The 5th Sunday of Lent: Cycle B 23-24
The 5th Sunday of Lent
Jeremiah 31:31-34 | Hebrews 5:7-9 | John 12:20-33
By your help, we beseech you, Lord our God, may we walk eagerly in the same charity with which, out of love for the world, your Son handed himself over to death. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.
This Sunday marks the end of the five Sundays of Lent, and we begin next week, the holiest of the year, with the Feast of Palm Sunday, ending with Easter Sunday. Then there is the Triduum, the holy Thursday, the institution of Eucharist, and then Friday, the death of Christ and then his resurrection on Sunday. This season is the culmination, in a sense, of everything that we need to learn and know about what it is that we are to engage in as we surrender to the will of a God who is all powerful, at the same time all merciful. If I go back to the first Sunday of this season, one of the things that was always brought up, usually, in terms of the reading, is the temptations of Jesus, and I just want to start with that one image, because it’s so clear that this last set of readings for this fifth Sunday, in a way, point to what it is that Jesus made clear when he was tempted. What was his intention in terms of his life here? What did he want to accomplish?
The incarnation is core to our teaching. It means that we believe that Jesus was fully human and fully divine, and when we see this creature that’s fully human and fully divine unfolding throughout its life on this earth, we realize that what we’re looking at is the fullest representation of who human beings are and who God is. The fullness of revelation is found in this human being who is also God. We see who human beings really are and who God really is. From the beginning it was clear what’s the relationship between humanity and divinity in this person of God and Jesus, and it’s this: the reason Jesus came into the world, he said, is to open himself as fully as possible as a human being, to learn as much as he could of what the Father is teaching. “I live on every word that comes from my Father’s mouth.” And when asked whether or not his words were worth trusting, the devil tempted him and said, “Well, make sure he’s going to do what he says or if his words really work. Test him.” And Jesus said, “I’ll never test him. I trust in him implicitly. Whatever he says, whatever he teaches, I believe in. I don’t need to have it proven to me.” And once Jesus made those two decisions, once humanity makes those decisions, then the next part is rather just like — it just turns out to be that way, and that is, when the devil shows him what it’s like to live in this world that runs on power and control, Jesus looks at it and says, “I’m not even interested in this. This is not the kingdom of my Father. It’s the kingdom of evil. It’s the kingdom of the devil.” That’s strong words for what is considered to be the world, but don’t confuse the image of the world as the world that God created but the world that we live in that is created out of an ego and a mindset that says the way to deal with this world is to be in a position of power and to use that position of power to achieve and get whatever you want. That’s living in the world. The other option is to live in God, which is what Jesus is teaching the world, what it’s like to live in God.
So we start with this first reading in this set of readings with an image of a change that came with time, in terms of how God was dealing with his people. He began, definitely, as his master, as the human beings’ master. He was the one with power, like all gods had power, and if you did what he said, and that was one of the ways to help them keep themselves from self-destruction, by following rules and regulations — there were first ten rules and regulations that were given that had everything to do with our relationship with God and with each other, the Ten Commandments. But it’s clear that human beings were so prone to wanting a power to tell them what to do, and if they could follow that, they wouldn’t have to do any of their own work, just obey the ruler. And if they gave themselves over to the rule and followed it, they knew they would be safe. They would not be destroyed. So you can see that that was the system in the beginning, and then we see, as God is revealing himself slowly over time, we realize that God is not a God of power over people but a God that longs to empower people. And so in this beautiful reading from Jeremiah, we have a kind of foretaste of what redemption is going to be, what’s going to happen to human beings, and what it is, it’s a change from looking outside of ourselves to a power greater than ourselves to tell us how to act so we can act that way and, our of fear, do it over and over again so that we won’t be destroyed. And that’s going to be replaced by something much more mysterious. “I will place my law within them, write it on their hearts. They will know the truth. They will know who they are. They will know who I am. Nobody’s going to have to teach them. It’s inside of them. It’s buried in their unconscious, and it’s going to become more and more conscious.” So no longer will people have to be controlled with rules and laws. They will know what to do. That’s the promise.
And that’s what we call redemption, and that’s what Jesus accomplished. We have to understand exactly how he did it. What did he do? Because what Jesus learned while he was here on this earth is what we all need to learn while we’re here on this earth. The first thing that we see in the next reading about Jesus, who was in the flesh, who was God in the flesh, is that he had to learn. He had to learn to obey, and he learned obedience from what he suffered. Now, what that means is obedience means to listen. So he had to learn how to listen to everything the Father was showing him, everything the Father was teaching him, and when he saw that what he was doing was not in sync with what he knew that God longed for him to do — in other words, when he was caught as a human being into being the powerful one, the one that could control people, he had to feel at times that that’s what he wanted to do as a human being. He was fully human, and if I want to change somebody, if I had the power over them to change them, I’d say, “You must change. Stop doing what you’re doing. Do this, or I will leave you, or I will destroy you. I’ll never have anything to do with you.” That’s the way the mind and the will work, but Jesus had to learn to listen to something new. And when he learned it, he had to surrender to it, which means to suffer, to allow it to take the place of where he was, what he thought. So he was made whole, more in tune with the truth, because every time he saw something he decided would work and it was revealed to him it wouldn’t work, he had to suffer it. He had to surrender to it and change, and what the change really was, was a change from being a figure that was a master over us becoming a servant. When Jesus said, in the first reading, “I had to show myself as master,” that’s the way he first revealed himself, as a master. “Follow my rules or die.” And yet he knew that that was not truly who he was, and he wanted not to be that, but he wanted Jesus to reveal who he really is. Who he really is, is a lover who wants to serve his people. He doesn’t want to have power over them, making them do what they’re supposed to do out of fear of losing his love or being condemned by him. No, he wanted so much for them to see that he was one that looked at their sins and didn’t want to destroy them because of them, because of those sins but wanted to offer forgiveness. And when he knew that we would understand that we were forgiven, human beings would begin to understand what it means to live in this thing, live in the world in God and not in the world as a place where the thing that works, the only thing that works is power over people, controlling them. How do you stop controlling people? Instead of that, empower them. Empower them to see who they are and to live as they’re called to live.
