A Grain of Wheat
A sermon by Revd Dr Alastair McKay
Readings for this service: John 12:20-33
When it comes to thinking about death, we have a straight choice: either we can pretend our death will never happen; or we can face our death head on. Our gospel reading sees Jesus coming face to face with what awaits him. His hour has come. And now he faces the prospect of his own death. Death is of course something which we all have to face. But in our death-denying culture, most of us do our best to avoid it. This morning I want to explore something of what might be involved in facing death head on. And I want to start by reflecting on the life of Rubin Carter.
Rubin Carter was born in 1937 in the state of New Jersey, on the east coast of the United States. When he was 12 years old, Rubin witnessed a white man molesting one of his friends. He reacted violently, and stabbed the man in the arm, with a knife. The authorities – who were all white – condemned him, and despatched young Rubin to borstal for six years. After his release, Rubin again found himself on the wrong side of the law, and this time he was sentenced to four years in an adult jail. After coming out of prison, what was Rubin going to do? It was then that he took up boxing. And through boxing Rubin found that he could channel the deep anger he felt about his life, and his anger at the prejudice the African-American community suffered at the hands of white people. And Rubin was so good at boxing that he turned professional at the age of 24, and started to build a successful career in the boxing ring. Thanks to his lightning-fast fists, he became known by the nickname of ‘The Hurricane.’
But then, four years later, disaster struck. Three patrons of a bar were shot and murdered in the town where Carter lived. By reaching a deal with two petty criminals who were eyewitnesses, the police were able to frame Rubin for the murder. The all-white jury then convicted Carter, and he was given three life sentences by the judge. Now Rubin was back in prison, but this time with no prospect of ever getting out. Thinking that his life was over, and wanting to publicise his innocence, Carter set about writing his autobiography. After eight years in prison, his book was published. And a host of people then read Rubin’s story, including some well-known figures of the day. Among them was the boxer Muhammed Ali, and the musician Bob Dylan. Dylan even wrote a song about the man they called the ‘Hurricane’: well worth a listen.
The resulting campaign eventually led to a re-trial, 10 years after the first. And Rubin got his hopes up, thinking that now his innocence would be proven. But once he saw the all-white jury, he feared the worst. And sure enough, his fears were fulfilled. The jury again found him guilty, and the judge sent him back to prison.
At this point, Rubin lost all hope. He became a recluse in his cell. He stopped cooperating with the prison guards. And then he was visited by his wife, Mae Thelma. She’d kept visiting him throughout his first 10 years in prison, and she wasn’t about to give up on him now. But Carter decided that he couldn’t receive love from this faithful woman who’d stood by him. And so he told his wife to stop visiting: he insisted that he was now as good as dead. He said that she should divorce him.
Rubin Carter considered himself dead. But at this lowest point in his life, a stranger came knocking. Lesra Martin was a teenager from a Brooklyn ghetto, who had read Carter’s autobiography and was deeply moved by a story which had so many resonances with his own. So Lesra started writing to Carter, and then visiting him. Now Lesra was living with a group of Canadians who’d taken on responsibility for his education. Before long, Lesra’s friends developed their own bond with Carter and began to work for his release. Eventually they helped to secure a hearing in a federal court. And in November 1985, the judge handed down a decision to free him, and Carter heard the words he’d been waiting most of his life for. The judge said: “the extensive record clearly demonstrates that his conviction was predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason, and concealment rather than disclosure.” After 20 years of wrongful imprisonment, Rubin Carter was finally vindicated and set free.
Carter could hardly believe that the life which had been stolen from him had now been given back. What was he going to do with this life? Rubin said to himself: ‘I’m going to use my freedom to work for others who’ve suffered a similar fate to mine.” So he served as director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongfully Convicted, and on the boards of a human rights centre and of an organisation campaigning to eliminate inhumane practices in prisons. And that was the path Rubin followed until his end. Shortly before he died in 2014, at the age of 76, Carter wrote a newspaper article appealing for the exoneration of a Brooklyn man who had been wrongfully convicted of kidnapping and murder, and had been imprisoned since 1985. After Carter’s death, the man was finally exonerated, and released from prison.
