A long time ago, in a life that feels very far away, I was an entrepreneur and owned a little business called Hi Point Coffee and Café. My business consisted of a couple coffee carts at medical facilities and a café. It was such a cool place, imho. It was a big thing to me, though tiny in the scale of businesses.

As I was getting on the map a bit in Reno, I was invited to be a part of a yearlong business mentorship program by a group called EO. EO is an entrepreneurs’ learning and support group for medium sized companies and they offered this as a way to help us little guys to grow business-wise, but also flourish as people.

Our first meeting together, the group of mentees and mentors went around the table to introduce ourselves and talk about our hopes for the year. Everyone was feeling each other out, no doubt sounding like very well put together entrepreneurs. And I’m sure I started out that way, too. Everyone likes to be seen as put together, right?

But then I got a bit more honest and said, “I’m just so tired of myself.” And there was a lot of quiet after that comment.

I should tell you that I was a living ball of chaos at the time. I was living in survival mode and by this time, I had been in a state of relative chaos for years. The company I was building with my staff was truly a thing of beauty (imho) AND it came at the cost of me living any sort of normal life for years. And I was tired.

What I meant by that statement was that I was tired of how I was living, how I was showing up in the world. I was tired of feeling like I was once step away from panic all the time, feeling battered by the world, and how that felt in my body and soul. I needed a break from being that version of myself. It was exhausting and I was ready for a change. And because I was ready for change, that year of being mentored and coached was a year of good, needed change.

Change when you’re ready for change is still hard, but it feels good. That said, we’re not always ready for change. We may be comfortable with the way things are. Or at least comfortable enough and if that is the case, we are unlikely to be open to transforming our lives. That makes sense, right? Why go through the discomfort and fear of transformation into something unknown if what you have seems pretty good. Or at least OK.

This is how I understand what Jesus is saying here in our gospel. “Very truly, I tell you, 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. ²⁵Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

If we love our lives as they are, we won’t be very open to changes as they come. We may not be ready to follow the call of Jesus. If we are comfortable, we will want to stay that way. If we are not comfortable, we will be ready for change. There will be times in our lives where we are so done with everything, we will be ready for God to change everything. It is during these times that we will be reborn if we let God lead the way. We will be made new and given the gift of eternal life in the kingdom, even while we are still alive and in our life after death.

However, if we indeed cling to our comfort zones, we live a sort of stagnation, staying inside our seed husks. That is a different sort of death. This is the kind of death our Lord and Savior does not want for us.

In this room today and online, there will be some of us who would also say, “I’m just so tired of myself.” We might be needing some serious personal transformation led by Jesus. Others of us might feel fine about ourselves, but be thinking, “I’m just so tired of how we abuse our environment.” Or, “I’m just so tired of how we do politics.” Or, “I’m just so tired of war and the death of babies in rubble.” Or, “I’m so tired of housing prices, grocery prices, health care costs, education costs.” Or, “I’m tired of cancer.” “I’m tired of pain.” “I’m tired of all the injustice.”

We are all tired of something. We are all waiting for the death or the end of something. And we are all promised that there is new life on the other side of these deaths and endings.

In the Jeremiah text, we are told that the law of the Lord is written on our hearts. Indeed, I think we would all agree that we know deep in ourselves what is good and what the Kingdom is, even if that knowing is buried under our sin and confusion. With prayer, contemplation, discerning conversations with friends or counselors, we can find it. It is there, written on our hearts.  That difference between what is written on our hearts and what we experience day to day can make us tired. That tension can be tough.

Anything but the Kingdom itself is going to make us tired. So, the question is, “How are you tired? What makes you tired?”

For some, it may be personal. We may be fed up with how we are actually living our lives. Some of us may be tired of how our lives function at work or at home. We may be tired of old patterns showing up in our relationships. For others, we may be tired of how our world works. There’s not one of us who could say with a straight face that we live in a world of justice for all people and all of creation. We do not and we all know it.

Jesus is calling us into being tired of that, as well. Jesus is calling us to shed our hard shells of complacency and comfort to feel the pain of injustice, no matter who is at the pointy end of that particular stick.  

Jesus is encouraging us to acknowledge how our lives and world are not in alignment with the promises of the Kingdom of God he so loves to teach about. He wants us to acknowledge how we are tired of our lives, of ourselves, of our relationships, of the world…not for the sake of shriveling into blame, despondency, or hopelessness, but so that we can be open to and even hungry for the promise of new life. There is the promise of the Kingdom. Let us not give up our hope for that reality. Jesus’ promise of the Kingdom is the truth, the way, and the Life.

What Jesus is saying in our Scripture today is that there is no new life without first traveling the path of death.

My invitation to you, as we enter into Holy Week starting next Sunday, is to think of something in your life that you are indeed tired of and hold this thing in your thoughts and prayers as we walk through Holy Week. Maybe write it down on a piece of paper and keep it close to you. I encourage you to come to the services through the week, holding this situation close in your prayers and on your heart. Wrap it in love on Maundy Thursday. Experience it dying on the cross with Jesus on Good Friday.

Whatever it is, we can offer up our prayers with each other that we are indeed ready to let God change our lives, change our families, work places, relationships, communities, and world. What does the Kingdom in our lives look like? Are we willing to allow God to open up that path in front of us? Are we willing to walk the way of the cross? We profess that as Christians we are baptized into death with Christ for the sake of being included in Christ’s resurrection. What is it that is wearing you down? Write it down and bring it into Holy Week with you.

My crazy way of being an entrepreneur surely had to go for the sake of new life for me and my family. That’s not to say I’m not still prone to being a bit off the rails. We all are, in our different ways. We can all bring what isn’t the Kingdom, what isn’t reflecting the beauty of Christ in our lives to the cross.

The promise of the Kingdom is for us, now in our lives. That is what Jesus’ death and resurrection is all about. Blessings to each of us, each of you as you name the thing you want to bring to the cross in our blessed week to come. You are held, loved, and adored always by our savior and Lord Jesus Christ, especially as you walk the difficult paths of your life. This is the promise, the truth, and the life forever given to us.

AMEN