Fifth Sunday of Lent
The Gospel of John 12:20-33
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Preached at St. John’s Christopher St, NYC
March 21, 2021
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Grace and peace to you from God the Creator, Christ the Beloved One, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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During the season of Lent, we have been doing a weekly Bible study on Zoom. One of the themes we’ve been discovering between the texts is an evolving God, or an evolving understanding of God and God’s promises. We’ve been working parallel to our Sunday worship texts for the most part, and this arc that we’re exploring is woven together with our Lenten journey.
From God setting the rainbow in the sky, to blessing Abraham and Sarah, to giving the Ten Commandments, to the baptism of Jesus, God promises again and again to be with us, even as we grow in understanding of what that means for us, and for our lives. God’s promises and covenants evolve over time, and are contextual. This is true again in our reading from Jeremiah. “I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” God is not only in holy places, in holy writings, accessed through other people, but God is within our very hearts.
The book of Jeremiah was written in tumultuous times, for an audience who is in exile. That context is important – communities in exile are separated from the lives and histories they once had, and exile doesn’t have a clear end date. And so the assurance that God’s law, God’s being, is written on their hearts would be a source of comfort. Even in exile, even away from everything they knew, God is claiming those wandering in exile as God’s people. God knows their hearts, our hearts, we know God, and God forgives our sins.
God has written Godself onto our hearts. We can experience God, understand God, outside of the written word. We can hear God in our hearts. In our modern context, this might not sound all that radical. But still can be, because this promise of God upends the primacy of the written word, which is an aspect of white supremacy culture.
A document I have found helpful in my own journey towards living in anti-racist ways is “White Supremacy Culture” by Tema Okun and Kenneth Jones. It’s easily searchable online, and if you haven’t read it before, I definitely recommend it. One of the aspects of white supremacy culture that is listed in this document is worship of the written word. Upholding the written word as the best or only way to receive and communicate information leaves whole ways of knowing and being out. It leads to dismissal of alternate communication methods, or dismissal of access needs. A reason I really like this particular document by Okun and Jones is that it also gives antidotes – if these are harmful aspects of white supremacy culture, what are concrete ways of shifting that? And one of the antidotes listed for worship of the written word is honoring that there are multiple ways of doing things, multiple ways of communication.
A way we can honor that in our own faith tradition is taking seriously that God has written God’s law, and Godself, onto our hearts. That we each have a particular and individual relationship to God, unmediated by other people or by religious authorities.
Please don’t hear me saying that scripture, the written word of God, is unimportant. We grow in our understanding of God through reason, experience, tradition, and scripture. All four of these are necessary and true ways of knowing God. And I know that, for many of us, written scripture, whether read or passed down through stories and song, is a meaningful way to understand and get to know God. We can hold those things in tension – valuing scripture, and also valuing reason, tradition, and our own lived experiences, and the way that these ways of knowing interact with each other.
How has God written Godself on your heart? What phrases, images, verses, experiences of God, do you remember and return to? What do you take comfort in when you’re on the subway, or in a hospital, or in the moments when you are separated from your community, or from everything you once knew as true? These might be pieces of scripture that have woven themselves into your heart, or they might be experiences beyond words.
Take a moment to pay attention to how God has written Godself on your heart.
For some of us, we might be remembering a feeling of wholeness, or presence, or love. A memory of a time where you knew God’s love and forgiveness.
For some of us, we might think of Psalm 23: “The LORD is my shepherd and I shall not want.”
For some of us, we might hold close the promise from last week’s Gospel of John reading: “”For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Whatever verse or experience you thought of, I would say that, for us as Christians, there is an underlying verse that is written on our hearts, that shapes how we seek and worship and understand God in the world: “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”
We wish to see the Jesus who came up out of the Jordan river, drenched in the waters of baptism, a dove alighting on his shoulder.
We wish to see the Jesus who healed, who cast out demons, who fed thousands.
