John 13: 31-38                                                                                                              Rev. Dr. Galen E. Russell III

Maundy Thursday / Good Friday                                                                                                  April 17, 2025

“Where I am going, you cannot follow me now; but you will follow afterward.”

     Prayer: Encourage us, O God. Challenge us to keep our faith growing, ever deepening. Amen.

Tonight is the culmination of our “Faith Mountain Climbing” Lenten worship series. Lent is always a time for faith growth. A time of introspection. It’s more serious. More contemplative. A time to dig deeper into our relationship with God.

This year we dug into facing some of our own spiritual mountains triggered by the Jesus-stories we read and studied. All these mountains can impede our relationship with God. But doing some faith mountain climbing with them I think helps us deepen our relationship with God which is, you know, life-giving and hope-giving for each of us, I think. Because who doesn't’ need life and hope in this world today?

So, I put the “mountains” we hiked up during Lent on the screen, starting with the mountain of Self-Interest and then Temptations. We heard about the mountains of distractions as we try to Follow God’s Call, Or not, and about some false beliefs about God that can cause a mountain of Spiritual Leakage.

Next we explored the mountain of a Guilty Conscience followed by the challenge of climbing the mountain of choosing God’s Priorities over our own. Last Sunday, we were pushed to climb the mountain of apathy by saying “I Pledge Allegiance to” God and what God values. My thanks to Rev. Dr. Nora Foust who assisted me by preaching the messages on two of those mountains, the one about distractions and priorities.

Now of course, you and I, on our faith journeys, we will always have some faith mountain climbing to do. So this is an ongoing spiritual discipline, not just for Lent. And my guess is that each of our faith journeys will give us all kinds of mountains to climb along the way. Most of yours will be different from mine and from each others, and mine different from yours.

However, there is one mountain that each of us will climb at some point in time. That is facing death. Death is the last of the mountains, perhaps the ultimate one? None of us, in all probability, I hope, will experience death in the near future, but all of us, with 100% certainty, will—at some point in time. Generally speaking, ours is not to choose the time of our death, is it? But, you never know. So, on this holy night, perhaps it’s good to talk about death.

Because Jesus is facing his death tonight. He knows it’s imminent. Judas had already gone out to betray him, so now, it was just a matter of time. The processes leading to Jesus’ inevitable crucifixion had begun. And there was no stopping it now.

So knowing that his death is within the next day or two, Jesus tries to help his disciples face it. He indirectly tells them he’s going to die by saying that he won’t be with them very much longer, that where he’s going, they won’t be able to follow initially.  And he gives them one last commandment, that they love one another, just like he loved them.

But facing death is hard to do sometimes, and on the surface, Peter doesn’t appear to get it. But, I wonder if he totally gets it. I’m guessing he understood exactly what Jesus meant, but he didn’t want to face it. He doesn’t want Jesus to climb up the mountain of death. And he doesn’t want to do it for himself, either. Maybe it’s all too unbearable for him. So, he almost denies the impending reality with futile, mis-directed questions of ‘Where are you going?’ and ‘Why can’t I follow you now?’ “You can’t follow me now, but you will afterwards facing death can be difficult thing.

So, all of us get it, I think, that someday we will have to face our death. Whether we want to or not. But, if we do some faith mountain climbing on the mountain of facing our death, there may be a few things we can consider along the way.

For one, it seems to me that there are certain ways that we often rehearse our deaths. Because death occurs in our lives all the time. And new possibilities come after it.

  Some of us have to face death when we made the transition from one job to another. Or when a loved one dies. Or when a divorce occurs. Or when someone gets sober. All of these feature a type of death, and all carry with them the potential of new life. Even deep sleep at night is a rehearsal of facing death, says the late theologian Frederick Buechner. Because you’re not aware of much in those moments, but when you awaken, you are aware of your life. He says it’s a precursor to dying to this world and being born into new life in God’s world, so sleep is a rehearsal to the real thing.  

And speaking of being born into God’s world, that’s the second consideration I offer for us tonight. That we, like Peter can’t follow Jesus to his death, nor do we need to. Jesus did that already for all of us. But we can follow him into his new life. Because Christ made it clear and so did Paul that nothing, no one thing, no sin, no human barrier, not the worst humanity can do to another person, not even death itself, can separate us from God’s love and grace through our Lord Jesus Christ. Christ made a way for every person to get into union with God. Christ is forever holding open the doors to God’s eternal realm so that we can easily traverse into it when the time comes for our bodies to die.

And we can easily experience God’s eternal realm now coming to us before our bodies die. Because the power of the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives sharing God’s love and grace all the time.

Which leads me to offer one more consideration for us. That as we do faith mountain climbing up the mountain of death, what really helps us know God’s love and grace is if we identify ourselves with Christ’s death. If we connect ourselves with his efforts to stamp out sin in our lives.

Because guess what? We can ask for God’s help to put sin to death in us. Yeah we can do that! You bet we can! Ask God to help put hatred of others to death. Put bullying to death. Crucify bigotry, and racism, and religism and sexism, and homophobia, and apathy… all of it. We can ask for God’s help in putting all of it to death in us. So we can live life to the fullest right now.

So let me end this worship and sermon series with this thought—that contrary to what Woody Allen famously said “I’m not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens,” my thought is, I do want to be there when it happens! Because I want to have life. When we face death, we also face life and new hope. Death is really a birth.

And when we do faith mountain climbing, we can be born to a new life because we grow closer to God. When we hike up the sometimes tricky terrain of any of our mountains on the journey, we always find Christ’s Holy Spirit is with us. And Christ is always helping us find new life. Thanks be to God. Amen.