So we have, in this set of readings then, an image in the gospel, which is perfect, because the Greeks are coming to this great feast. Now, understand this feast is a celebration of the power of Jesus in the world. He had just healed a man that was born blind. Then he raised someone from the dead. This is power, and he came into Jerusalem as a rock star, as a celebrity, as the greatest of all kings. And it was a kingdom that was not the kingdom of God but the kingdom of the world. He was powerful, and so he had to have been, in a certain sense, intoxicated by that a little bit if he was human. And maybe he could look and realize, when he saw that he was being held up as some great powerful figure that had power over evil, he became worried that maybe he had made a mistake. And where would the mistake have been? Well, if you look at Jesus, he was really good about offering forgiveness, and as a human, remember, he was a human being learning how to become more like God. And at the beginning of his even ministry, he had a way of dealing with the scribes and Pharisees where he showed hate for them. He was judgmental and condemning and thought they should be destroyed, and yet he was soft as a human being over sinners who recognized their need. Well, doesn’t that feel human? It does make sense. If somebody who is absolutely bent on doing destruction to you — you want to destroy them. If somebody comes to you and says, “Forgive me. I’m going to change.” You can relate to that person. So is it true then that Jesus revealing in this story of the end of his life the final thing he had to learn — you cannot change the world by hating it or trying to destroy it. So you’ll notice that this statement, when the Greeks came and said, “We want to see where Jesus is right now.” This is the end of his life. “Where is he? What’s he dealing with?” That’s kind of what they were asking, and Jesus said, “Look, I realize something. Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat, but something has to die in us as human beings, and it’s power over people.” If you really are in that world of power, you know how effective it is, and if your motive is good, you feel empowered.
If I had the power to change everyone by forcing them to be who they should be, I would think I was doing a great thing, but the only trouble with every institution that gets that power inside of them is it may start out by saying, “I want to give it to people, empower them.” But then normally the source of power becomes intoxicated by their power, and they start to use and abuse instead of empower. So Jesus is saying, “Something in me still has to die at this last moment of my life, and I want God to glorify me and glorify God.” What it means, the glory of God is human beings intoxicated with the love of God dwelling within them, becoming everything that God longed for them to be. That’s what God wants. That’s his glory. So what it is that Jesus is trying to say to the world, “I’m finally seeing fullness of who I have to be.” Yes, to forgive the sinner is a very, very difficult thing for a lot of us to do, but how about to forgive evil, raw, demanding, destructive, ugly evil? What do you have to do with that? Can’t you will to destroy it? Isn’t that what God would want? No, he wants you to forgive it, and so the glory of God in Jesus and the glory of Jesus in God is that moment on the cross when the pinnacle, the high point of his humanity and divinity coming together manifests itself in a humanity that is surrendering to something that’s so hard for the will and the mind to understand. And that is power over people is always destructive, and empowering people is the only way to save the world. And what is clear in this moment of Jesus’ death, right before he realizes that he has seen all of this, and he wants to manifest it to someone, he says the most incredible thing. He said, “Father, I am a victim of the institution that I’ve come to save, and the people in that have become empowered with the way of the world, not your way. And I’ve hated them for that. I’ve tried to destroy them for it. It’s the wrong thing to do, and so now I’m hanging here and saying to you, look, I’ve learned it. I see it. I want to tell everybody that — look what I am doing. I am forgiving the very people who have set their mind on destroying me, and I wanted to destroy them first, but I couldn’t.” And the more you try to destroy the enemy, the more you empower them. And the more you empower them, the more you lose. And so there he is, saying the most amazing, powerful statement. “Unless you forgive everything, every evil, every wrong thing, unless you forgive it with your heart and want it to be changed by it, being forgiven, only then can you enter into the kingdom of God. Only then do you understand my kingdom.” Living in God is living as a figure that empowers every seed of goodness in everyone by loving it. To live in the world is to destroy every person who’s filled with evil, and while you destroy that, you destroy the seed of goodness in them. Hatred, destruction is the devil’s work. Forgiveness, understanding, compassion is God’s work, and it’s conceivable that the human heart can override the human mind and will that can work always toward destruction of evil. And the heart can win. Instead of destruction, there’s life and beauty and goodness and redemption.
Father, your gift to us is the life of the God/man Jesus. Without it, we would never fully understand who you are and who we are and why we’re here. Bless us with insight, understanding, openness to who he is and who you are in him, and let us grow in our understanding of what his life teaches us so that we can do it, imitate him, become like him. It is going through the same process he goes through. It’s not being told what to do. It’s becoming who we really are. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.