"wp-block-file__button wp-element-button\" download aria-describedby=\"wp-block-file--media-d075f62d-33e3-4b40-bd99-d5fa34e75c44\">Download<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-file\"><a id=\"wp-block-file--media-3bdf5dcb-aa9a-4d7b-bd25-8ea86592624e\" href=\"https:\/\/www.episcopalchurch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Sermon-Lent-5B-English.pdf\">PDF \u2013 Lent 5 (B) Sermon<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.episcopalchurch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Sermon-Lent-5B-English.pdf\" class=\"wp-block-file__button wp-element-button\" download aria-describedby=\"wp-block-file--media-3bdf5dcb-aa9a-4d7b-bd25-8ea86592624e\">Download<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[RCL] Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-13 or Psalm 119:9-16; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33 Some foreigners, outsiders, show up for the festival. They say, \u201cWe wish to see Jesus.\u201d Philip runs to Andrew and presumably says something along the lines of, \u201cHey, there are all these foreigners who want to see Jesus! What should we do?\u201d Andrew&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":201212,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tec_requires_first_save":true,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[51,43,52,3],"tags":[309],"class_list":["post-651624","sermon","type-sermon","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lent","category-sermons","category-sermons-that-work","category-worship-and-prayer-menu","tag-lent-5b"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":51,"label":"Lent"},{"value":43,"label":"Sermons"},{"value":52,"label":"Sermons That Work"},{"value":3,"label":"worship_and_prayer_menu"}],"post_tag":[{"value":309,"label":"Lent 5B"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":[],"comment_info":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon\/651624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/sermon"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon\/651624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3478586,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon\/651624\/revisions\/3478586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}