The Word for Sunday: http://usccb.org/bible/readings/032215-fifth-sunday-lent.cfm
Jer 31: 31-34
Heb 5: 7-9
Jn 12: 20-33
Change
is inevitable everywhere but we often resist change because we fear the
unfamiliar, we dare not leave our comfort zone, or we see no reason to
change. Things are fine the way they are
so why redesign the wheel? Yet certain changes bring something far more
significant and beneficial.
The
other evening around 9 pm, I turned on the television and channel surfed for a
bit when I came across what proved to be a fascinating program. It concerned the monarch butterfly. The show was listed as an hour long and at
first blush I wondered what you could say about a butterfly in an hour what you
could not cover in about ten minutes.
However, these small, silent, fragile appearing creatures are a wonder
of nature. Despite their delicate appearance, they prove to be tenacious. Only
further proof of God’s mystery and beauty.
With amazement I learned these beautiful creatures migrate thousands of miles in
the fall and spring. Hundreds of thousands of monarch butterflies will follow an
airborne path, like geese, from south to north and north to south as they fly over
2,000 miles! Geese yes but butterflies? This astonishing fact is only possible
when those fat and somewhat clumsy worm-like creatures called a caterpillar "die" to their previous form
and rise as the delicate and beautiful new creation. In this case, the death of one becomes the transformed
new life of another. It’s no wonder that
one image of the resurrection of Jesus is often a butterfly.
Our
Gospel this Sunday prepares us for a new transformation in Christ; for death to
bring life and despair to bring hope. In
the Gospel passage, placed by John towards the end of Jesus’ ministry, he
reminds us that his mission and his person must undergo a new change in order
to bring about a greater good – Jesus’ glory in death and resurrection will be
the next stage of his mission, his Church, to the greater world beyond
Jerusalem. It is clear in John that Jesus is in control of this entire event.
That he and his Father are one in mind and purpose. As we approach Holy Week
and Easter, we are now given a reminder of the transformative power of Jesus’
death. Ultimately, what has been
accomplished by it – a new Covenant in his blood. That covenant is spoken of centuries before
Christ appears.
Our
first reading is taken from the prophet Jeremiah who preached to the ancient
Jews during a very turbulent time. The
Babylonians are a direct threat to Jerusalem and in fact eventually conquered by
destroying the holy city then carried off many to Babylon. What has God allowed to happen to his chosen
people and why?
Jeremiah
is now in Babylon where he prophesies to the Jews not only that God chastised
them for their unfaithfulness to the covenant established earlier through
idolatry and social injustice but that now at a future time God will establish
a new covenant with his people. A new covenant,
not an agreement, that will be an intimate sharing of love and life based in
the law not written upon stones or in books but upon their own hearts: “I will place my law within them and write it
upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (Jer 31:
31). This permanent bond will form a new covenant not of a static obedience
to the law but of unconditional love made concrete through forgiveness and
reconciliation. Our response to that
outreach from God is the way in which the relationship is deepened and
fulfilled.
If
we place this reading aside the Gospel, we hear that Jesus himself speak of
this new beginning: “Unless a grain or
wheat falls to the ground and dies, a it remains just a grain of wheat; but if
it dies, it produces much fruit... and when I am lifted up from the earth, I
will draw everyone to myself.” (Jn 12: 20 ff).
It
is all about a new relationship between God and humanity that goes far beyond
the ancient covenants of old. It is a
new covenant that is living and personal not just for a few but for all
humanity which is the new “chosen people” of God. And similar to the previous covenants sealed
by blood and sacrifice, this new covenant will be sealed once for all through a
more deeply personal sacrifice and shedding of blood.
If
we recall the moment when Jesus gathered with his disciples in that upper room
the night before he died when he took a cup of wine and a piece of unleavened
matzo. His words to those gathered we
hear in every Mass: “This is my Body, which will be given up for
you . . . this is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal
covenant, which will be poured out . . .” Jesus himself will offer his body and
blood as the ultimate and final sign of this new covenant offered by God
through his unconditional love. How we then live out that love in our
sacrificial service of love towards one another is the way in which that
covenant is made clear and moves forward – the grain of wheat must die to
produce much fruit.
In
just two weeks we’ll hear stories of the risen Lord that the Gospel writers
struggle to describe their experience as amazing, awestruck, trembling,
fearful, joyful. Once the grain of wheat
died, Jesus himself, great fruit was produced by the Lord of glory in his
Church and the Spirit’s power that sent that Gospel message of the new Covenant
of unconditional love to humanity. Gathered
for the Eucharist as we do so often in the remembrance of that eternal seal
which transformed our broken relationship with God and now offers us the proposition
of a new way that is forever renewed through love, mercy, forgiveness.
By your help, we beseech you, Lord our God,
may we walk eagerly in that same charity
with which, out of love for the world,
your Son handed himself over to death.
(Roman Missal - Collect for Sunday)
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