In his final article Rubin Carter wrote this: “If I find a heaven after this life, I’ll be quite surprised. In my own years on this planet, though, I lived in hell for the first 49 years, and have been in heaven for the past 28 years. To live in a world where truth matters and justice, however late, really happens, that world would be heaven enough for us all.”
Jesus said: “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 did Jesus mean? I think Rubin Carter’s life can tell us. Rubin knew what it was to be a single grain of wheat. And what he found was that no one cared if that grain of wheat was buried in the ground, and dead to the world. Rubin reached the point when the only way that he could face his life of wrongful imprisonment, was to live as if already dead, and to give up on hope. That’s why he asked his wife to abandon him. But the unexpected friendship of a teenager, Lesra Martin, proved to be the fruitful soil that eventually allowed Rubin’s life to be resurrected. And after his release from prison, Rubin’s life bore much fruit, working in the service of others who’d been wrongfully convicted. Rubin Carter was once dead; but he also knew what it was to rise from the dead.
For the Christian disciple, this journey echoes our baptism. For before our baptism, our lives are but individual grains, without a true purpose. But if we are willing to let our life go, and to enter into the waters of baptism, then our life becomes buried with Christ. And that’s when our life, in collaboration with God’s people, can become the soil for life-giving service to the world. That’s when our resurrection begins.
In thinking about his own death, Jesus had a clear understanding that his death was needed to bring the rest of humanity into the joyful life of God’s kingdom. Hence he described his life as the grain of wheat that must die in order that its death could bring about the fruitfulness that God desired. But Jesus was also clear that the path he’d chosen was not his alone. So he indicated that if we want to follow him, then we too need to face the prospect of dying. Listen to these words:
“When Christ calls a [person], He bids [that person] come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow Him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time – death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old [human being] at his call.”[1]
These are the words of the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book The Cost of Discipleship. Bonhoeffer was writing during the rise of Nazis in the 1930s. And he chose to follow Jesus, rather than bow to an idolatrous and murderous state. This decision was to cost him his life at the hands of Nazi police: he was executed just before the end of the war.
But following Jesus faithfully will not always entail such a literal death. It may simply involve dying to the supremacy of our own self-preservation and advancement, which act as such a powerful driver in our lives. I think this may be what Jesus means by “hating our life in this world,” in order that we can keep it for eternal life. Sometimes this dying is a voluntary act, something we choose, as it was for Jesus. Sometimes it’s forced upon us, as it was for Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and as it was in a different way for Rubin Carter.
Laying down our lives to follow Jesus can therefore take on different shapes. One such shape is offered by the set of disciplines entered into by those who are today being commissioned as members of the Nazareth Community. The commitment to regular silent prayer, to sharing in the sacraments, to giving oneself in service of those in need, to studying to understand more of God, and to sharing with one another – together these commitments require a dying to oneself, and a radical offering of one’s life to God. This is a path which some of you are choosing and publicly committing yourself to today.
The disciplines of the Nazareth Community are one way to follow Christ. Whether or not we join the Nazareth Community, each of us faces the question of how we are going to allow the grain of our life to die, and what the harvest might be if we do so. But if we want to follow Christ, we cannot avoid this death: a dying to ourselves, and a giving of ourselves in God’s service. Rubin Carter faced death, and then found a way to live a life that bore much fruit. And if we are prepared to walk that path, and to look death in the eye, then, just as Jesus was glorified by the Father, so we too will taste of his glory, and will be honoured by the Father. “Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.” That’s Jesus’ promise to us. So let’s not be afraid to face death. Instead, let’s come and die with him.
[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (London: SCM Press, 1948/2001), p.44.
