Homily:
5th Sunday in Lent – Cycle B
In
the Gospel today, we encounter Christ in a liminal moment—that is, a
transition… the proverbial “fork in the road”.
We know that he came for all people, but as he proclaimed multiple times
throughout his public ministry, he came first for the Jews—the descendants of
the ancient Israelites. Nonetheless, his
job was to fulfill the task that God had given to his chosen people from the
beginning, which was to be a “light to all nations” so that all peoples would
be drawn back to God. Thus, in this
reading, when the Greeks (that is, members of "the nations") come
looking for Jesus, Jesus realizes that his "hour" had come (that is,
the time for him to fulfill that for which he came).
As
he enters this moment he says a number of interesting things. First, he reveals the utter fullness of his
humanity and says, "unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies,
it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit."
Jesus sees that, while all that he had
done so far has been good, he still must hand himself over to suffer and to die
if he is to produce the fruit for which he came. It's the kind of sober thing that you say
when you realize that your “fate has been sealed”, so to speak. Then he says "I am troubled now." What human wouldn't be troubled knowing that
immense suffering was coming their way? He follows it with "But what else would I
do? This is why I came!" In this we hear echoes of the letter to the
Hebrews: "He learned obedience from what he suffered." Then Jesus sets his sights clearly on the
end: the cross. "When I am lifted
up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself."
While
this last comment refers to the cross, it also refers to an image that any good
first century Jew would have recognized; and it is something to which Jesus
more specifically referenced earlier in the Gospel of John (we actually heard
it read last week). There, Jesus was
speaking to Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish religious court, who had come to
Jesus trying to figure out who he was.
Jesus said to him: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may
have eternal life.” He is referring to
the incident that occurred as the Israelites wandered through the desert on
their exodus from Egypt, in which they complained one too many times against
God for taking them from Egypt. As a
punishment, God sent poisonous serpents into their camp. Many people were being bit by the serpents
and were dying. And so, they began to
beg Moses to plead for relief from God, who instructed him to make a serpent
out of bronze and mount it onto a pole so that it could be raised up and people
could see it. Anyone who had been bitten
by a serpent, but who then looked at the bronze serpent with a repentant heart,
was healed and lived.
Jesus
refers to this incident in order to make sense of his upcoming passion and
death. In the desert, the Israelites
looked upon the image of the serpent, which was a sign of death to them and,
thus, the image of the full weight of the punishment due to them. In God’s paradoxical wisdom, however, the
image of the punishment became the source of repentance and healing. Jesus, in being crucified, takes this sign
and brings it to fulfillment. You see,
when Jesus is crucified, the fullness of the punishment due to mankind is
effected. Therefore, the image lifted up
is no longer a thing of fear, as the serpent was in the desert, which reminded
the people of the punishment due to them, but rather it is a sign of hope, tinged
with sorrow: hope, because those who acknowledge their sinfulness see in it one
who has given himself over to pay the full debt of punishment due for their
sins, and sorrow, because those same persons realize the pure innocence of the
one who was sacrificed and that he truly did not deserve to suffer.
This
image, the innocent one who suffered for our sake, and the reaction, sorrow for
our sinfulness that caused him to suffer and die, yet with hope that our
punishment has been fulfilled, has become the source of salvation for
everyone. Thus, the image of Jesus
crucified fulfills what he said, that “when he is lifted up from the earth, he
will draw everyone to himself”. Anyone,
therefore, who recognizes their own wretchedness has only one source of consolation:
Jesus Christ crucified.
This,
my friends, is why we keep the image of the crucified Christ on our
crosses. Certainly, we honor the cross itself
as the instrument on which our salvation was won for us, but it is Christ, who
was crucified on the cross, that gives the cross its meaning. Our non-Catholic Christian brothers and
sisters criticize us for keeping the image of the dead Christ on our crosses,
saying that “Christ is no longer dead!
So we shouldn’t show him as if he is!”
But without the image of Christ’s dead body on the cross, the image of
the cross loses the power that Christ intended it to have to draw all men and
women to himself. This is because the
image of Christ crucified on the cross says to the one who recognizes his or
her sinfulness and who sees no way out of it: “Look at the punishment due to
your sins and take hope in me, because I have been punished for you!”
And
this, in a sense, is what we have been called to do during this Lent: to
acknowledge our sinfulness and to look upon Christ, crucified on the cross, and,
thus, to see the horrible punishment due to us because of our sins; and then to
repent from them, knowing that Christ has been punished for our sake, and so
putting our hope fully in him once again (or for the first time) so that we may
not lose the everlasting life that we have in him, through baptism.
If
you, therefore, do not have a crucifix somewhere in your home then you must get
one! Then (or if you already have one),
spend time over these next two weeks looking at the image of Christ crucified
and meditate on the punishment that he suffered for you. Thank him for not saying “Father, save me
from this hour!”, but rather that he said “Father, glorify your name”. Then, commit yourself to rooting out sin in
your life and to enduring whatever suffering may come your way in this world so
as to console his heart, which opens the floodgates of his merciful love for
us. My friends, if you can do this, you
will not only prepare yourself well to celebrate Easter, but you will become
saints.
May
his merciful love, poured out most perfectly for us here in this Eucharist,
bring this good work to completion in you.
Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – March 18th,
2018
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