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The Fifth Sunday in Lent Almighty God, the breeze of your love and grace is ever blowing; may we set our sails to capture that breeze, and may it inspire these words and those who hear them. Amen As a southerner transplanted to New England, I find March to be one of the more difficult months of the year. In my native south, March is the month when the flowers burst into bloom, when the sun becomes truly warm again, when the breezes become balmy. The proverbial wisdom that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb seems to hold true. Here on Cape Cod, however, March seems to be one long stretch of winter getting in its last licks, of grey drabness, with only the barest hints of the spring we long for. That proverbial lion is still skulking around, waiting to pounce if we let our guard down, take off our coats or open our windows in hopes of a whiff of spring. But today is the last Sunday in March, and we can begin to see the light of spring at the end of the long tunnel of winter. It feels especially fitting that today, the fifth Sunday in Lent, also marks the beginning of the end of our long Lenten journey with Jesus towards Jerusalem and the cross. This somber journey embark on in Lent offers us a unique with an opportunity each year to pause and take stock of our lives. As we do so, many of us take on some sort of Lenten discipline, trying in some way to live more in concert with what God is calling us to be and do—perhaps by praying more or differently, or by studying something new, or by treating our bodies with more respect, or by being more attentive to God in our midst—the options are endless. My own Lenten disciplines vary from year to year, and I’d be less than honest if I didn’t admit that I am more successful in honoring them some years than others. For me, this is one of those years where quite frankly I haven’t done so well. Is it a matter of time? Is it being stressed by the normal vicissitudes of life? Is it negligence, even sloth on my part? Probably it’s some of all of those things. Recognizing as Lent draws to a close how woefully weak I am, how unable I am to do the simplest things to bring my life more in alignment with God’s desires for me is a humbling experience, but one that I expect many of us share if we are honest with ourselves. This week’s readings speak powerfully to the condition that I find myself in, to what is in fact, the human condition, one that has marked the lives of God’s people throughout time. It is likely no accident that the readings for this 5th Sunday in Lent remind us that despite our weakness, despite our consistent falling away, despite our hardness of heart, God continues to call us back and to welcome us, to love us, and to rejoice in our being—and to do it as often as it takes until we finally get it. This is the message we hear from the prophet Jeremiah. On the whole Jeremiah is not a guy who is full of consolation—in fact, he’s more characteristically a prophet of doom and gloom, called to warn the people about the dangers of falling away from the ways of the Lord. But when the people of Israel find themselves in dire straits—in exile, Jerusalem sacked and their Temple destroyed—Jeremiah is there to relay God’s offer of a new covenant, a new relationship: This is the covenant that I will make This is a powerful promise. God recognizes the failure of the people to uphold their part of the covenant they entered into as they were brought up out of Egypt, yet God still rewrites the covenant, taking even more responsibility for the relationship, writing the law on the people’s hearts—etching it into their very being. You would think that would do it, wouldn’t you? God calls us and directs us from the innermost parts of our being—and yet we are still a recalcitrant people, willful and slow to conform ourselves to God’s ways, our hearts hardened so that even with God’s word written on them, they can’t break in. If God were a lesser being, if God were not God, God might be tempted to turn away at this point in despair—what to do with these hardhearted humans? But as scripture reminds us, our God is a God of infinite love and never-ending patience, and so God sent Jesus to break open our hearts and let God’s words fall in. Jesus comes to remind us that God does not give up on us. In his ministry Jesus’ mighty acts of healing connect him with the God who has acted throughout time, and his teachings show the people once more the kind of life God desires for them. It’s a message that is both powerful and perplexing, and it’s sometimes slow to sink in. In today’s gospel we find Jesus near the end of his ministry, preparing his followers for what is to come and reassuring them that he is not abandoning them. To explain his approaching death, Jesus likens himself to a grain of wheat, which unless it falls into the earth and dies, can bear no fruit but will instead remain just a single grain. The fruit that Jesus will bear, of course, is nothing less than our eternal life. Jesus came from God to call God’s people one more time back into relationship, to crack open our hearts so that God’s word might enter in. Jesus did this by offering himself up on the cross, giving up his life as a human being so that we might share the fruit of eternal life with him in God’s eternal kingdom. And Jesus calls us to do likewise. If we are to bear fruit in this life, if we are to share in the fruit of eternal life, then we must allow our hearts to be broken open and let God’s word enter in. Just as Jesus gave up his life for us, we, too, must die to the life we know, the life of this world that takes such a hold on us and hardens our hearts so that we might live the life God wants for us, so that we might follow Jesus into heaven. As we come to the end of another Lent, it is easy to feel discouraged. Despite our best efforts we are sinners, and we often fall short of living the life God calls us to. Consciously and unconsciously we make choices that take us farther away from God. But as we move towards Easter and the promise of the resurrection, we are reminded yet again that we should not despair, for God’s love for us infinite, God’s patience with us is everlasting, God’s desire for us boundless, God’s joy in us is immeasurable. Just as the green shoots reliably emerge out of the dead earth in spring, so too are we called to renewed life--resurrected life; to bear fruit and to enter yet again into God’s kingdom. In that blessed assurance may we rest and give thanks. AMEN |
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