5th Sunday of Lent
My apologies for no homily online last week, due to
Cyclone Larry! The eye of the storm
passed right through Malanda, Yungaburra and Herberton far north
Really strong thanks especially to the pastor and people
of Daisy Hill in Brisbane who took up a special collection for this area, with
the hope that “the people you love and care for can somehow struggle through
this and see God’s great love for them”.
Yes, a love mediated by the people and pastor of Daisy Hill, as well as
by so many others, including that emergency services person and that police
person who called around during the eye of the cyclone.
The prophet Jeremiah begins our word this week with the promise of a new covenant: “Deep within them I will plant my Law, writing it on their hearts.” The Responsorial Psalm, based on Jeremiah and Ezekiel goes one step further: create a clean heart for me, put a steadfast spirit within me – as in take away our hearts of stone, give us hearts of flesh.
How does God go about doing this? It is a question of the Word from without meeting the Spirit from within. There is a Divine working within, which we sometimes call the Holy Spirit, sometimes Divine Grace or Divine Inspiration, whereby our heart and spirit get to be touched and shaped and prepared to receive. This does make a great difference. What however is the Word from without, to touch us in the depths, to give us a new heart, put a new spirit within us?
The answer to this is obvious enough.
In terms of today’s reading: because of the loud and silent tears… Because the Son of Man was glorified and in this God glorified. Because the grain of wheat fell into the ground and died… Because Jesus eventually prayed, thy will be done. Because sentence was passed. Because the Son of Man was lifted up...
Or in terms of previous weeks: because God did not spare his own Son but gave himself for us all. Because Jesus the Beloved did not spare himself, did not save his life but lost it for our sakes. Because God so loved the world…
There is something to note here: in this gospel from John we are a long way from the earliest preaching of the Good News immediately after Pentecost, along the lines of “You killed him, God raised him up”, where the glorification = the resurrection. Here, in today’s gospel, Jesus is glorified, and God is glorified, already in the death, in the crucifixion, in the Son of Man being lifted up. Already the seed starts to bear fruit, already on the cross, on Good Friday, Christ draws all people to himself. Resurrection is divine validation after the fact, yes this is so, this is the way it is.
We are Good Friday people, as well as Easter Sunday people. Yes, God shares with us even unto death, yes, God will do anything to convince us of God’s love, even this. We are people of the new covenant, then, constituted already as such on Good Friday by the love of God in Christ Jesus, body given up for us, the cup of the new covenant in his blood which was shed for us and for all.
Not that they are really contrasting. On Good Friday Easter Sunday is already starting to happen, already there is new growth, already new life, a new heart, a new spirit, the giving up of his spirit on the cross is already the beginning of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit: thus the mature insight of Christians by the end of the 1st Century.
(Saturday Morning: the church and presbytery now have electric power, from lunchtime yesterday. This is mostly positive, though having to do without electricity was not an entirely negative experience – the tea tasted so good, made on a metho burner and later a gas burner outside! But it also very strangely meant leaving a certain community – the community of people still without power, of whom there are still a number in the parish. I think it is kind of important, then, that as Hebrews has it, we have a High Priest who is like us in all ways, including the tears. Even if the object of the exercise, to push the image probably a bit too far, is to get us all plugged in to the Divine power network!)
In a final touch, Jesus invites his key disciples to accompany him, to participate with him in this final extreme Divine strategy, to become Good Friday people in yet another sense, not just products, like all of us, but part of the producing. It is directed to men and women disciples who have already had their burdens lifted, people already liberated. Though it can still be a strategy for people at the end of their tether, a strategy for taking control, for affirming ourselves in spite of everything when all else fails. Such people also can join themselves to and participate if they want to in this ultimate Divine strategy, in spite of everything making themselves part of the solution, Good Friday people in yet another sense.