Fifth Sunday of Lent Year B 2024

Title

To Rise with Christ we must Die with Christ

Outline

We love Jeremiah ch 31

Ancient Israel and Judah did too, for it promises a restoration. But it promises a restoration to one nation that was already destroyed and in exile and to another nation that was soon to be destroyed. It is from the context of death that the promise comes.

Furthermore, while the chapter as a whole speaks of a return to the land, which did happen around 538 BC, Christians understand this spiritually in that it also speaks of a new covenant, a covenant written on the heart, a covenant under which all will know the Lord. There is no talk in Judaism of a new covenant, but of living the old covenant. In the Jesus movement there is a new covenant, which, because it is in the heart transcended ethnicity. So while the first Christians were all Jews, soon non-Jews were being brought into the new covenant. And both Jew and non-Jew had to die to their previous identity to come into that covenant in which God says, “I will forgive their iniquity and no longer remember their sin.” That is why Jesus (and John the Baptist) preached “repent.”

That is in part why Jesus had to die to establish the new covenant

God became a man so that with a human will he could “learn obedience” and with a human body he could suffer and die and with a resurrection as a transformed human he could be “made perfect.” It was through death that Jesus “became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.” Death and resurrection are built into the new covenant.

That explains John chapter 12

Jesus has arrived for his last Passover, which was a reliving of the first covenant-forming event. Greek speakers ask a Greek-speaking disciple to see Jesus. Jesus sees the request to expand the kingdom message beyond the Palestinian-Jewish world as the divine sign that it was time for the new covenant-forming event: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” The way into this covenant will be the way the covenant is formed: “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.” That refers first to Jesus forming the covenant and including all who trust him. But then he makes it clear that the same principle holds for us: “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honor whoever serves me.” We live the way of death and resurrection in Jesus.

So long as we live only in this age with its ethnic divisions we are under “the ruler of this world.” In his glorification (death, resurrection, and ascension) Jesus draws all who commit to him into the new type of humanity with the new covenant written on their hearts; that is, he draws all to himself. (When you reread this you will see that Jesus uses a number of words with dual meanings.)

Now, perhaps you see the goal of Lent

When one comes to Jesus one repents (or parents repent for one); that is, turns from the life of the old humanity, and is baptized, commits to Jesus and union with him in the new humanity. Unlike some naturalizations, such as the ones I experienced, one cannot be a dual citizen. There is always a death before life.

But we discover as we go on or as we grow up that while the old humanity with its ethnic divisions and control by the ruler of this world is in principle dead, it keeps trying to deny its death and assert its control over us. I think of a German pastor I knew, Helmut Ahlvers, who was praying to God intensely and said, “Lord, I am down on my face on the carpet, why do you not answer?” God in some way indicated to him, “Helmut, you are not low enough, you need to be under carpet.” There are parts of my this-world life that are not functionally dead yet.

So in Lent we join with those preparing for baptism for we too need to repent, fast, pray - to allow God to put the this-world life to death in us, so that we can in a deeper, fuller way rise to a closer union and fuller life with Jesus. And while this can go on in our lives at other times than Lent, in Lent we focus on this intensely with the expectation the Triduum will culminate for us in a new closeness with Jesus.

It is that simple, so simple that Jesus can sum it up in a single sentence, and so hard that most of us will spent our lives dying more thoroughly and experiencing union with Christ more thoroughly and only becoming saints at the end of our lives. But then if we do not embrace the process we will never get there. And there is no time like this Lent to do that.