We wish to see the Jesus who washed the feet of his friends, an act of care he learned from the woman who washed his feet.
We wish to see the glorified Christ.
There’s a challenge in the passage from John for today. It’s a challenge that Jesus himself gives us. In this first part of his farewell discourse, Jesus says, “okay, you want to see me? Really see me? Well this is what you’re in for.”
It’s not just healing and feeding and blessing. Seeing Jesus also means seeing his death.
Jesus asks us to imagine him like a grain of wheat that is buried in the earth. When a seed is planted, that is an act of faith. Because unless the dirt, water, and sun are right – the seed remains dead in the ground. It dies further. We might wait, and watch the dirt, hoping for a tendril to come up through the soil. It’s not a guarantee. It’s not in our control. While we watch, it might seem like nothing is happening. And that could be true. Some seeds that are planted never sprout, some harvest seasons are lean. But for the seeds that do sprout, they are transforming, changing, living, under the soil, reaching towards the sun. This is how Jesus is asking us to imagine his death – a moment of transformation, change, and ultimately, though it might seem impossible, a moment of life.
This year, as we are still collectively surrounded by death and violence and indifference, it might be harder for us to see Jesus in this way. It might seem shocking to us that the seed doesn’t die in the ground, but instead springs forth with abundant fruit. It might be easier for us, this year, to sit with the fact that Jesus dies. That God dies. That we are surrounded by death. It might feel like God is no longer written on our hearts, that we can no longer access God through experience, but only by retelling the stories of scripture. So much of our worship centers on the Cross – a tool of oppression and death that God transforms – that it might be easier to imagine Jesus, crucified, instead of Jesus, resurrected.
But Jesus asks us to see him. Really see him. Not just as one who is going to die, but as one who is going to transform death. Who is going to drive out the rulers of the world, and draw all people to himself, to new life. Who asks us to follow him in this path, transforming, changing, sprouting, and bearing much fruit.
This is where our Lenten journey changes. Where our discipleship changes. We have been journeying with Jesus alongside the disciples, and now we deliberately turn towards Jerusalem, and towards the Cross. Today, Jesus tells us what it means to see him, to experience him. Not just in the moments when he feeds and heals. Not just in the moments of death. Not just in the moments of transformation, and new life – but in all of those moments. And the question for us as disciples is – do we want that? Do we want to follow Jesus if that’s what it means – following him not just in the easy moments, but in the challenging and heartbreaking moments? In the moments where we are scared to hope for resurrection because we have been let down so many times before? We know death – are we willing to trust in new life? Because following Jesus will transform us.
We can only answer this question for ourselves, even as we journey with each other.
Sometimes, when I think of all the ways God has made Godself known in scripture and in our lives, I get overwhelmed by that amount of love. This is a God who is willing to die for us, who transforms death. Who wants to be with us, who draws us all to Godself. Who loves us. Who is with us, even in the moments when we might not be able to feel God’s presence, when we are overcome by grief or fear. Who is with us, even when we lie fallow in the earth, not sure if we will sprout and flourish. Who is with us, in the painful moments of change and transformation. Who is with us beyond words.
The first time I experienced the triduum – Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil, Easter morning, all following the joyful, defiant action of Palm Sunday – I was surprised at how viscerally it impacted my body. I had scheduled my week to attend the services, but didn’t account for the time and energy needed to process my reactions, my experiences. I didn’t realize how big of an impact seeing Jesus, listening to the story of God, joining my prayers to centuries of prayers, would have on me. And so as we turn to Palm Sunday, to Holy Week, I would invite you to take the time you can to prepare. To sit with the questions of what it means to see Jesus – living, crucified, and resurrected. What it means that God has written Godself on your heart. To be surprised, unsettled, and comforted by what you might find there. And to trust in the ongoing promises of God – that God is with us, God loves us, and God transforms us. Amen.
Reed Fowler 